I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a hundred more times – prevention for relationships is exactly like physical health: it is much more efficient and less painful.
This is a direct quote from the World Research Foundation on preventative medicine:
When you are sick, you have no choice but to think about your health; it’s right there in your face – you feel awful. You must build healthy habits even when it’s not convenient. Eating right, getting exercise and avoiding destructive substances. Healthy habits are an “automatic” defense against most illnesses and can provide us a long, healthy – and thus happy – life.
World research foundation
Now do me a favor. Replace sick with unhappy; replace health with relationship. Replace “eating right, getting exercise, and avoiding destructive substances” with being vulnerable, open, loving and connected.
Healthy relationship habits are so important and there are many ways to learn them. But life gets in the way, and we forget. Or we never learned. What happens if you don’t go see the doctor about your small cut? Sometimes, it’s nothing and we get past it. But sometimes we get a full on infection and have to deal with huge repercussions because we waited to go see the doc.
The same thing happens with relationships, and far far too often. Every day I have couples on my couch where one person is completely checked out. It is the same story, “we’ve lived like this too long”, “I don’t believe they can change”, etc. And unfortunately, when we get to this stage, sometimes its too painful for people to be willing to do the hard work to get it back. We let the cuts accumulate and fester and now we’re too sore to want to even try.
This is why I am asking, begging, and pleading with you: if you have signs of a relationship cold or cut, please make an appointment with us!
But I also have a better suggestion. Don’t let the cuts accumulate. Don’t even let them happen. Take care of your relationship like you should take care of your body. Be on top of your relationship health, be active in working hard in the relationship. Make a commitment to your partner. And a great, easy way to do this is provided right here at The Couples Experts.
We offer a research-developed assessment of relationship health. It is called the Annual Relationship & Love Test. You can register for this relationship checkup right on our website.
The way it works is that you request the assessment from The Couples Expert, and we send you the link via e-mail. Once you and your partner have finished, the completed assessment is sent to us to review. It involves 480 questions about friendship, intimacy, emotions, conflict, values, and trust, as well as parenting, housework, finances, individual areas of concern, and more. It is a great tool to determine what areas of your relationship could use a tune up. Think of it like getting your blood checked, it helps the doctor know about your cholesterol, vitamins, etc. This assessment checks the relationships strengths and challenges.
Just like going to the doctor for your annual checkup, you should be checking in on the health of your relationship.
The beauty of the check up is that your relationship may be in great health, but it will allow me to identify areas of improvement so that those cuts don’t fester or even happen.
We all have our family doctor that we go to for everything (at least, we should). The beauty of the check up is it allows your relationship to have a go-to “doctor” – though I have a masters not a doctorate – in case of any further attention being needed. I think the best thing a couple can do is to nip a problem in the bud before it grows into something more. If youre taking good care of your relationship, and reaching out for help when needed, you’ll have a long, loving relationship.
Please do not wait until you have reached your limit to ask for help.