1 Relationship is a nature need
1 Relationship is a nature need. No person is an island. No one can survive. No one can certainly thrive without relationships.
2 One of the reason why the extremely happy people have a stronger immune system is that they have thriving personal, interpersonal relationships – whether it’s with romantic partners, or with soul mates, or with family members, or all of the above. They
have close, intimate relationship that makes all the difference.
3 First off all, when you’re happy, you share your happiness with someone close to you, who truly cares about – that enhances, amplifies your happiness as well as their happiness. That’s the win-win.
4 When you go through hardships and difficulties, having close relationships helps us overcome it.
5 The key though in relationships is to know yourself, meaning to know your needs. The number of relationships that you need that would be best for you – depends on your personal, unique needs. The number of hours you want to spend with other people differs
for everyone. There’s no right or wrong here. Some people enjoy spending 10 hours a day with friends, while other people 2-3 hours a day is what they need.Both need close relationship, soul mates, romantic partners, family members – whatever it is. It’s a
need.
6 Everyone benefits from relationships, men benefit more. Because for the first time often, men have someone they can share with, whereas women have more often, more likely have their girl friends whom they talk to about certain issues. Both sex benefit
from intimate relationships.
2 Learning from what works
7 The reason of why there’re so many relationships end up when they start off with best of intentions is that people would be attracted by new things. The excitement will be higher when there’s a new person.
8 How can we create relationships that thrive? The first step is understanding what true love really means. Perfect love doesn’t exist, but true love does. True love exists between imperfect humans.
9 Ask the right question: What makes some relationships thrive and grow stronger over time? What can we learn and apply to our relationships? Let’s learn what works best – the best relationships that we can look at and study and learn from.
10 Very often it is later on that it becomes better.
3 Relationship is about hard work
3.1 Working hard
11 There are no short cuts, if we want a relationship to thrive, to succeed, we need to put a lot of work in it.
12 Finding a right partner is important, but it is a mistake to focus on finding. The more important part of a thriving long term relationship is the cultivation.
13 Relationships or finding the right partner, a good partner is of course important. It’s much more important to then cultivate that relationship.\
14 There’s more than one right person.
15 What makes relationship unique? It’s cultivating that one chosen relationship. It’s by virtue of working together, of being together, of spending time together, of dedicating one another, of spending time together, of dedicating one another. That is
how we create one special relationship. That’s how two separate “I”s become a “we”.
16 Again, it doesn’t happen over night, it doesn’t even happen in a year or two, It takes time. In fact, it doesn’t happen; t is happening. It’s a process. It’s not about success in a relationship; it’s about succeeding in a relationship.
3.2 Doing things together
17 We cultivate our relationship by doing things together.
18 The important thing in resolving conflicts is having a super ordinate goal. Working together, supporting one another and when you have the working together, doing together, that’s when you are most likely to resolve the conflicts.
19 The couple need mutually meaningful goals. It could be having children together and raising the children together. Working together, bringing up the kids together, or being on campaigns together, or helping one another at work but doing things together.
20 That doesn’t mean they have to do anything together. It’s ok for one to have his or her own meaningful goals at work, where they don’t work together – that’s perfectly fine. But in addition there have to be things that are done together.
21 What we need is an active kind of love. We can actively engage in activities that show and illustrate our love. If we don’t sustain the active love, over time it will go away. Because if I don’t invest anything in a relationship, it cannot be sustained.
22 How do we sustain love? How do we remain active? Relationship rituals. Without rituals, in our modern world, the important and yet not urgent activities will take a backseat.
4 Being Known Rather than Validated
23 If we are up to be known by the other partner, that means we must open up, we must reveal, we need to share of ourselves - not just the wonderful and the amazing and the terrific things, also the things that sometimes we are not that proud of, our weaknesses
perhaps, something that may be we’re ashamed of. But it takes time, it not happened on the first date, it might not happen on the first 10 years.
24 A healthy relationship is about expressing ourselves, rather than trying constantly impress.
25 It’s more risky to open us ourselves, because what if she doesn’t like me? What if he doesn’t like what he finds out about me? But you see when we express, we are more likely to have a thriving relationship – it’s not guaranteed by any stretch of imagination.
However, if we just impress, we are guaranteed failure.
26 When we express, generally, over time, people will be more attracted to us – specially my partner will like me even more over time because of deeper levels of intimacy, even they sometimes find out things that they don’t necessarily like or adore or appreciate.
Over time it’s people who are genuine, when we express ourselves, we are much more likely to thrive.
27 We also need to get and make active effort to get to know our partner, to know what their favourite wine is, what their favourite flowers are, where they like to be touched, what are their fears, what are their desires, when is it a good time to maybe
give their own space, when is it a good time to talk to them, when is it a good time to touch them. And all these things take time. That’s what it means to create a lifelong thriving relationship that we get to know the other person throughout our lives.
28 It’s very important to validate your partner, however, the foundation of the relationship is to be known.
29 When we disclose ourselves, it’s difficult in the short term, but in the long term, it leads to growth.
5 Allowing for conflicts
5.1 Allowing for conflicts in relationships.
30 It’s natural to have conflicts in relationships, let’s see what we can learn from it and how we can grow from it. It’s important to give our relationship the permission to be human and humane.
5.2 Love booster
31 Love is in the details. Love is not in one week or two months around the world cruise, love is not in that 5 carat diamond ring. What sustains a happy relationship are the details. The little things, the day to day rituals, the touch, the gaze, the meal
together.
32 60-second pleasure points, whether it’s a passionate kiss, whether it’s just a hug where you just hold one anther, whether it’s just sending a text message to your partner saying how much you love them and miss them – the little things. These little things
make the big difference.
33 We demonstrate our interests, by asking “so how is your day sweetheart”, or “tell me more about what you have just done”, or “what you have been thinking”, or you know “you look a little bit down – anything I can do”. Demonstrate interest, create love
maps. Get to know the other person – what they like, what they don’t like, and how they like it.
34 The little things, such as smiling, such as flowers, such as remembering the important dates.
35 Pay compliments to your partners. “Oh, you look wonderful.” Or “Thanks for thinking of me.” Pay compliments – appreciating makes the good appreciates. Don’t wait to be asked to give compliments. Give it, it’s free. And yet though it’s free, in the ultimate
currency it is invaluable.
36 Demonstrate empathy. Do I really listen to my partner? Do I really look at my partner? Do I demonstrate genuine interest in what my partner is doing and feeling? And how they are? Do I really want to get to know them? If we don’t have that, it is very
difficult to sustain a long term thriving relationship.
37 Sex is important for long term thriving relationship. Love at its – or rather sex at its highest is love made concrete. That’s what we talk about making love. It’s the concretization of the emotion, of that abstract notion. The important thing here is
as every other areas of the relationship, healthy communication. Because very often, we reveal ourselves, we share of ourselves in the bedroom more than in any other place, whether it’s physically or emotionally or cognitively.
5.3 Positive Conflicts
38 Healthy conflict is cognitive conflict rather than affective conflict. Cognitive conflict is about focusing on the person’s behavior or thoughts and idea, and challenging those. Unhealthy conflict is focusing on the person, on the emotions, on who they
are.
39 When I attack someone on who they are – the person, the emotion, that is not healthy. At the same time, I can disagree with, can have conflict when it comes, when we focus on the ideas, the thought and the behavior.
40 Challenging behavior, not person
-Person: “You are so inconsiderate”
-Behavior: “Do you mind putting down the toilet seat when you’re done?”
-Person: “You are such a slob; you promised to throw away the garbage ; I can’t trust you.”
-Behavior: “It upsets me to return to a dirty home, after we agreed that you would throw away the garbage.”
Different approaches lead to different results to these criticisms.
41 Avoiding hostility, insults, contempt. It is important to keep these insults away, to focus on the person, to validate the person, to appreciate the person, and then to disagree with the behaviour or with the ideas and the thinking.
42 The key is to keep these disputes private, it is difficult enough to fight in a relationship, it is extraordinary difficult when embarrassment is also associated with it. So couples who shout at one another when there are others, it is extremely destructive,
extremely unhelpful.
5.4 The Titanium Rule
43 The Titanium Rule: Do not do unto those close to you what you would not have done unto others (who’re not so close to you).
44 Why treat others better than we treat the people we love the most? Why treat the people we love the most worse than we would treat others?
5.5 Deep Friendship
45 Deep Friendship: At the heart of my program is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company. These couples tend to know each other intimately—they are
well versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams. They have an abiding regard for each other and express this fondness not just in the big ways, but in little ways day in and day out.
46 Love is in the details. It’s about knowing the little things, the big things. It’s about sharing and being known. That’s what a healthy relationship is. That’s how you can sustain passion in a relationship over years. That’s how you can continue to enjoy
a passionate, sexual relationship.
47 Beautiful enemy and helpmeet.
6 Positive Perception
6.1 Benefit finding and benefit creating
48 In a healthy relationship, the partners have to be the benefit finders. They have to appreciate one another. Because remember if we don’t appreciate, the good depreciates. If we don’t appreciate what is working in a relationship, pass the honeymoon phase,
the relationship will enter a downward spiral.
49 Benefit finding is important in a relationship. Focusing on the good, focusing on what works. And that is then accentuated.
50 Successful thriving couples take this step further. They are not just benefit finders, they have positive illusions as well. They think of their partner more than other people think of them. Couples who evaluated each other at a higher level, these couples’
relationships were most likely to thrive and succeed over time.
51 Positive illusion becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, benefit creating. Seeing things that were not there or other people had not seen and then making it real.
52 Not only does love perceive potentialities but it also actualizes them.
53 This is the essence of benefit creating. You made me want to be a better man, a better woman, a better person.
6.2 Refocusing on the Positive
54 Asking positive questions: What am I grateful for in my partner? It’s important to do it always, especially during the difficulty times.
55 Asking positive questions: What is wonderful about our relationship? What’s working? Why are we together in the first place? What do I love about him, her, us? What’s good? And when we ask what’s good, that’s when we perceive it. And when we perceive
it, when we appreciate it, it appreciates.
56 What we need to do is open up a new quest, see things that are there all along, that we simply have overlooked.
57 In terms of creating a more positive relationship, in terms of being a benefit creator, we want to focus on the potential.
6.3 Positive communicating about positive events
58 Active constructive responding: Ok, tell me more. So how was it? Let’s celebrate! Give me more details. I’m interested!
59 It has to be win-win, both of us or the relationship will benefit from, or at the very least, that the other person is not hurt by it.
60 It has to be genuine, it cannot be fake, because that especially once the partner knows you over time it just doesn’t work.
61 Partners who actively constructive respond to one another are building capacity for hard times.
7 End up
62 There are no shortcuts when it comes to good relationships, to healthy relationships. It is hard work. If you want to succeed, just like it is in every other domain in life, there’re no shortcuts. However, that doesn’t mean that hard work cannot be enjoyable,
cannot be pleasurable as well as meaningful. And when that hard work is pleasurable and meaningful, over time that leads to a happier relationship, happier individuals to a win-win togetherness.
63 You have a person with you because you are the most important person in their lives, because they care about you so much that the I becomes the We. They care about you as much as they care about themselves. They include you in their circle of the self.
64 Now it dose not mean that there is no sacrificing in relationships, that does not mean that if my partner is unwell, or needs my help, I would not go out of my way, even if meaning giving up something I really really want to do at that point.
65 Of course, in healthy relationship, when the Is becomes a We, sacrifices exist, and there is healthy sacrifice. But it’s not a relationship that is based fundamentally on the sense of duty or altruistic negation of the self.
66 The more independent we are, the more inter-dependent we can become. That’s when the I becomes a We. Ask yourself what partner would you rather be, what partner would you rather have.