Reflect on your romantic relationship(s), and identify one area in which you’d like to improve. Be it your wife, fiance, or new girlfriend, there’s sure to be something you can do to make the relationship even better. If you don’t have a romantic partner in your life, perhaps you can identify past failures that you’d like to improve in your future relationships. You can choose to talk about this with your partner, or not. Either way, you’ve now put your relationship top-of-mind and will be more attuned to being intentional about keeping it healthy.
I feel like I already put 150% into my relationship with Laura. I try to be patient when she criticizes me. I try to learn and grow. I do everything I can to keep the family going. I carry the slack when she feels like she needs a break. I avoid criticizing her to her face our behind her back. The one thing that I should get better at us finding ways to complement her more regularly. The problem is that I’m ignorant of The details of her day and it’s hard to take the time and energy to construct a compliment while I’m busy picking up the slack because of her constant need for breaks. (In not doing so well as refraining from criticizing at this moment an I?) The other thing that makes it hard is how much extra burden she places on me and the older kids by her insistence in sitting down for talks all the time. Rarely is much accomplished but much time is sapped which can’t be used to get anything important done. She just keeps returning to that pattern no matter how much I tell her it isn’t yielding the desired fruit. She can’t be happy until she learns how to listen and follow and I can’t keep carrying this load – especially not as well as she wants me to do it. She needs to learn to do things herself out be more forgiving of those who do it but not to her standards. If she did more herself her standards might be more realistic.
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