The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Healthy Relationship
As a marriage and family therapist, I have the unique opportunity to meet all different types of couples, ranging from recently married folks, couples in conflict after infidelity, LGBTQIA couples, and everyday couples who are committed to developing a stronger relationship.
I love working with couples and absolutely love Gottman Method Couples Therapy. I am serious about helping couples reignite passion, sexual intimacy, and equality in their relationship.
Today, I wanted to share a complete guide to maintaining a healthy and happy relationship: one where each individual feels seen, heard, and valued. Keep scrolling for some game-changing tips and advice for how to help your relationship thrive. Okay, now let’s get started!
Part 1: Creating a healthy foundation
A relationship is like a house. It needs at strong foundation in order to survive and be long-lasting. If your house has an unstable foundation, no matter how many pretty decorations or additions, the house won’t be secure. Similarly, a relationship needs a solid structure where there are clear boundaries, excellent communication and expression of needs, and mutual respect. Your relationship can look great on the outside — with your Instagram feed full of loving cute couple pics and people saying you’re #couplegoals — but how does it feel during your day-to-day life? How do YOU feel in your day-to-day life?
Prioritize your own self-care.
The first step in creating a healthy foundation is radical self-care and self-responsibility. You are not here to fix your partner, nor is it your partner’s responsibility to fix you. Going to therapy, both on your own or as a couple, can help you identify toxic patterns and behaviors and help you become more self-aware. While self-care can be a face mask or body scrub, it is also learning to create healthy boundaries, express your needs, and create a life for yourself, even outside your relationship.
Give your partner loving attention in everyday moments.
Simple acts of love and attention are key in making magic out of the mundane. After all, it’s those everyday moments that make up the majority of our lives and often the ones that are most memorable. A few examples of ways to show your partner you care could include:
Making coffee and pouring a cup for your partner.
Inviting them to take a walk with you.
Telling them about headlines you read in the news and discussing it with them.
Offering to pick up food, help them cook, or clean up the kitchen.
Offering to give them time alone to work, engage in self-care, or tackle a project.
Sticking a love note in their lunchbox.
It’s often these small gestures that mean the most and create more intimacy and connection.
Talk about sex before, during, and after sex.
Talk about what you like/liked, what intrigued you, what interests you, and communicate your needs. Everyone is different and clear communication is the key to fulfilling sexual intimacy.
Here are some tips for how to talk about sex with your partner.
“Turn Towards” Your Partner’s bid for connection.
“Turning towards” your partner’s bids for connection is a term used in Gottman Method Couples Therapy. “Turning towards” means that when your partner makes a bid for connection, you respond in a loving, kind, and positive way.
Examples of bids include friendly text messages mid-day, reaching out to hold your hand, asking you to watch a show, read an article they read, or look at something interesting out the window.
It also includes invitations for sex, cuddling, or just a smile and glance across the room. According to John Gottman’s research, couples experience thousands of bids between each other every month, and couples who are the happiest turn towards each other 75-80% of the time.
Turning towards builds your emotional bank account and creates long-lasting love, commitment, and trust.
Spend quality time together every day.
Spending quality time together each day is an important part of maintaining a strong and healthy relationship bond. Emotional intimacy is the key to long-lasting passion and romance. Here are some ideas for day-to-day quality time:
Schedule regular date nights (here are some budget-friendly ideas)
Take a walk or hike together
Cook dinner together
Cuddle on the couch
Listen to an audiobook together
Do a group workout class together
Talk to each other during your commute home by phone (hands-free, of course!)
Find a show you both like and watch it together
Consider therapy to help release toxic shame.
Toxic shame stems from past trauma, abuse, neglect, bullying, and emotional wounds. We carry these core shame messages throughout our lives. When we make a mistake we spiral into self-defeating talk and toxic shame.
Toxic shame sounds like:
“I’m so stupid! I never get anything right!”
“I can’t do anything right in this relationship, I should just leave, you’d all be better off without me.”
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t treat me like this. I wish I could die, you’d all be happier.”
You can hear how toxic these statements sound, and yet, most people experience toxic shame during their lives.
Healthy shame sounds like:
“Too bad that happened, I learned my lesson, I won’t do that again.”
“I know I make mistakes. I’m going to try harder to be the best partner I can be. I won’t be perfect, but I’m trying, I really am.”
“When I heard you say that, I felt hurt. I respect your opinion, but can you rephrase that without criticism?”
“I know I’m not perfect, and bad things happen to good people. I’ll keep trying at this.”
Can you hear the difference? Toxic shame is dangerous and causes depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts.
Take the quiz to see if therapy is a good option for you.
Part 2: Working through conflict
Know how to turn a fight around.
According to the research of John Gottman, couples can turn a fight around in less than 3 minutes (!!) with humor, affection, or a repair; but if you are like most couples, you get caught in a cycle of attacking and defending and find yourselves in a heated and loud fighting match.
According to Gottman, if your fight exceeds 3 minutes, then it’s time to take a break. Here are a few examples of ways you can use humor or affection during conflict:
“You’re right, that was stupid. I’ll do better next time.”
“Awe, honey, are you trying to trick me again?”
“Hey, can I give you a hug?”
Watch your tone when you say these things. Make sure you are calm, centered, and really listening, and making eye contact with your partner.
Learn how to prevent conflict.
Through his research, John Gottman discovered four behaviors that lead to unmanaged conflict, anger, mistrust, and divorce. Let’s talk about each of them:
#1: Criticism: When one or both partners make critical statements by using “you” statements and by making negative comments about their partner’s behavior. Once one person becomes critical, it is nearly humanly impossible to avoid the next one…
#2: Defensiveness is used to combat criticism and hurtful comments. This leads to more criticism and more criticism leads to more defensiveness, and then you get...contempt.
#3: Contempt is deadly to relationships and can actually cause people to become physically ill. A relationship filled with contempt will eventually lead to divorce. How do people respond to contempt? They respond with more criticism and contempt or...stonewalling.
#4: Stonewalling: The abrupt end of conflict. One partner, fed up with the criticism, defensiveness, and contempt, shuts down, silences, ignores, isolates, and refuses to talk. This can last hours or days until the conflict passes. The problem here is that partners are left feeling hurt, betrayed, and fearful, and never get to process the conflict.
This cycle destroys intimacy and creates feelings of distance and isolation.
Have daily check-ins with your partner.
Daily check-ins are a game-changer for relationships. Studies show that couples who spend a total of 21 minutes each day discussing stressful events, providing each other with empathy and validation are happier. These daily interactions develop trust, commitment, and emotional connection.
Here are a few tips for how to use these 21 minutes!
1 minute: Create rituals for saying “good morning” and “good night.”
1 minute: Create rituals for saying “goodbye” and “welcome home” at the beginning and end of the workday.
4 minutes: Make one phone call to your partner during your lunch break for a mid-day check-in.
14 minutes 54 seconds: Have an “events of the day” discussion at the end of your day. Talk about the stress points, provide each other with empathy and validation.
6 seconds: Have a magical 6-second kiss every day. Kiss for 6 seconds. Let it be fun and ignite passion!
Part 3: Healing after betrayal and/or infidelity
Understanding betrayal trauma
“D-Day” or “Discovery day” is the day you found out about your partner’s infidelity or process addiction and now you are thrown into a whirlwind of hurt, pain, anger, rage, flashbacks, self-doubt, disbelief, shame, embarrassment, and lonely feelings.
Your job is to immerse yourself in a group of women who help you heal, find a therapist or coach who understands and won’t judge you, and give yourself the space you need to heal. This isn’t the end. This is the beginning of a new you, a new life, freedom, and stability. It takes time, but it can and does happen for so many.
Identifying the symptoms
Anytime an affair occurs, the betrayed partner might experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that includes flashbacks, anxious and depressed feelings, intrusive thoughts, preoccupation with the affair or affair partner, uncontrollable anger outbursts, or numbness. Both partners might turn to substances, such as alcohol, in an attempt to numb the pain. The betraying partner might feel grief and sadness about the ending of the affair, and guilt and shame for going outside the relationship.
Therapy, therapy, therapy.
Some couples attempt to sweep the infidelity under the rug and move on with life. This is a dangerous way of handing infidelity and puts the relationship at risk of falling apart. Both partners need adequate space to process their grief in a secure therapeutic setting. Couples therapy can help partners discuss the affair in a controlled environment where both partners can feel secure in the conversation. A skilled couples therapist will not align with either partner. If you are the betraying partner, you should feel accepted in couples therapy, and if you are the betrayed partner, you should feel understood. A couples therapist can help each of you move through the trauma while tending to the relationship. Your therapist should be patient with your intense emotions and able to teach you skills to help regulate your reactions.
Setting boundaries after betrayal.
Boundaries do not have to be forever or absolute. Think of this as a temporary compromise. For example, you might set a boundary that your partner attend therapy weekly. However, this boundary might change as the recovery process progresses. Instead of weekly therapy, you might attend couples therapy, a couples group, and other events together. The recovery process changes over time, and our boundaries might shift and change too.
Building empathy after being unfaithful.
If you betrayed your partner, you might feel immense guilt and shame, and want to withdraw from the relationship and hide your pain.
It is imperative that you take steps to build trust, and building up your skills in providing empathy is a fantastic step in developing the skills you need to navigate betrayal recovery and build a lasting lifetime of commitment.
Use caring body language to show your compassion, understanding, and empathy. In the beginning phases of a relationship recovery, ASK PERMISSION before using any touch on your betrayed partner.
Non-touching caring body language can include keeping your arms uncrossed during conflict discussions:
Smiling at your partner when you enter the room, for example.
Final thoughts…
Relationships are multifaceted. They can bring about the best in people, and also the worst in people. They expose us and our vulnerabilities and create a space for us to be seen, which can feel incredibly daunting. Oftentimes, relationships are the start of a family, where together you will raise children and lead by example. Relationships can be magical and miraculous and also painstaking and utterly brutal. It can be overwhelming and confusing and exciting and all-encompassing. Just like anything worth having in life, relationships take work and require commitment and presence. But they are also the window to connection, love, community, and fulfillment.
If you’re looking for a guide to walk with you on a journey of healing and growth, I’m here for you. I provide affair recovery and help couples create relationships filled with more passion and intimacy through online therapy and in-person at my offices in Cypress and San Marcos, Texas. I would love to support you in creating a thriving relationship!