Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the US this month, and while it’s always an opportunity to celebrate love and the relationships we have with our significant others and be reminded of how blessed we are to have them in our lives, it’s also an opportunity for us to step aside from any issues we’ve got in our relationship and remember the best memories and reasons why we’re with that person, why we’ve given them such a place of prominence in our life.
Every relationship has problems, complications, disagreements and differences, even the best and healthiest relationships aren’t all hearts and flowers, but you should have more good days than bad days. You should look forward to and enjoy seeing your partner at the end and/or beginning of a day. You should want to spend time with them and share with them about what’s going on in your day, your life and the world that we share. You should want them to participate in your life and want them to support you. And the opposite is also true: they should want to spend time with you. They should look forward to sharing with you what’s going on in their life when you’re not together. They should want to participate in the things going on in your life and want you to support them.
You’ve probably heard the old saying that advises you to not go to bed angry, and to that suggestion I’d add that you should work hard to have at least one good moment every day with your partner, whether it’s a text, bed/couch snuggle time, walk with the dog, doing the dishes together or surprising the other with a treat that says ‘I’m thinking about you’ because this too helps to keep you moving away from being constantly immersed in the issues and doesn’t let you forget that there’s good in your relationship.
So if you’ve been in a low point with your relationship lately, maybe this is the best time for Valentine’s Day to come around, because it will actively remind you to take a break from the bad and focus on the good. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your relationship is to call a break or time out or breather or ceasefire, a time for you both to stop talking about the issue (or issues), deal with the other important things in your life and relationship and come back to the discussion/issue when you’re calmer and have had time to think through things. Have you called for a time out like this in your relationships? If so, what was your experience with it?