The Essential Guide to a Lasting Relationship.  (Part I) By Dr. Marty

 It’s been a while since I’ve shared material from my book  “The Essential Guide to a Lasting Relationship”  In my second chapter, I talk about “Dealing with the bumps” in the next two blogs I will share four “take aways” from that chapter.  You can find more details about these tips in the book, my hope this information will get you thinking and help strength your relationship.

Here they are:

1. Denying a problem will just make it more difficult to deal with it later on in a relationship    This may seem obvious, but just the other day I had a couple tell me they knew something was wrong, but they figured it wasn’t “that bad”. It’s easy to get caught up in the business of life and forget about problems negative feelings that normally happen in the course of a relationship, by saying that you’ll deal with them later.

 2. Respecting your partner’s boundaries is essential to strong relationship.  Again, this is obvious, but when you’re fighting with your partner do you let your partner, take a step back and not insist on an immediate answer?  On the other hand, when a step back is taken, is the issue just swept under the rug?  Both responses will cause a problem.

 3. Life will bring changes; it’s not the changes that determine the strength of the relationship it’s how you handle those changes.  For details about how couples can handle changes, you might want to take a look at my book “The Negation handbook for couples   http://yourmarriagecounselor.com/negotiation-handbook-for-couples/ I will share with you the last “tip” in my next blog