Nobody ever gives us advice on relationships as we grow up. We learn by example, or we wing it if we don’t really have an example to go by.
This is unfortunate because it often means we go into relationships clueless as to how to make them great.
Today, I’d like to share some advice on relationships that I’ve gathered over the years through various forms of research. I hope you find these tips useful in your own relationships.
Best Advice on Relationships – Learn How to Communicate
Poor communication is one of the leading problems in relationships. Oh, we know how to speak our minds well enough, but what many people don’t know how to do is listen.
Often, we’re too busy trying to best the other person or plead our case to truly listen to what’s being said.
This is especially true when the discussion is more of an argument.
In my book, The Power to Communicate, you learn about different communication styles and how you can communicate with people who are often difficult to talk to. Knowledge is power!
When you’re in a romantic relationship, especially when the relationship is new, you might be afraid to speak out about something that’s bothering you, but this isn’t fair to you, or your partner.
Of course, part of the male-female communication challenge lies in understanding different communication styles you both have.
Men use few words, and the few words they use are effective and efficiently get their point across. Women use many words, often with emotion.
Neither is right or wrong, they’re just different, and these differences begin in childhood.
Studies have shown that little boys can play together without saying a single word to one another. Little girls, on the other hand, use language to build relationships, so they talk a lot more.
Of course, this few words versus many words thing is a real dilemma because it creates problems. You send your guy a twenty-word text asking him his opinion on something and he says something like “It’s okay.”
You were looking for more, but that’s all he felt was necessary. You’re frustrated and he’s clueless as to why.
Learn how to understand how men think
Develop Your Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is your ability to understand, manage, and express your emotions. It includes your ability to recognize and appropriately respond to other people’s emotions. It’s your feelings smarts.
So, how do you develop emotional intelligence?
Label Your Feelings
Sometimes we feel something, but we never take the time to identify exactly what it is. What seems like anger might really be frustration or disappointment.
If you stop and take the time to label your feelings, you can appropriately deal with them.
Dealing with anger when you’re really frustrated doesn’t get you anywhere. You need to instead determine what’s frustrating you and deal with that.
Accept Your Feelings
Somewhere along the way, feelings became bad things. Someone, and I have no idea who, determined that stuffing bad feelings deep down inside was better than accepting and dealing with them and now we have a lot of people who are unable to deal with those feelings.
The problem with stuffing them is that they don’t go away. Even if you think they’re gone, they aren’t.
They’re like a giant festering wound that won’t go away. They get worse and worse until they explode, and you have an even bigger mess.
Instead, once you’ve labeled those feelings, accept them. Acknowledge that what you’re feeling is real and it’s okay to feel that way.
There is not a right or wrong feeling, and nobody should tell you how to feel something either. We all do that in our own way.
When you feel anger, for example, instead of saying something like this is wrong I shouldn’t be angry, say I can handle this problem, and I can figure out how to do that without losing my temper.
If you’re feeling lonely, say something like this: I am worthy of having someone wonderful in my life. I just haven’t found that person yet.
Manage Your Feelings
Now that you’ve labeled and accepted your feelings, it’s time to manage them. This is where people kind of drop off of the emotional intelligence ladder.
Did you know that at all times, you are 100% in control of your emotions? I felt really badly once because I told a woman this and she got very angry with me. I was trying to help her feel more in control and she wasn’t having any of it.
So, what does managing your feelings look like in real life?
Let’s go back to anger – it’s an easy emotion that everyone can relate to. If you’re feeling angry, you can manage it by taking a deep breath and stepping back for a moment. Collect yourself and give your mind a chance to get out of reactionary mode and into a mindset where you can rationally deal with the situation.
This is also sometimes called self-regulation. You’re learning how to regulate your emotions by evaluating them and choosing how you want to respond. People who do this enjoy much happier relationships and feel more in control of their lives. They live with less regret as well.
As soon as you feel you’re becoming emotional, stop yourself and take a moment to label and assess what you’re feeling. Step back and take a deep breath to evaluate what you should do next. Then, your response is at least more appropriate for the situation.
Share What You’re Feeling
Sometimes it helps to talk to someone about what you’re feeling. If that someone is the person you were experiencing the emotion over, then it’s definitely a good idea to discuss what happened, once cooler heads prevail.
Trying to talk when one or both of you are angry will never end well. Instead, take some time, maybe even a couple of hours, to redirect yourself and really think about what happened and how you might work on fixing the root problem.
If you’re frustrated with your boyfriend because he always leaves his dirty socks on the floor, explain to him why this frustrates you and ask him calmly if he can work on doing better.
As men, we don’t mean to be slobs, but sometimes, just like you, we’re in a hurry and we don’t think about those things. Chances are if you ask him calmly to try to do better, he will.
Sometimes sharing your feelings with someone who wasn’t involved in the situation helps you reevaluate what happened. Just saying it aloud often jolts something into place, and you have an ah-ha moment.
Advice on Relationships – Set Healthy Boundaries
Boundaries are necessary for any relationship to thrive, whether it’s with a friend, family member, or partner. Boundaries help you teach people how you will accept being treated. They protect you emotionally and sometimes physically, and they tell people that you’re a strong, confident woman who won’t put up with any crap.
Early in a new relationship, a great boundary would be no sex until you’re sure he can be trusted and that he isn’t just in it for the sex. A confident man will accept this boundary and will respect you for it. A player will push it and disrespect it. You can learn a lot about a man with just that boundary.
Another important boundary might relate to how he acts on a date. You might have a no phones boundary. This keeps him focused on your time together and not on the latest round of solitaire that he can’t beat. Other boundaries might be more general, like being on time when you go somewhere, or not being bothered when you’re working from home.
Be Self-Aware
Research tells us that many people believe they are more self-aware than they actually are, sometimes out of fear that they will actually discover things they don’t want to know out of fear or shame.
Having a healthy understanding of your own needs, values, and even wants or desires makes you self-aware. The second half of it, however, is being able to communicate those things to your partner effectively. Let’s tackle understanding your own needs first.
How to Understand Your Own Needs, Wants, and Values
Journal
One of the best ways to be more aware of yourself is to journal. By writing down your feelings and triggers, as well as thoughts and behaviors, you become more aware of what’s going on and you can unlock cause and effect.
For some, reading back through a week’s worth of entries helps to put things together. You can discover trends and notice things that may escape you as you’re writing. Sometimes just allowing your pen to follow your thoughts uncovers things you didn’t realize you were thinking or feeling.
As your journal progresses, you can look back to see how far you’ve come over time.
You can also use a journal to reflect on when your thoughts and feelings met your standards and where you might improve in the future. It helps if you have a deep understanding of your values, which we’ll get to in a moment. We’re most unhappy when our lives aren’t aligned with our values.
Uncover Your Values
Knowing what your values are helps you understand your needs because it gives you a guidepost by which you can navigate your life.
For example, if you value family but you seem to be working many hours, leaving little time for family, you might feel out of sorts. The reason is because you aren’t putting your values first.
To determine what your values are, look back at situations where you were happiest. Who was around? What was going on? What about the situation made you so happy? Your values lie in the answers.
You can also look at times when you weren’t very happy. Who was around then? What was happening and why were you so unhappy? This is also how you can find your values because whatever was going on was probably moving you against your values.
Get Curious
Imagine you’re someone you’ve never met before. Explore your thoughts. Explore your body. What are you capable of? What’s more difficult for you? Look at your journal entries and discover what might be hiding in your writing.
Curiosity is a wonderful thing if you allow yourself to go there. You can learn wonderful new things about yourself that can truly change how you feel about some area of your life.
I was coaching a woman a few years ago, we’ll call her Kelly. Kelly was generally unhappy and felt it was creeping into her ability to find a happy relationship. When we started digging into things, she discovered that her environment wasn’t making her happy.
Many of her things were hand-me-down items from family and she’d had them since she graduated from college. She was tired of them and felt those things didn’t really represent who she was. While it took some time, once she knew what some of the problem was, she set about making changes.
She saved up for new furniture, chose a new paint color for her apartment walls, and even changed the little do-dads around her house. She also discovered that she’s really a minimalist and was able to clear a lot of clutter that her mother had set around. She and her mother definitely didn’t feel the same way about clutter.
Just discovering what she needed to do helped Kelly feel better, and as she slowly made the changes she wanted to make, she felt even better. As her self-awareness began to grow, so did her confidence. This helped her find men who were more confident and better suited for long-term relationships.
Break Down Barriers
As you start working on your self-awareness, your instincts may be to build walls and keep people out, mostly out of shame and fear. But your true friends will love you regardless of the flaws you perceive you have. Chances are, your friends have things about themselves that they hope nobody discovers too, but as their friend, you only want to help.
We create our own barriers, usually by creating rules in our lives. Do any of these sound familiar?
- I would never date a guy who didn’t go to college
- There is no way I’d date a guy who rides a motorcycle
- I am not interested in men who are shorter than I
The truth is that by creating these rules, we’re creating barriers. It’s usually done out of fear. Barriers protect, but sometimes, there can be too many of them and then they’re not protecting, they’re hurting.
Distinguish Between Wants and Needs
People often say they need something, when in truth, it’s something they want badly. A need is something that keeps you alive. You need air and water, as well as shelter from the elements, and so on. You may want sparkling or flavored water, but the need is water.
When you confuse wants and needs, things feel dire when they aren’t. “I need to get a red sweater to wear to the Annie’s Holiday Party next weekend.”
This isn’t a need, it’s a want.
Identifying what you need versus what you want helps you create a framework that’s reasonable and sustainable.
For example, you may need a vehicle to get yourself to work every day, but that doesn’t mean you need a $150K vehicle.
You need a home to shelter you from the elements, but you don’t need a home in the high-end neighborhood.
You need clothing, but you don’t need to shop at the most expensive shops in the mall.
Understand that Needs Change
Your needs today are probably different than they were when you were a child. Then, you needed someone to provide for your life and take care of those needs for you. You needed an education and a supportive family.
Today, you probably have that education, and your supportive family has grown to include a great group of friends. What you need today is a job to pay for your own shelter, transportation, clothing, and so on.
When you have children, your needs are also different, often including childcare, and the ability to provide those basic things for y our children.
But once they’re gone and you’re getting older, your needs change again. You may need help doing some tasks, medications to manage different health issues that may come up, and so on.
Stay aware of your changing needs and make sure to accommodate for them in your life.
Communicating Your Needs
If you’ve experienced a few failed relationships, you might be a little hesitant to communicate your needs. While I understand where you’re coming from, I also know that keeping these things from your partner puts you at a disadvantage and places your relationship in jeopardy.
A good man who truly loves you, or if it’s too soon for love, truly enjoys spending time with you, wants to meet your needs. He wants to show you that he cares through his actions.
Women often misunderstand how men show love. I’ve coached too many women to count on this and I’m sure I’ll coach even more in the future.
I remember one woman who was extremely upset because her boyfriend bought her oven mitts as part of her birthday gift. What was he saying with this gift? Did he expect her to cook for him?
No! He had heard her complaining about how the oven mitts she had now were wearing out and she was burning herself when she used them, so he solved the problem and got her new mitts.
The guy who takes your car for an oil change or assembles the shelves you wanted in your office is showing you that he loves you.
If you don’t communicate your needs to your partner, you aren’t giving him a fair shot at showing you how he feels. It’s also important because it helps him know you better.
And if you have special needs that are physically or emotionally based, it’s even more important.
The truth is that it isn’t fair to hold this back in a relationship. You’re putting yourself and your partner at a disadvantage right away.
So, how do you do this?
Use “I” Statements
Which do you think Steve would more likely want to hear?
“Steve, I need some time each day after work to regroup, instead of launching right into dinner and evening activities.”
Or, “Steve, you always want to have dinner and do things right after I get home from work and I hate it.”
To me, it’s an easy decision. I’d much rather hear the first one than the second. The second statement is confrontational and accusatory. It immediately puts poor Steve on the defensive. The poor guy is so happy to see you at the end of the day and that second statement stomps all over his excitement.
When you say “I”, it presents your need in a peaceful and calm way. There is no accusation in the first statement, just what your needs are in a given point in time. It’s very hard to argue with someone when they make a statement like that.
Choose Great Timing
It’s never a good idea to express your needs when you’re both tired or if you’ve just had an argument. Of course, it should go without saying that you don’t express your needs during an argument.
You should also consider what else is going on at that time. I need to talk to you as he’s running out the door is very poor timing unless something just came up in the last few moments and it truly is urgent.
It’s also not great timing to try to discuss needs when he’s distracted with something else, like his favorite team playing on television or while he’s intently working on a hobby or work project.
Choose a time when neither of you are distracted and there is no urgent business in five minutes. Make sure neither of you are already agitated or feeling poorly.
Don’t Assume
We often place our own feelings on someone else and assume we know what they’re experiencing. A friend recently lost her father, who had been suffering from a long-term terminal illness for quite some time. The friend felt peace upon her father’s passing because she knew he wasn’t suffering any longer, but she quickly became annoyed at everyone assuming they knew how she felt.
She had to push away guilty feelings that often came from having a conversation with someone over her father’s passing. It was as if she needed to feel badly about his death just to appease other people. She got tired very quickly of people saying “I’m sorry for your loss” when she didn’t feel sorry at all. She felt at peace knowing that her father wasn’t suffering.
Everyone experiences things differently, so to assume that you know how they feel often means you’re wrong, and your attempts to comfort or guide that person are already on the wrong path.
Stay Focused on Today, Not Yesterday
It’s much easier to focus on what you need today, rather than what you needed but didn’t get in the past.
Holding on to old grievances doesn’t do anyone any good, plus it keeps an argument alive when it should have been resolved already.
Instead, stay focused on today and what you need moving forward. Let go of past problems and focus on the present. By doing this, you are able to problem-solve effectively and without malice.
Focus on Feelings
Much like it’s difficult for someone to find fault when you use “I” statements, it’s hard to find fault with someone’s feelings.
“Steve, I feel like we could have been more friendly to one another this morning during breakfast.”
“Joe, I feel left out when you start talking to your friends and leave me out of the conversation.”
“Adam, I feel like you aren’t really listening to me when you’re playing on your phone while we’re discussing things.”
Sometimes, people don’t realize that what they’re doing is impacting you negatively. There is no way for someone to argue how you feel in a situation. Of course, the opposite of doing it this way is again to use accusations.
“Steve, you were really rude to me at breakfast this morning!”
“Joe, you and your friends are really mean.”
“Adam, you ignore me all the time and I’m sick of it.”
It’s easy to see, again, how using the “I feel” approach is kinder and also more likely to produce results.
Be a Good Listener
It’s one thing to communicate your needs, but this should be a conversation where both of you are able to do so. That means you must be a good listener as well as a good speaker. We already talked about listening and communication at the beginning of the article, so I won’t repeat it now, but will just remind you of how important it is.
Problem Solve Together
When you find a problem in your relationship, work together to find a solution you can both live with. Don’t dictate solutions or leave it up to him to figure it out, regardless of who’s at fault.
In most situations, you and your partner both need to give a little to have an effective solution. Be prepared to not only expect some compromise from him, but to compromise yourself.
This helps you feel more like a team, which brings you closer together. It helps lessen the need for blame and focuses on solutions, rather than who’s at fault.
Advice on Relationships – Understand What Love Is
Many people mistake love as a state of being, when in truth, it’s a verb. Loving someone is acting to show them that you love them, even during the most difficult times.
James has three children. Two daughters and one son. His oldest daughter, after a series of medical problems, became addicted to pain medications. Year after year, she would disappear for long periods of time, then reappear, wanting to go to rehab. He always supported her efforts to get clean, but eventually, she would end up back on the streets and drugs.
The younger children couldn’t understand why their father kept supporting failed efforts at rehabilitation. The cycle continued for years until finally, one October, she came home and asked for help once again. Her siblings avoided her and barely spoke to her, but her father allowed her to live with him as she pulled herself together. Slowly, she started doing Uber Eats deliveries and working toward a few goals.
Three years later, she is still clean and still slowly moving toward independence. James never stopped loving his daughter, regardless of the turmoil she brought to his life.
Things happen in relationships. People get sick or become disabled. Mental illness can creep in and negatively impact everyone. To love is to be there, as much as you can, during those difficult times, as well as during the good times.
It’s easy to be present when things are great. It’s less challenging to be there when things are difficult. The friend I mentioned earlier who recently lost her father had been living with her parents for the last six plus years to help care for him in spite of the fact that she has a rocky relationship with both of them.
My Final Advice on Relationships – Don’t Rush
I know how it goes. You find a guy you really think is the one and you want to hurry things along. You want to have sex and go on several dates a week. You set aside your ‘old’ life to spend as much time with him as possible.
Then it all comes crashing down.
Sounds familiar, right?
We’ve all been there. There is nothing like the excitement of a new relationship. For men, it’s the fun of learning about you, one bit at a time. It’s the fun of doing things together and discovering who you are.
My advice is to slow way down. Continue dating a couple of other guys for a while. There’s nothing wrong with dating more than one guy if you aren’t in a committed relationship. This doesn’t mean you have to flaunt it, but don’t stop dating multiple men until you make a commitment.
As you date these men, one will stand out over the others and your choice will be clear, but allow it to happen naturally, without forcing it.
A great relationship evolves over time. If you don’t rush things, but allow them to grow naturally, you’ll find yourself in a better place.
Wrapping Up
Advice on relationships for women comes from every direction. You can google that term and find thousands of articles, many probably telling you some of the same things I’ve told you here, and frankly, I could write a whole book on this topic and it would be very long.
But that isn’t the point. The point is for you to understand that the best advice on relationships is to be a confident woman who accepts nothing less than what she deserves!
Be a great communicator and know yourself well.
Great men, the type of men who make commitments and stick to them, are attracted to confident women, so the very best advice is to build your confidence. You can’t go wrong if you follow the advice you’ve been given here. I promise!
Once you find true love, the key is keeping it! In my best-seller, Pennies in the Jar: How to Keep a Man for Life, you’ll learn many things you and your guy can do to maintain a healthy, happy relationship. The pennies you put in the jar are shared memories. You add pennies when you do things together like exploring a quaint little town nearby or relaxing in a coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon. They’re added when you make a game out of grocery shopping or have a cooking contest for dinner.
Learn how to put pennies in the jar, how to communicate effectively and how to fight fair, all inside this great book!
To learn more about it, click here. To purchase the book, click one of the buttons below.
