Meeting your loved one is a great happiness.
Psychologist Valery Gut told how to maintain love in marriage.
But to maintain a connection with him, you need to put in a lot of effort. If you don't work on the relationship, sooner or later it will fall apart.
According to the Unified Interdepartmental Information and Statistical System, 70% of marriages in Russia broke up in 2021. For comparison, 30 years ago the divorce rate was 42%, and 70 years ago - only 4%.
To live happily ever after in a marriage, you need to love by the rules. Here are some of them.
Rule #1: Don’t idealize your partner or the relationship as a whole.
When we decide to be together, we must be ready to accept a person as he is, with all his shortcomings.
Acceptance means allowing him to be imperfect, not comparing him to others, not adjusting him to your ideas of what is ideal, not remaking him. This also applies to relationships in general.
You need to learn to tell your partner about your desires and what you are not happy with - then there will be no unjustified expectations, resentments and disappointments. The other person cannot read our thoughts, so he cannot predict our desires. It is worth reminding yourself of this more often.
A happy relationship is when we can be who we are and still feel accepted and loved.
Rule #2: Be able to listen and hear each other.
We cannot read minds. But it is necessary to know what a loved one thinks, what is important to him and what his soul aches about. Therefore, it is necessary to develop observation skills in yourself, to be attentive to details and trifles.
To help realize big and small desires, it is worth taking an interest in what your loved one dreams about, and noticing what attracts him.
The reaction of the partner at such moments is priceless, and this experience will strengthen love in marriage every time.
Rule #3: Show each other your love.
To keep feelings, you need to show them. Love and care can be expressed in different ways.
Gary Chapman, in his book The Five Love Languages, argues that each person has their own unique love language through which they best express and receive love.
He identifies five languages with which we can show our attitude towards our loved ones.
- Words: talk about your feelings, express gratitude, admire from the heart and out loud.
- Touch: holding hands, hugging, carefully adjusting clothes.
- Time: spend every free minute with your loved one, find a place for him in your busy schedule.
- Care: fill the car with gas, help with dinner or cleaning.
- Gifts: they don’t have to be expensive, you can give something symbolic and without a reason.
To understand what language your loved one speaks, you need to observe him. You need to try to translate his actions and words into the language of love, and then express your feelings in a way that resonates with him.
It is also important to maintain romance in a relationship - it makes it lively and interesting.
Rule No. 4. Know how to conflict and make peace correctly.
We think that conflicts destroy relationships. Therefore, in situations where something irritates us or does not suit us in our partner, we prefer not to pay attention to it.
Over time, contradictions accumulate and sooner or later can turn into a destructive confrontation.
Therefore, it is important to discuss any problems in a timely manner - both big and small.
There is no need to argue and especially not to go beyond certain limits: humiliate the interlocutor, discuss him instead of the problem, give ultimatums and endlessly return to past conflicts.
Also prohibited are generalizations such as “you always” and “you never”, which undermine a person’s self-esteem.
Any conflict is, first of all, an opportunity to see and solve a problem. And if each partner tries to understand the other's point of view, recognizes the right of both to make mistakes and looks for a way out of a difficult situation, the relationship will only become stronger as a result of the conflict.
Rule #5: Don't forget about yourself and respect the freedom of others.
Don't dissolve in your loved one completely. It's important to remember that we once attracted this person's attention with our individuality.
If we merge with our partner - we begin to live exclusively by his interests, communicate with his friends and do only what he wants - we gradually abandon ourselves.
It's as if we are trying to replace our personality with the personality of a loved one, thereby destroying our own. In such a situation, both lose, because our partner stops seeing in us what previously attracted his or her interest.
Each person must strive to preserve their integrity, their identity. And contrary to popular belief, love is not the fusion of two souls, but their ability to exist harmoniously side by side.
To learn to love, we must act in the same way as if we wanted to master any other art - for example, music, painting, carpentry, or medicine.
We must grasp the theory and consolidate it in practice. Erich Fromm speaks about this in his book with the telling title "The Art of Loving".
Every married couple who has lived happily in marriage for many years has its own rules and secrets. But they all come down to one thing - to preserve love, you need to work on the relationship.
If you don’t sow anything in them: neither emotions, nor time, nor patience – then nothing will grow out of the relationship.
You can't stop learning. No matter how long people have been married, they need to continue learning new things about each other. When we think about how to make our relationship even better, ideas will definitely appear.
“Giving is much more joyful than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because by giving I feel that I am alive” - if you follow this rule of Erich Fromm, you can maintain love in a relationship for a long time.
