10 psychological keys to improve your relationship with your partner.

Habits and strategies that help strengthen and improve a couple's relationship.

Couple relationships are dynamicThey are not always the same, since they go through different stages such as life changes, changing situations and difficulties that will put the relationship to the test. Broadly speaking we can differentiate an initial stage of courtship in which there are more beautiful, romantic and leisure moments and a later stage of cohabitation in which to share in addition to more time, more responsibilities and burdens.

Regardless of the moment in which your relationship is, Verónica Valderrama Hernández, from Psicoalmeria, gives you 10 keys to improve it. These keys will be very useful. However, if you consider that the relationship is at a point of stagnation may be important to receive the help of a professional psychologist, in Psicoalmeria perform couple therapies professionally involved and adapting techniques and strategies to each case.

Key ideas to improve your relationship

Many times it costs us to make changes thinking that if the couple does not change it will not be of much use what we do.. This is not true, no matter if you think your partner should also change, making these changes will get your partner to change without doing it consciously. Why? Because it won't make sense to treat you the same or to treat you both the same if something has changed.

It may be in your power to break the patterns of reciprocal behavior that currently exist in the relationship. You can start applying these keys today!

1. Practice Active Listening and learn to Activate the Look

It is important to actively listen to your partner with full awareness. It consists of being totally focused on the message he/she is trying to communicate and transmit.. Accompany this technique with the active look, an eye contact indicates that you are paying attention and denotes sincerity.

Have you ever stopped to think how many times you communicate in the right way and how many times you communicate while doing other things? It is common for many conversations to take place while you are checking your cell phone, for example, or attending to other obligations. Knowing how to listen is very important and will reflect attention on your partner. The following are some of the things that prevent you from promoting active listening: getting distracted, interrupting your partner, imposing your ideas without understanding him/her, not validating his/her feelings, telling your version without listening to his/her version and disqualifying his/her opinion.

2. Empathize

In any situation you are going through, before acting, you can put yourself in your partner's shoes. How is he/she going through it? How would I go through it in his/her place? Put yourself in your partner's shoes, try to understand him/her and not to judge him/her.. If you do this technique properly, you will be able to address your partner in a more assertive way.

3. Use "I" and avoid "You".

During conversations and discussions try to use more of the first person (I) and less of the second person (you). We do not feel the same way when we are told "You hurt me" as when we receive the message "I felt bad about what you said". The I promotes empathy on the part of your partner.The You provokes emotions compatible with an attack, so that the following response will probably be along the lines of a new reproach.

4. Reset

Avoid the reproaches of the past, imagine that these situations have expired and already overcome.What do you think can be positive in a discussion if you bring up things already talked about in the past? Focus on clarifying the current situation with arguments and facts from the present.

If your partner agrees that reproaches bring negativity and increase problems, you can establish a secret word and use it whenever one of you reproaches something from the past.

5. Activate the positive circle

It consists of doing something positive for your partner every day. A detail, a nice, affectionate or romantic gesture. Anything that implies that you have dedicated time to your partner will be rewarded, did you know that by nature we tend to return the favors we receive? by nature we tend to return favors or gestures of affection.? Do something new and positive for your partner every day and you'll see it start to pay off very quickly.

6. Recreate first dates

If you have the opportunity to recreate one of your first dates, remembering and reliving those first moments can rekindle the spark and make you connect with what attracted you to your partner initially. It will also be useful to do new pleasurable activities as a couple or to recover activities that you stopped doing.

7. Think before you speak

How many times have we heard this phrase, and how many times do we actually use it? It is normal to be impulsive during a conversation, but if we believe that the conversation is entering into a discussion, it is better to think before speaking and focus on the words we want to say. focus both on the words we want to communicate and on the most appropriate ways to do it..

8. The Wish Box

It is an interesting and beneficial activity, you can propose it to your partner. It consists of to make a box between the two of you (there are available for purchase), personally I recommend to do it and share time as a couple..

This box can be decorated as you like, and will have a slot on the top as a "piggy bank". You will choose a color each for the notes or ballots to be inserted, you will place during the days those wishes that you want your partner to fulfill and you will commit to fulfill the wishes of your partner written down.

9. Sex without ideas?

Ask yourself the following questions: what did we do before in sex that we could recover? Is there any sexual fantasy that I have not fulfilled and I can propose it to my partner? Don't be afraid to innovate and go for it, get out of the routine.

10. Try to ask for help before deciding

Before starting a serious conversation that could have important repercussions on the couple, we recommend you to seek a professional opinion, we recommend you seek a professional opinion to get an objective perspective of the situation.

Many of our actions and behaviors are made by expectations and interpretations that we form and that sometimes do not conform to reality, so it is important to see the situation from different perspectives. it is important to see the situation from different perspectives. The psychologist Verónica Valderrama Hernández and the psychologists of Psicoalmeria will help you in the situation you are going through so that you can decide in the most appropriate way and always with psychological techniques that have empirical validity.