How to be a Healthy Lover
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, I figured I’d drop some knowledge of some of the things I work with to improve relationships with my patients. Here are some tips to improve the health of your relationship.
This one is especially for the men: listen to your partner. I mean actively listen. If your partner has a hectic day, all they want to do is vent about it. Having a bad day sucks, but it sucks even more when no one cares. It’s actually pretty easy once you accept that you don’t have to fix anything. You just have to pay attention for 5-10 minutes and understand how crappy your partner is feeling, and then show that you care. Don’t try to help them fix it, and don’t trump their story with yours. If you don’t listen, your partner will bottle everything up and eventually it’ll come out as a physical symptom like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, headaches or a big juicy zit, or they’ll find someone who will listen.
Know that the way you express and receive love is most likely different than the way your partner does. You might build your partner a deck or buy them fancy jewelry but if their love language is words of affirmation, you could have just said they looked nice and it would’ve meant a heck of a lot more to them. For more information on this check out the book, ‘The 5 Love Languages’.
Be open about what you want. Just be straight up. Instead of giving a multiple choice question and having the right answer in your head, just give them the answer. Telepathy is rare and we hate being wrong.
If you had a bad day and you know you’re bound to take it out on your partner, walk it off. Either go for a walk on your own if you feel like you need alone time, or ask your partner to join if you just need to release some tension.
If emotions tend to get in the way of touchy subjects, email each other instead. This way you can look over what you’ve read and reflect on it before spouting it out and saying something you didn’t mean.
Take care of yourself! If you don’t take care of yourself and love yourself it’s going to be difficult to take care of, and love your partner. If you feel like you don’t deserve to be loved, your partner’s efforts will be futile and they’ll eventually stop trying. It’s important to explore why you don’t feel like you don’t deserve to be loved before your partner gives up on expressing love that is not being received.
If you have kids, be sure to maintain your own identity and relationship. I see so many patients whose kids have finally moved out and they have no clue who they are or who their partner is. We can get so wrapped up in our kids’ lives that we abandon our own. Once those kids are gone you have another 60-80 years with yourself and your partner, a 20-year hiatus isn’t the best way to start the remaining years of your life.
Recommended readings:
You Just Don’t Understand – Deborah Tannen
The 5 Love Languages – Gary Chapman
