Stronger and longer love

Valentine's Day is approaching, and it is delightful to see colorful flowers, roses, and red hearts all around. It naturally suggests that we think about the arduous work of love and how to strengthen relationships.

We all know there are many essentials ways to keep our relationships strong, some of which we are already aware of. However, it is also useful to get to know what the researchers of relationships have found in their study. Therefore, this article's focus is to share with you some of those findings that can be helpful to people who are in a relationship with the significant other.

Self-love

"You, yourself, as much as anybody else in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." ~Buddha

Many psychologists and researchers of relationships believe that self-love is one of the most important keys to finding true love and having a long-lasting relationship with a partner. As Dr. Sonya Friedman explains, the way we treat ourselves sets the standard for others, and it is very empowering to know that deep love comes from within. Once we love and respect ourselves, we can expect others to love us too. It is not to be confused by being selfish, but self-respect, which means how we want others to treat us with love and respect.

Confidence, self-respect, trust, positivity, and auto-esteem are all essential factors that lead to good solid relationships with people in love.

Improving auto-esteem is very important in having a good relationship and helps reduce stress and anxiety, but a low auto-esteem and low confidence can ruin a relationship.

Be grateful for one another

According to the research done by many experts and psychologists, such as Dr. Alice Boyes, gratitude plays a significant part in a healthy relationship. As Dr.Boyes explains in her book The Healthy Mind Toolkit; the way we manifest gratitude has much positive effect on love relationships to last long. Being grateful keeps us positive, helps us support each other, and cooperates better when we give value to our partner. Having gratitude and feeling glad about our partner's good values and behaviors is like a force that strengthens the union of a couple so that the love can last a lifetime, as emphasized by Dr. Boyes. We are never perfect, so we should allow and leave space for imperfections, but appreciating our partner's good habits, manners, and actions and bringing more focus on them could help obtain and maintain intense feelings of love.

Motivate each other

As we know, relationships are not perfect, and over time there is some change and fluctuation of our feelings due to the changes in the circumstances of life. Therefore, to improve relationships, it is imperative to learn how to motivate our partner (according to Dr. John Gray, who is the best-selling author and trusted voice in relationships). We can, and we should accept that there are always challenges and changes in life due to many factors and circumstances. However, we shall look at the changes like opportunities to grow, which could teach us many lessons; we can learn much from those lessons that help us achieve mutual growth. According to Dr. Gray, when there are problems in a relationship, we shall look at how much change needs to happen, estimate them and track our partner's progress by motivating and encouraging this progress with a friendly, positive approach. Motivation is an essential step before taking any action because it is the reason behind any promise and commitment which pushes us towards positive and fruitful growing or emotional changes. There are many studies done on motivations and relationships (such as Yoo, Clark, Lemay, Salovey, & Monin, 2011); and they suggest that we must feel responsible for our partner's well-being and try to be present and pay great attention to partner's needs: having positive reactions to emotions, blaming our partner less about the failures, but instead giving more credit for the successes and good values. Lastly, it is essential to mention that collaboration and cooperation are crucial. Establishing communal and shared motivation can lead to our behavior changes naturally occur and help our relationship forward (Stanley, 2002).

"Raise your words, not your voice,

it is rain that grows flowers, not thunder."

― Rumi