10 Tips for a Deeper Relationship

1. When you are mad, don’t speak, take some space and hold yourself accountable for reacting. It is fine to feel, but anger is a reaction to a fear or hurt, go below the anger and be honest about what is really happening.

2. Don’t demand that anyone takes care of you in a way that you don’t do for yourself. If you don’t feel loved, then love yourself first. If you don’t feel you have enough attention, then pay attention to yourself first. If your life doesn’t feel happy, you make your life happy first. If you don’t have enough of anything, you take responsibility to make sure you have enough of what you want and need.

3. Be courageous and heal your past hurts. Look at your family dynamics and how you learned to “love” and be willing to do it differently. If you don’t understand how your belief systems were created, you will continue to act out all sorts of behaviors that you should have outgrown.

4. Want to know the person across from you more than you want to defend yourself. Love them more than you want to be right or look good. Be vulnerable and honest at all times.

5. Let them be free to be themselves without trying to make them change. Allow them to learn from their mistakes and support their journey.

6. Have a full life outside of each other and make a choice to join your full lives together.

7. Never make the children more important than the marriage. That is hiding from the work that marriage takes and the children can’t feel safe when the marriage isn’t whole.

8. Choose to love first and make that choice in every moment.

9. Maintain healthy friendships outside of the marriage.

10. Get help from a professional to create a strong relationship. Don’t wait until it is almost too late. Prevention is the best way to insure a long lasting relationship.