What Should A Relationship Do? | 12 Essential Things


Relationships are an essential part of many people’s lives. Work and effort are required to make a fulfilling relationship that can make you feel things beyond just happiness.

A relationship should make you value and love yourself more. It should make you enjoy life to a greater extent as a person who has a positive and optimistic attitude towards living and is more aware of their own potential and personality.

A relationship’s contribution to your life can highly affect your mood, emotions, and personality. It is best to be aware of how a relationship should be affecting you positively.

What Should A Relationship Do For You?

Your personality and level of confidence get affected by the relationship you’re involved in.

A relationship should make you feel much more confident about yourself and should have the ability to boost your self-esteem.

It should not let you question your own worth and should help you to discover yourself at a much deeper level.

1. Helps You To Discover Yourself At a Deeper Level

Relationships can help you know yourself at a much deeper level. When a partner gives you the right kind of empathy, love, and affection, it helps you get a new meaning to your life.

When you react to such care, you identify the new facets of your personality which were unknown to you before. It can make you realize how empathetic, explorative and spontaneous you can be.

For example- if your partner is into painting and making art, they can help you discover your inner artist too, which you didn’t know was there before.

Helps You To Discover Yourself At a Deeper Level

2. Helps To Reduce Your Stress

A strong relationship will drastically reduce your stress levels, risk of depression and other symptoms of poor mental health. 

Research conducted by The Australian Longitudinal Study of Aging followed 1,500 people aged 70+ over 10 years.

It was observed that people with the most robust network of partners, confidants, and friends were 22% less likely to die during the study than those with the weakest network of good relationships.

We all know it’s comforting to have someone there for you who brings the right amount of love and emotional stability to your relationship.

The fulfillment of basic needs and your being genuinely happy reduces your stress to a greater extent.

3. You Achieve Your Life Goals Together

The right relationship can help you achieve your goals by motivating you, giving you a companion and keeping you accountable so that you don’t lose faith and give up.

A relationship with the right partner makes you focus on your goals and accomplishments and will never let you feel lonely in your hard times.

Your partner facilitates you as a cheerleader in your relationship and makes you see beyond the hard times. You focus on the brighter side and gain the drive to keep moving to where you want to be.

4. Helps You to Become a Better Person

A partner should help you to become a better person. They must show you the right way and a chance to see life from a more optimistic perspective.

It helps you to improve yourself daily and impacts your life to get better than it has ever been. Your partner helps you heal from past traumas, grow above your insecurities, and accept your flaws gracefully.

Being an optimistic person is not an easy task. It is also hard to be a kind and generous lover. All of this is made easier when your partner radiates positivity into your life and supports you at every turn.

They are always there to pick you up if things go wrong and tell you what you did wrong.

5. Boosts Your Self-Esteem

A meaningful relationship will help you feel much stronger than before. If you feel that you’re loved, that makes you feel much more secure and also expands your self-esteem.

Feeling you’re wanted and trusted makes you more confident and better. If someone is there to listen to you and understands you, it can boost your confidence.

When a person always supports you and is there for you through your ups and downs, it makes you feel more valuable and wanted.

You can develop more confidence in all areas of your life- personal and professional- because of the right kind of support.

6. You Feel Validated

The feeling of being validated in a relationship is a great one. It’s the feeling that makes you think you’ve finally found someone who is understanding and makes you feel good enough.

It’s important because it provides us with a sense of self-worth and belongingness with a feeling of being more connected with each other.

7. You Are Better Motivated

You feel that you’re much more motivated to do even the most mundane, or over-complicated tasks. You don’t lack energy or enthusiasm because your partner acts as a motivator for you.

They encourage you to do better, always strive for success and happiness, and not focus too much on the negative aspects of your life.

Everyone needs someone who motivates them to work harder even when the times are not in their favor. Your relationship should help you stay motivated and always look for opportunities.

Your partner should make you feel capable of everything, even in low times. It should be able to motivate you and boost your confidence so your relationship is doing the right thing for you.

You Are Better Motivated

8. You Are Happier and Positive About Life

Your entire outlook on life can change drastically when you’re in a relationship. You can become much more positive or negative depending on how your relationship affects your life.

A relationship should contribute positively to your life and should make you happy. It should help you to enhance your mood happily even in the worst times and think optimistically about various life situations.

9. You Feel Independent

Many people have this misconception about relationships: they make you lose your sense of self because you become too dependent on your significant other and don’t do things on your own.

On the contrary, the best relationships help you believe more than ever in yourself. It gives you the feeling of newly gained independence.

A good partner can motivate you to complete pending tasks you were procrastinating on by giving you the right kind of insights or by renewing your energy.

If your partner helps boost your confidence and makes you realize that at the end of the day, you’re solely responsible for your outcomes, it makes you much more independent whilst also having a sense of security in your hard times.

10. You’re Healthy

We all know that stress is a major cause of being unhealthy and prone to various diseases. If you’re happy and positive, then the diseases stay at bay.

A relationship can be a leading factor in causing unhappiness or happiness in your life.

Studies also show that people in supportive and optimistic relationships tend to produce more oxytocin, making one fall prey to the adverse effects of stress, anxiety, and depression.

If your relationship makes you happy and you feel joy and contentment, you will lead a healthy lifestyle due to a lack of relationship stress.

Making you feel healthy and optimistic is also what a relationship does.

11. You Are Mindful

Being mindful of harmful habits is a strong and disciplined trait one can develop.

A good relationship can make you more mindful of how you treat yourself physically and mentally and what your outlook is toward negative things in your life.

It helps you become more mindful about the perspective you hold towards yourself and others.

Your negative habits can hamper your growth, and if your partner checks on you and makes sure that you aren’t indulging in one, you can grow significantly.

12. Higher Sense of Purpose

A relationship should cater to your growth in all aspects of your life. It should make you feel and find a much greater sense of your existence and thrive better to achieve happiness and joy in your life.

Being in a loving relationship, a person can feel a sense of well-being and a sense of purpose in their life. They know how valuable they are as an individual.

What To Do If Your Relationship Doesn’t Do What You Want It To?

If your relationship is not helping you and isn’t doing what it should, then it’s best to communicate with your partner and let them know.

If communication is impossible, you must try other methods or walk away.

1. Communicate Openly

Communication is key to a good, fulfilling relationship. Suppose you’re openly communicating your needs and wants regarding your partner and your relationship.

In that case, chances are high that you may be able to fix the stressful situations by telling exactly what you expect.

A relationship should not make you feel that it is not giving value to your personal growth and adding happiness to your life.

It shouldn’t let you experience that the expectations of what you want are not in alignment.

If this is the case, you should undoubtedly communicate with your partner and try to handle things together.

Communicate Openly

2. Seek Professional Help

Seeking professional help from a certified counselor or therapist is the best thing you can do to fix problems in your relationship and to let the relationship serve its purpose of adding growth to your life.

Going to a professional to seek solutions is a good idea that has saved many relationships.

In a therapeutic setting, mental health professionals help you understand each other better and let you talk and heal from your personal traumas and arguments.

Couples need to have a healthy relationship which makes them better individuals than they were before. Seeking therapy is a way to save your relationship while getting what you expect from a relationship.

3. Giving Space To Your Partner To Change

Change doesn’t happen overnight. People take months to change. You should always allow your partner to change their behavior and actions if they are willing to do so.

Change takes time, but once it happens, it is always worth it.

If you have communicated with your partner to fix a problem in your relationship, then it may take some time for them to change their old behavior, which is normal.

Even if the change is small, at least they are making an effort to modify their behavior, which is a sign that they really want you in their life.

Give some time to them, and help them move through the challenges of changing their own behavior.

4. Working Through Disagreements

Having disagreements while discussing and fixing things in your relationship is entirely alright.

But a relationship is always a two-way street where having a deep, meaningful connection is what everyone desires.

While conveying your desires and expectations to your partner, it is very typical that you both might disagree with what the other one says. If a disagreement arises, don’t act like a child and stop talking.

If you’re hesitant about finding solutions to the problems, then it would be difficult for you to turn them into a healthy, communicative relationship.

Make sure you’re solving your arguments without brushing them off or delaying them indefinitely.

Working through the arguments is tough, but try understanding your partner and their values and priorities. Once it gets solved, it can be the most beautiful feeling you will ever experience.

5. Explore New, Healthier Ways To Be Together

Exploring healthy ways to fulfill your needs, desires, and expectations in a relationship is an excellent exercise you can do as a couple.

It will help you understand each other better and know their expectations and what they seek from a relationship. You can use the internet, talk to friends, and even a therapist.

Look out for exercises that make you both know your expectations from a relationship and can help you engage in techniques that might help you change the dynamics of your relationship.

This is a great way to understand each other’s viewpoints and opinions and communicate effectively. It also aligns your needs with your partner’s, which can fix the situation.

6. Be Willing To Walk Away

We know it’s a challenging step to walk away from someone you love and leave the relationship behind.

If the relationship is not adding value to your life and not making you grow emotionally and mentally, then maybe the best thing you can do is to walk away.

If you’ve tried many methods to fix the situation and let your partner know what you want from a relationship but still you both are not able to get on the right track, then walking away from the relationship is definitely not a bad idea.

Some things are not meant to work, and it’s okay if they don’t. There are many beautiful moments that are yet to be seen and felt in your life.

Be Willing To Walk Away

Conclusion

A relationship should always be conducive to boosting your self-confidence, making you genuinely happy, and helping you to know yourself at a much higher level.

It should always radiate positivity in your life. All relationships have their own struggles.

But if you’re willing to fix a situation, you should communicate with them openly without hesitation and help each other overcome difficult life situations together.

A healthy relationship offers you spiritual growth and always motivates you to do better in life.

Shashank Verma

A trained theatre actor and a STEM graduate who brings perspectives and methods from these worlds into dating and relationships. Also a big time Krav Maga enthusiast and practitioner.

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