The 17 Best Ways to Nurture and Grow Your Relationships

The following 17 tips offer guidance on how to nurture and grow your personal relationships and how to be your best self so that loving, healthy relationships are possible. Arm yourself with the tools that can help you avoid making self-destructive choices. Write down the following in your journal and reflect on them frequently as part of your work towards creating that special relationship.

1.    Learn to compromise.
2.    Acquire and build your ability to be assertive.
3.    Disagree without demonizing. You are BOTH individuals; you both have a right to your opinions.
4.    Recognize that very often when you make concessions or compromises, you are not caving in, you are staying in.
5.    Think compassion not competition. Chill out. Revisit hot issues when you’ve cooled off and can re-open the door of reason.
6.    Resist the urge to push each other’s buttons. You know what I mean. Button-pushing is a no-win, inflammatory activity.
7.    Retain individuality. The who-you-are-person-inside is what your lover fell in love with in the first place.
8.    Self-esteem – build it, feel it, nurture it.
9.    Let love grow. Nurture it and protect it, because it is precious.
10. Write down your current mindset of how sex fits into your relationship.
11. How does your perception differ from your partner’s ideas?
12. If you feel guilty about having sex, examine why you feel this way. Come up with statements that counter your guilty thoughts with a more positive view.
13. Seek a healthy outlook about your body, your sexual appetite, and your mental health.
14. Make it your business to learn how your body functions, and what makes you feel good.
15. Meet with your trusted spiritual counselor to gain insight about how sexual activities are meant to fit into a healthy relationship according to your religious doctrine.
16. Seek counseling from a professional who specializes in sexual relationships.
17. If you are in an abusive relationship, seek immediate help from authorities. Emergency resources are available. Muster up your true survival instincts, and get the hell out of Dodge!

Love is worth giving and worth receiving. It’s so important in your life that you’ll spend a great deal of time thinking about it, desiring it and hopefully, living it. Treat it like your garden and nurture it every day. Every bit of energy and positive attention you devote to your love will pay dividends; love is the currency the universe thrives on. Make deposits daily.

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Read more: Guidance, Love, Relationships, Self-Help, Sex

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Roxy A.

1:55PM PST on Dec 28, 2009

wonderful

send a green star

Mary H.

7:39PM PST on Nov 24, 2009

Allowing each other to be who they are and have their own interests and active listening/acknowledment of what the person just said. Not having to 'win' all the time. That's the ego trying to be front and center. Saying 'sorry' if you truly mean and feel it, otherwise wait until you both cool off and find some common ground. Compliments, hugs, checking in w/each other throughout the day, all essential to keeping a relationship alive.

Past Member .

10:13AM PDT on Jun 14, 2009

thanks...
Kabin
Konteyner

Caroline K.

10:34AM PDT on Jun 8, 2009

15 and 16 should be replaced with

LISTEN. Listening is a skill and each person in a relationship should use it often.

and

Support you partner's interests, even if they are different than yours. For example, If you expect her to sit and watch your softball game you can sit through a performance of her choir.

Ken G.

9:43PM PDT on Jun 4, 2009

Getting older and realizing that most my affairs that involved sex only seemed to be the only thing we were together with. I'd hear women tell me when I was younger, "That's all men think about is sex. Why can't we be friends first?" Now that I'm older I hear, "That's all they want is to be friends. I want something more than that."
Not meant in an offensive way but I truly wonder if it is possible to honestly relate to form a relationship with a person and not just a person's body. Sex is fine in youth but then getting older one wakes up to the fact they never learned how to relate to one another.