If you want your garden to grow, you have to care for it. The same is true for your important relationships—if you want them to grow, you must nurture them. Thus, you must cultivate your relationships with the people about whom you care the most: significant others, spouses, or children. What follows are some strategies that I believe will help you to keep those relationships thriving:
Sustain a Sense of Urgency: Determine that the people whom you most value are the ones to whom you rarely say, “Just a minute.” Be tuned in and responsive. That person is more important than any television program, sporting event, or video game.
Remain Engaged and Loving: It takes work to keep a relationship strong, so do your best to keep that important person, well, important. Inertia is difficult to overcome, so actively avoid it. In addition, your words must be loving towards that important person. For example, on a date, you could tell them, “I really like spending time with you.”
Talk about IT: “It” is any problem that you and that person must talk about-an unexpected bill, or maybe, who is going to clean the bathroom. Problems get solved when you talk about them. Problems swept under the carpet will grow and become more difficult to manage.
Use Active Listening: Get physically involved in conversations with those special people. Actively listen to what they are telling you rather than thinking about your responses. Also, tune into their emotions behind the words. You might say, for example, “It sounds like you were frustrated that happened.”
Make “I” Statements: “I” statements inform that important person how you feel when they do something. Those statements include no blame and no threats. An example of an “I” statement: “I feel frustrated when don’t call to tell me you’re working late.” You also could give them a choice for what they could do differently, “Next time you have to work late, would you like to call me or send me a text?”
Look to assist, but ask first: Be sensitive to that important person’s need for help. But, instead of jumping in, respect that person’s autonomy and ask, (a) do they want your help, and (b) what would they like you to do.
