There’s an unavoidable truism about relationships—great relationships are made, they don’t just happen. Who isn’t searching for more effective ways to deepen their connection with their partner, open themselves up to love and be loved, and free themselves from their fears of getting close to another person? Although bumpy roads are an inevitable, even necessary aspect of any relationship, knowing how to renew your relationship and deepen your emotional involvement with your partner is an invaluable skillset for anybody who wants their relationship to grow and deepen. Let me provide you with a short list of skills that can empower you to create great relationships with the people who matter most.

1.) Involvement: How you involve yourself in your relationship determines how connected or how distant you are from your partner. There’s a simple rule, when properly applied, that will ensure that you will develop a close loving relationship with the people in your life—you can get anything in a relationship that you want as long as you are willing to help another person get what they want from the relationship. How best to help your partner get what they want? You need to be aware of what their emotional needs are and how you can best fulfill those emotional needs. For more information about the skills that create loving involvement in your relationships, read chapter 1 (Involvement) in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Building Better Bridges: Creating Great Relationships With the People Who Matter Most and Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online articles, Involvement—How to Honor the Emotional Needs of You and Your Partner.

2.) Trust: Trust is the glue that holds your relationship together, especially when times get rocky. As important as trust is to the well-being of your relationship, the need for your partner to be able to trust you is oftentimes taken for granted or disregarded all together. Of all the relationship skills that you will read about, there’s no skill easier to execute than acting in a trustworthy way. Here’s a simple formula for building trust in your relationship—make sure that your words and actions match. Always do what you say that you’re going to do! For more information about how to create trust in your relationship, read chapter 2 (Trust) in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Building Better Bridges: Creating Great Relationships With the People Who Matter Most and Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online articles, Trust—How to Make Your Relationship Safe for You and Your Partner.

3.) Revealing Yourself to Your Partner: There is no more important communication skill than being able to express yourself in a way that: 1.) You let your partner know who you are, 2.) You let your partner know what’s important to you, and 3.) You let your partner know what you need from them. I refer to this self-disclosure skill as revealing yourself. Most people when they communicate describe circumstances, tell stories about events, offer opinions but seldom do they take the risk of revealing themselves. To reveal yourself you need to: 1.) Express what you’re feeling, 2.) Express what you need from your partner, 3.) Express how you’re affected by the action(s) of your partner. For more information about how to effectively express yourself, read chapter 3 (Communication) in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Building Better Bridges: Creating Great Relationships With the People Who Matter Most and read Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Making Molehills Out of Mountains and Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online articles, Revealing Yourself—How to Make Yourself Known to Your Partner.

4.) Supporting Your Partner: No relationship skill can bring greater comfort to your partner than actively being supportive of your partner. The problem is that most people confuse fixing their partner with supporting their partner. How can you make sure that you are being supportive of your partner? Just remember the following—your partner is a person who only needs to be understood by you, not a problem to be solved by you. For more information about how to support rather than fix your partner, read chapter 4 (Support) in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Building Better Bridges: Creating Great Relationships With the People Who Matter Most and Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online articles, Support—How to Honor the Dignity of Your Partner.

5.) Personal Freedom: Relationships thrive when two people are free to express who they are in words and actions. When you limit the range of feelings that your partner may experience, when you limit the range of behaviors that your partner may participate in, when you limit the range of choices that your partner may make about who they are and how they want to express that in your relationship, you are limiting how much of your partner can show up in your relationship. To limit your partner in such ways is to limit the breadth and depth that your relationship can develop. You can enhance the degree of personal freedom that your partner experiences by: 1.) Encouraging your partner to openly express their feelings, 2.) Supporting choices that enable your partner to grow as a person, 3.) Accepting rather than judging the parts of your partner that make you feel uncomfortable. For more information about how to create acceptance in your relationship, read chapter 5 (Personal Freedom) in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Building Better Bridges: Creating Great Relationships With the People Who Matter Most and Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online articles, Personal Freedom—How to Empower Your Partner to be Who They Are.

6.) Personal Responsibility: No relationship is more challenging than taking personal responsibility for the health and well-being of yourself and your relationship. No relationship skill, when ignored, is more detrimental to the well-being of yourself and your relationship than not taking personal responsibility. You and only you are responsible for yourself and your emotional and spiritual well-being. All too often people sabotage their emotional and spiritual well-being by placing responsibility on their partner for the fulfillment of their well-being. Learning how to 1.) Identify what actions you need to take in order to maintain the health and well-being of yourself and your relationship, 3.) Identify what behaviors you participate in that sabotage the health and well-being of yourself and your relationship 3.) Effectively communicate your emotional needs to your partner, 4.) Commit to resolve rather than ignore relationship issues are the four major areas in which you need to invest your areas in the care and maintenance of your relationship. For more information about how to create personal responsibility in your relationship, read chapter 6 (Responsibility) in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Building Better Bridges: Creating Great Relationships With the People Who Matter Most and read the sections on Acceptance, and Unmet Emotional Needs in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Making Molehills Out of Mountains and Personal Responsibility—How to Get What You Need in Your Relationships.

7.) Acceptance: Feeling accepted by your partner is a necessary pre-condition for your partner to willingly and openly reveal themselves to you. Whenever your partner experiences you as being non-accepting of some part(s) of who they are, they will likely pull away and build walls of protection between you and them. The most effective way to accept your partner is to work hard at understanding your partner for who they are rather than trying to change them into whom you would prefer them to be. For more information about how to create acceptance in your relationship, read chapter 7 (Acceptance) in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Building Better Bridges: Creating Great Relationships With the People Who Matter Most and read the section on Acceptance in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Making Molehills Out of Mountains and Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online articles, Acceptance—How to Make Your Partner Feel Safe and Cared About.

8.) Commitment: There are many aspects of commitment in a relationship but I want to focus on one important aspect—remaining present by not emotionally or physically abandoning your partner when you feel frightened, disappointed, disapproved of, or misunderstood by your partner. I have a simple saying that I use to illustrate this point—commit to making sure that the sun will rise over your relationship tomorrow. Simply put, get both feet into the relationship. Make room in the relationship for negative feelings to be expressed and negative experiences to take place without abandoning your partner emotionally or physically. By hanging in there when times get hard, not walking out just because things become momentarily uncomfortable will make your partner feel safe and enable your partner to invest even more of themselves in the relationship. For more information about commitment read chapter 8 (Commitment) in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Building Better Bridges: Creating Great Relationships With the People Who Matter Most and read Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online articles, Commitment—How to Face Your Fears of Loving and Being Loved.

9.) Resolving Conflict: There is nothing more intimidating for two people who care about each other than to work through conflict in an open honest fashion. An important skill to learn in order to make it easier for you to resolve conflict rather than perpetuate conflicts is a skill I refer to as pinpointing the issue. The premise of this simple skill is that conflict between two people has two issues embedded in the disagreement—the circumstantial issue and the relationship issue. The circumstantial issue is the event or the circumstance that you’re arguing about (e.g. dirty dishes that never get cleaned, who’s turn it is to take the clothes to the dry cleaner, not coming home from work on time, extra-relationship affairs). The relationship issue is the issue that is being masked by all the energy people put into fighting over dirty dishes, undelivered dry cleaning, not coming home from work on time, or cheating on your partner rather than talking about the underlying relationship issue. There are generally one of or any combination of four themes that the circumstance is masking—1.) Feeling unappreciated by one’s partner,
2.) Experiencing resentment over unmet emotional needs, 3.) Feeling unaccepted by one’s partner, 4.) Power and control. Learning how to identify the underlying relationship issue that is being masked by the circumstance and talking about those issues will enable you to much more effectively resolve conflict in your relationships. For more information about how to resolve conflict by pinpointing the issue read Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online book, Making Molehills Out of Mountains and Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online articles, Conflict Resolution: How to Make Space in Your Relationships for Love, Joy, and Harmony.
 
G.B.U.

Steve