Relationships, like life in general, have a habit of being incredible one minute, and pretty mediocre the next. Depending on your personality type, you might be able to see through this cycle and plod along, waiting for the next wonderful moment. Or you might find that pretty impossible to do and find yourself getting bored or feeling hugely unattractive when things aren’t at their best between you and your partner. Here are our top tips on dealing with the ebbs and flows, glorious and grimy times, when it comes to relationships.
This too, shall pass.
Ah, the infamous phrase ‘nothing lasts forever.’ When it comes to your relationship and its natural cycles, that is most certainly true. Our hormones, friendships, satisfaction at work, sex drives and fashion sense all change every now and again, so why shouldn’t our relationships? The trick is knowing how to live in the moment and appreciate things when they are good, as well as having the strength to know that things will get better if they aren’t going so well. This is much easier to do when you’ve been in a relationship for a little while as you have hindsight on your side and can recognise cycle changes and work with your partner to make them not seem quite so dramatic when time goes on.
This doesn’t mean ‘settle’.
We are not remotely saying that awful behaviour in relationships is okay because that’s part of its natural cycle, and it will get batter if you just sit and wait it out. No. Accepting unreasonable behaviour or bullying of any kind isn’t what you should be doing, and it’s more than okay to stop a relationship in its tracks if it’s not working for you and you feel threatened, unsafe or put down by your partner. There’s a huge difference between getting itchy feet and working towards better times for both of you, and waiting for a partner that doesn’t deserve you to change their ways (which is very unlikely to happen, by the way).
But do let evolution take its course
If you are new to your relationship, do learn to sit back a little bit and allow yourselves to learn from each other in terms of how you communicate, what your love languages are and how you both fit into your relationship when it comes to preferences and roles. As with anything new, there can be teething problems at the start, but give yourselves the chance to see the sunny side of each other, too.
Good luck!
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