Are your relationships strong enough? Are you suitable for each other or not? How to find out? The clinical psychologist has compiled her own checklist and offers to check your relationship on 20 points.
“Often in our culture you can find the belief that if people truly love each other, then they should do everything together! — says clinical psychologist Victoria Rasulova. Imagine porcupines that can never get close to each other. This is a very accurate metaphor: there must be distance between partners so that intimacy can be comfortable.”
Victoria has compiled a checklist for those who want to check themselves and their partner for compliance with the concept of a “happy couple”.
1. Common interests. We often converge precisely on «similarity» when we find that the other shares our interests. Maybe it’s a love for Netflix series, Bulgakov, or long walks in the city center.
2. Own desires and hobbies. One loves cars and can spend hours watching reviews of the latest auto industry on YouTube. The second one likes to listen to classical music and knows all the works of Bach. It is not necessary to 100% share the partner’s hobbies. But you need to know and respect the choice of a loved one.
3. Common friends and your own. When relationships develop and “we” appears, partners become overgrown with common friends. They are perceived as conditional «Petrovs», and not just as separate Sveta and Dima. However, it’s just as important to spend time apart from time to time: chat with a friend about cosmetics or quantum physics, or fight a friend in the new «Fifa» on the Play Station.
4. Core values. For example, views on family, children, freedom. There are no right and wrong values, but it happens that two people do not have the same values. It is difficult to imagine a harmonious union if one partner welcomes open relationships and polyamory, while the other advocates a classic monogamous marriage. Or one childfree, and the other dreams of children.
5. Respect and acceptance. You have different views on some aspects of life, but at the same time you are tolerant of the views of your partner. There are no two identical people in the world. You care about the environment, sort the garbage, and your partner loves coffee from a paper cup. If you respect each other, then such differences will not be a problem for you.
6. Joint leisure. You have a great time on your own, even if you miss your partner at the same time.
7. Common future. You are planning a joint vacation and going to a concert in the summer. Discussing marriage or having children. In any case, you think about the future and make joint decisions.
8. Ability to survive a breakup. Even if the relationship ends, you will get over it. Your life will go on. Relationships are an important part of it, but not the only one. Living through a breakup and the loss of relationships, as well as your desires and hopes associated with them, is always sad. But sadness will pass, especially if you have friends, loved ones to help. And in a critical situation, you can turn to a psychologist.
9. The ability to take care of yourself. You know how to organize your life without a partner. You have where and what to live on, you are able to earn money and serve yourself.
10. Physical and sexual intimacy. You like his touch and smell, you like just sitting next to him, that is, the physical presence of a partner in your field you feel as something pleasant or neutral.
11. Opportunity to refuse intimacy and sex. “I don’t want to” is a good reason. You should not make love when you don’t feel like it, “if only you don’t go left.”
12. Caring for a partner. Make tea, prepare breakfast or dinner when there is time, opportunity and desire for this. At the same time, you asked in advance whether the partner wants just such care. Otherwise, it is highly likely that you will do good and do good when it is not expected from you. And then you should not be offended or pour boiling water into a person, «because I care so much.»
13. Ability to accept care without guilt. A partner cooked dinner, met you from work, gave you an expensive gift, or covered you with a blanket when you fell asleep. Perhaps you didn’t ask for it. But you are pleased. Therefore, later on, you will also cook dinner or get a massage, but not out of a sense of duty, but because you feel like it.
14. The ability to put your interests first. You know how to sometimes put yourself first and not feel guilty about it. For example, you agreed to watch a movie together in the evening. But you suddenly felt like sleeping. You calmly offer to reschedule the viewing and are not offended if your partner watches the movie without you.
15. No sacrifice. You respect his ability to «choose» himself sometimes, even if you don’t like it. For example, a husband likes to lie in bed all day on Sunday. And you have a passion for morning cleaning on the weekend. But you don’t ask him to get up and make his bed. Even if you want to clean up the bedroom.
16. No violence. There is no physical, psychological or financial abuse. There should be no rudeness, humiliation, use of force or deprivation of money from one partner by another in a relationship. There is a union of two people choosing to be with each other day after day.
17. There are no attempts to remake, change, «improve» the other. Perhaps one of the most difficult points. There is an acceptance of the «whole» person with his pluses and minuses. For example, your partner smoked, and you do not like it. If he does not smoke at home and does not violate your boundaries in any way, this is his business, he has the right to live the way he wants. Or a partner likes to sit at home, and you want to spend time with him in the company of friends.
18. There is no place for control. You do not tell your partner how to live better. Trust to make your own choices and make your own mistakes. And support if he needs it and in the way he wants. You will not read the correspondence, even if the phone is unlocked. If you live with a person who is not worthy of trust, then only one question arises: why?
19. Only healthy criticism. You are able to correctly express your dissatisfaction, respectfully and in the form of a self-message: “When you say that you will come home at 21, and you come at 23, I feel deceived and worried. Please don’t do that, and let me know if plans change.»
20. The ability to admit your mistakes and ask for forgiveness. Every person makes mistakes. Sometimes we lash out at loved ones. But conflicts can benefit your union if you learn to argue the right way. Admitting a mistake and asking for forgiveness out loud is the best way to show that the relationship is important to you. Do not humiliate yourself and beg for forgiveness, but apologize, explaining why. Do not demand instant forgiveness, but give your loved one time to respond.
“Relationships are the work and responsibility of each partner,” sums up Victoria Rasulova. Remember that there are always two people to work. Walk your half way and wait for your loved one in the middle. Don’t run for two.»