If you are wondering about things you should expect in a relationship or what to bring onto the table, this article will help.

Relationship is a process. It’s an area where you stay for long to know what and what not to do. The list of things couples says, go through, discuss, fight about, things that makes your partner want more of you goes on and on.

Compassion

Sensitivity to other’s feelings and concern for the wellbeing of others.

Absence of compassion in a relationship gradually eats the relationship up.

Individuals should be responsive to their partner’s afflictions.

Importance of Compassion

It makes couples feel important
It soothes the partner in difficulty
It creates warmth in relationship
It places value on couple
It is a sign of commitment

Affection

Affection is showing concern, demonstrating care and willingness to express love through various means to protect, approve and make others feel secure.

Importance of Affection

It shows how willing you are to protect your partner
It reemphasizes partner’s care and concern
Your partner feels secure
It strengthens partner’s sense of protection (partner feels protected)
It creates comfort
It reaffirms your partner’s trust in the relationship
Placing value on your spouse
Showing concern

How to Show Affection in Relationship

Expression of lovely words
Encouraging words
Text message or phone call
Sending a greeting card
Designing a special birthday card
Holding hands in public places
Handshake
Exchanging greetings
Hugging
Eye contact

Dr. Willard F. Harley Jr. “Affection is, for many, the essential cement of a relationship. Without it, many feel totally alienated. With it, they become emotionally bonded”.

Intimacy

Intimacy is the closeness in personal relationship. The feeling of being emotionally connected. Lack of intimacy in a relationship can leave the relationship stagnant.

What are the four types of intimacy?

Firstly, intimacy does not only involve physical touch. To be intimate, you need to give each other undivided attention.

Emotional Intimacy

Regarding each other’s feelings and speaking your innermost desire about your spouse without holding back and feeling daunting.

Emotional intimacy promotes security, love and trust and ensures healthy communication. It allows partners to connect more deeply with each other.

If there’s lack of emotional intimacy in your relationship, try spending more time together to create bond.

Importance of Emotional Intimacy

Communication abounds
Honest expression of one’s feelings and thoughts:

1. Joy
2. Disappointments
3. Fears
4. Aspirations

Mental Intimacy

Engaging in fair competitions. Introducing mind racking games during leisure hours.

Think of playing chess, ludo, hide and seek, jumping rope, puzzles, affectionate quiz, computer games, lessons learned from books, movie series, and discussing issues regarding your career.

Sharing strengths and limitations around your business, plans on starting new business and how to handle investors and customers.

Importance of Mental Intimacy

It engineers healthy competition among couples to strive to reach their best
Couples learn from each other new set of skills
Serves as stimulant to the brain
A best way to share ideas
Discover each other’s strength and weakness and fill in the gaps
Creates bond
Creates unity
Encourages children to learn
Serves as a way to release stress
Inspires new business ideas
Rejuvenates the mind

If you are busy couples, make sure you find some time to engage in mental intimacy.

Spiritual Intimacy

Connecting on a deep level of spirituality makes room for strong lasting relationship. Taking your relationship on spiritual journey is by far the best you can do for your relationship.

Building your relationship spiritually is a healthy step as improving on personal spiritual life is great.

Connect with your partner in a quiet moment.

Importance of Spiritual Intimacy

Spirituality helps heal inner wounds
It nourishes the soul
Encourages openness in relationship
Helps partners to trust and share secrets
Promotes honesty
Binds you on spiritual level which reflects how you deal with your partner emotionally, mentally, and physically.
Brings happiness

When your spiritual antenna is low, it affects how you relate to each other and how you engage with others as well.

Physical Intimacy

Great one, in all of the types of intimacy, this is the only type that stretches your touch ability. Physical intimacy allows both couples to share themselves with each other.

The willingness to give and also get, engaging in talks about what soothes you, how you want to be pleased physically.

How will you want to be touched and how will you want to play with your partner? This type of communication between partners will make room for understanding each other’s body and increase fulfilment.

Benefits of Physical Intimacy

First of all, it increases pleasure
Reduces stress
Serves as bridge between couples
Creates bond
Helps partners to know each other’s body, which increases satisfaction
Fortifies the relationship

Consideration

When you are in a relationship, you haven’t loss your personal life in anyway. You are an individual bonding with another person.

This haven’t taken who you are away by any means, yet, once you entered a relationship, you must understand the need to respect union regulations.

You cannot live single but married, expecting your marriage to grow. In other words, whatever you do, or most of the things you do, you should consider your partner.

Interest

In every relationship, people talk about their personal interest and the union’s interest at large.

What are we interested in as couples, how will it move us forward.

Respect

Respecting your partner, her will, opinions and things that concerns her is very important in growing your relationship

Time

People in relationship consider time. It is part of everyday routine they go about. The time to wake up and prepare the kids for school.

Allocating time to pick the children from school, when you both can engage in physical intimacy and when to talk about outside business etc.

Couples not valuing time in their various homes are likely to have difficulties managing their home.

Time consciousness in marriage teaches children to value time and become great entrepreneurs.

Forgiveness

If a relationship is going to see the future, there is a need for each partner to learn to forgive. In human society, somebody is going to say something wrong or take the wrong move, disrespect home tradition.

The good thing is, couples finding a way to handle such cases amicably and return to normal. When we forgive, we heal ourselves from hurting. And we give our loved ones second chance.

Misunderstanding

Since we are individuals and entitled to our opinion, we should expect others to misunderstand us.

When such instances occur, best practice is to consider ourselves bigger than the situation, find a common ground and move on.

Hardship

Some relationship struggles with financial difficulties. Money for school fees, utility bills, hospital bills, rent and other things requiring money.

Financial problems are common in marriages, and couples should take time to understand each other and work around it.

For instance, if the husband earns GH¢300.00 as salary every month and is expected to pay utility bills, school fees, and still give the wife about half of the salary, the wife must be understanding.

Don’t look at what happens in other homes and try implementing them in your home.

I am not of the view that this is enough to manage the house but unhealthy comparison can destroy your home.

Don’t dash your husband or wife to anybody because they don’t have enough today.

Cheating

Cheating is one thing which relationships battle a lot in this generation.

Easy access to communication, financial difficulties and indoctrination or cultural integration are some of the causes of the high increase in cheating in homes today.

Disadvantages of Cheating

Distrust for opposite sex
Causing divorce
When children are involved in the broken home, their upbringing becomes difficult
Waste of resources – Hiring lawyers for divorce process should it get to divorce
Low productivity – If both parties own a business, it may affect the growth of the business in case they split

Birth Control

In every relationship, couples discuss childbirth. Number of kids, when to have children, interval between the children and how to take care of them.

Introducing children in a relationship definitely alter the relationship, therefore, necessary plans must be in place to start with.

Family Interference

The man or woman’s family may not be pleased with the person their son or daughter wants to marry. This creates conflicts in relationships.

Some of these conflicts can last through the life time of members who disagree with their family’s choice.

My father’s mother is not in support of their relationship.

Even though they are adults now, and spent many years together, having four (4) children, my mother’s mother in-law is still having problem with her.

Other family members could also interfere with the relationship.

Disadvantages of Family Interference

It brings enmity among families
It causes divorce
It causes cheating
It causes frustration
Family interference in marriage creates division

Relationship Boundary

Respecting boundaries in relationship is very important. People should be allowed to develop as individuals, that they can contribute effectively to the growth of the relationship.

Sex Position

Couples discuss sex, and they also talk about the position they enjoy best with their partners.

Communication is a requirement among couples.

Partners should be free to speak their mind on positions they are comfortable with during sex and how to increase pleasure.

Doing so will make your sex life vibrant all seasons.

Religion

Religion is one thing couples discuss. Some people belong to different religious bodies, and dealing with this to not upset each other and the union at large, care must be taken.

There should be understanding among couples regarding this matter.

Education

Education is one important matter. Education comes to play when couples decide on childbirth, number of kids and interval.

It also influences financial decisions and how the house is managed entirely.

Advantages of Education in Marriage

When both parties are educated, it helps them communicate well
Both can be employed and contribute financially, reducing financial burden
When both are educated, they will see the need to spend on their children’s school fees and buy them educational materials
Because they will learn more about relationship, they can manage their relationship well
They can both manage their salaries and resources effectively
They will both learn the need to save money and invest

Communication

What to say to your partner and how to say it. What hurts or what sounds offensive to the other person. How often to call your partner if you are in distance relationship.

One party may desire attention while the other may be introvert and hardly speaks. Whether one is extrovert and the other is introvert, both couples must find a better way to communicate.

Importance of Communication in Relationship

It educates your partner about your needs
Communication helps your partner understand your feelings
It helps improve upon behavior
Communication makes couples realize their shortcomings
It is a way of participating in the relationship
It gives detail account of what is achieved and what you want to accomplish in the near future

Dating

When establishing relationship with someone, first thing we do is to go on date. It may be 3 times or more. Once, people get married, they cease to date their partner.

Experts believe the best way to keep relationship alive is to continue to date each other throughout the lifespan of the relationship.

This lets people involved in this union, get to renew their knowledge about each other and are always up to date.

Benefits of Dating

Getting to know your partner
Expressing your love to your partner
Strengthening your connection
Growing intimacy between couples
Refreshing your memories

Empathy

First of all, you should know that empathy is different from sympathy.

Sympathy is showing concern while empathy is moving into the feelings of your partner.

Empathy is embodying the feelings your partner is experiencing. Putting yourself into their shoes.

When the other partner is depressed, instead of jumping into conclusion to make them think you know all about what it is they feel, try to rather understand their state.

Ask your partner how you could help alleviate their pain. Tell them you are sorry for making them feel bad, you will make it up to them next time.

Reaching a spouse in empathetic manner connects you to your partner and you become someone he or she can rely and count on when going through challenges.

Instead of your partner looking for a comforter in other people, friends and family, they will run to you since they are aware you will share their depression, frustration and anxiety.

Conflict

When you are angry because of a misunderstanding between you, you shouldn’t let the anger eat deep, that you forget to resolve the conflict and let it escalade to bigger conflict.

Commitment

You cannot have a successful relationship without commitment.

Love is reciprocal, if I keep giving out on a higher level and keep receiving on the lower level, I will get tired and may quit.

Therefore, we should all try to give our hearts out in a relationship as much as we can if we desire to maintain what we have.

Diet

In relationship, people also discuss diet. Beside giving attention to healthy or balance diet, we must also notice that a partner might prefer some recipes to others.

Children may want something different for dinner. As you need healthy food to develop and be in good health, preference also plays a role.

We should learn to respect each other’s likes and dislikes.

Marriage

In early stage of relationship, where we are only boyfriend and girlfriend hanging across the streets and waving friends, we shouldn’t forget there will come a time where we will marry.

When the other partner brings up marriage, we shouldn’t run away or feel threaten. Rather, it is important we let out partners know when and how we will be ready.

If one partner is interested in marriage and other is not, it is good the other communicates it openly that the one interested in marriage, will decide as to whether to stay in the relationship or move on.

Work

Who should work, who shouldn’t, and the type of work are things that comes in relationship. If you decide to own a business, how do the other person contribute to its growth.

If you are government employee or employee of private company, how does it affect the relationship?

Perhaps your partner asking you to move from the village to the city to get a job where you can both raise money to marry.

Spending Habits

How to spend money in your relationship. You should both have freedom to save your income or how to handle your money.

But you must also have a fair idea of how to put your heads together and manage your finance. How much you spend on yourselves and children and other things.

Relationship Fears

People become scared of losing their partners.

This makes them overprotective and some eventually become abusive.

At times, the other partner fights friends and colleagues they believe could snatch their loved ones.

This fear can grow, and cause confusion in the relationship and may possibly break the marriage.

Old Age Home

When you are married, even before that, you should begin looking into how you will be living your life when you grow old.

Plays for the Weekend

Couples should revive marital life with vacation. Going for holidays. Setting some weekends aside and go out with the family to ease tension and rejuvenate their body and mind.

Costume

The kind of clothes you and the children wear home, when going to church and public places.

Dealing with Neighbors

How do you relate with your neighbors? How to entertain your neighbors. Do you allow your kids to make friends outside home? Are there limitations to how you accommodate neighbors.

Child control

Looking at how to instill discipline in your children. The peers they make, clothes they put on.

Training them for the future, teaching them at home and giving them values that will help them live an upright life.

Attitude

Your partners attitude is very important. Your tolerance, how you respond to situation, your temperament, how you reply your partner and speak to them may be a deal-maker or deal-breaker in the relationship.

Priority

What do you value most? Are you both sharing similar interest? How to handle things you invest your time into that they don’t become hinderance to your partner.

How to Invest

Couples talk about investment. Investing into each other, children and family members, and people outside the marriage.

Many families do not prioritize investment. This is because, what some people earn is meager. It can hardly take care of their immediate needs.

Others also lack the culture of savings and investing in their children and other ventures. This is the reason people go on retirement after successful employment and begin to face financial crises.

Investing doesn’t have to be putting your money in a business but educating your children or each other is also a form of investment.

Importance of Investment Plan

It will prepare you for future economic hardship
Prepare you for retirement
Helps take care of your children’s education
It helps take care of the needs of the immediate family and extended family members
It helps cultivate the attitude of saving
It helps have value for money at every level
It helps reach out to others outside the family e.g., orphans, needy but brilliant children, charity organizations

Divorce

Knowing about things that leads to divorce will help both partners contribute maximum effort to avoid it.

Disadvantages of Divorce

It disturbs the child’s upbringing
Some children become arrogant as a result
Some children dropout of school
It distorts future plans you both had together
It delays success
It causes ailments associated with mental health
Divorce puts burdens on the society
Those who look to you are discouraged
Others lack enthusiasm to marry
It causes teenage pregnancy

Dateguide

All the magic feelings surrounding new love disappears as you age.

Therefore, you must constantly renew your relationship through marriage or relationship seminars, learning from old people, visit your pastors and relationship expert or coaches when facing difficulties to navigate through.

Marriage is not a smooth sailing journey, there are bumps on the road.

People change due to circumstances, and we should learn how to adapt to these changes and keep the family together through hard times and crises.

There are many things to discover, learn and do in relationship. These are but few items we listed.