The 4 Pillars Of Positive Relationships

How would you define an enriching relationship? Is not difficult. The one in which you find reasons to laugh and get excited every day. The one that is not based on distrust, jealousy or ultimatums of all or nothing. An enriching relationship is a pact between two people where both win and no one loses.

Learning to maintain a stable, happy and committed relationship does not require great sacrifices or having to study huge volumes about psychology. Sometimes simple common sense helps us a lot, and above all , the sincere desire to care for those we love. Because wanting is not offering suffering, we have to leave behind that famous phrase of “who loves you well will make you suffer.” Not at all, positive relationships are a tribute to respect and hope.

Do you want to know what pillars support them?

1. A healthy attachment

Surely you associate the word attachment to the relationship that children establish with their family. They are those bonds of love and affection essential for a person to grow with security and confidence. At the couple level it is very similar, we all need to establish a needy attachment with the person we love. But beware, not all attachments are healthy to build authentic enriching relationships.

• Attachment based on trust : here the couple is built on the essential substrate of mutual trust. Two mature and confident people who do not have to have continuous doubts about the other person. There is no continuous fear of being cheated, betrayed or abandoned.

• Anxious relationships. What are they based on? You can already sense it, in the restlessness you continue to be hurt, to question the love of the other person at every moment. We become obsessed, we want continuous testing, and worse, we develop desires to control the partner.

• Distant attachment:  It would be the opposite pole to these dimensions. Indifference, complete unconcern and little need to show affection for the other person.

2. Satisfaction of basic needs

There are essential dimensions that define enriching relationships, such as being respected and understood by our partner. Receive support when we need it, a right word when we fall into concern, that hug that heals everything, that look that explains everything.

People have needs, and at the level of the couple it is essential to perceive that some of them are fully satisfied. Because building a couple is defining a common project where all efforts are worth, where we stand as a good team capable of understanding and getting excited on a day-to-day basis. You sure agree.

3. Ability to solve problems

Let’s delve a little into those  indispensable factors that define the fact that we can solve any problem, at the couple level:

• Comprehension ability.
• Empathy.
• Adequate communication skills.
• Don’t just focus on the positives.
• Ability to propose ideas and not only point out defects.
• Sense of humor. That spark that relativizes every situation and, at the same time, makes things easier.

4. Ability to repair after breaking

It may be that with the simple statement we will not get to understand the concept. But to understand it, let’s think for a moment about all those times when we have done something wrong. In that we, or our partner, has made a mistake that has hurt us.

Positive relationships admit that there may be mistakes, failures, or oversights. It is normal. But now, we also hope that you will have that indispensable ability to know how to re-build, re-enable, recognize the error and put all the means to repair what happened.

Making a mistake is a great opportunity for learning and knowledge, to know which pieces are the ones that turn on the engine of our relationship to know how to feed it.

Without there is no will to “repair”, there is no real commitment, it is letting pride eat away at us inside to establish a clear distance from the other person. If you really love someone, you will put all your means and abilities to “cure”, to take much better care of that precious asset as your partner is.

We are sure you feel the same.

Image: Movie “Begin Again” (2013)