That loving feeling

It is the easiest thing in the world to take something for granted but it usually comes at a cost. You use your email so much that it is hard to convince yourself to find the time to empty it out, but if you don’t eventually it will crash and you will wish you had spent a little time maintaining it. The same goes for your car: if you just keep hopping into it without having it serviced, the day will come when you’ll put the key in the ignition and nothing will happen.

Unfortunately, your relationship is similar: if you want the engine to keep sparking when you turn the key, then you need to do some regular relationship servicing. It’s all very well to say that of course, but the problem is how do you do maintain a relationship? Thankfully, a new piece of research offers some clues.

To arrive at their findings, researchers from the University of Illinois conducted a meta-analysis of 35 studies that involved a total of 12,273 people. These were studies that looked at the factors that were most important in maintaining healthy relationships. What emerged from the analysis were five behaviours that consistently help make relationships better. Those behaviours or characteristics were: openness, being positive, providing assurance to your partner, sharing tasks, and having a shared social network. Being “open” means listening to your partner as well as telling them what you think or feel, while being “positive” encompasses everything from just having fun to being cheerful when you interact.

The evidence is that people who behave in these ways are more likely to be satisfied with their relationship and to continue to love, and even like, their partner.

Interestingly, the researchers noted that it is not enough to be open, for instance, but your partner must realise that you are open. So a little marketing of the fact that you possess these qualities is also required.

On the upside, it seems that even a small attempt at one of these behaviours is enough to give your relationship a lift. So, now that the puerile furore of Valentine’s Day is over, why not take some time to make a real difference to the love in your life: listen to how their day has been, let them know they are safe with you — and make it fun by doing it all in a new t-shirt that says, “Anything unrelated to elephants is irrelephant”, or perhaps, “Hedgehogs. Why don’t they just share the hedge?”