Critically Evaluating Your Role in the Relationship

When it comes to relationships, most of us are pretty hands-off. The prevailing mindset seems to be that relationships should work out all by themselves. In any case, because there is no manual, most of us accept that we will just blunder through them and hope for the best.

I mean, who do you know actually bothers to analyse their relationship and think critically about what they can do to improve it?

Yet, most relationships suffer precisely because we are apathetic towards them. We assume they are obscure and unknowable and so don't put any effort to understand them or improve them.

For the most part, the approach we have towards our relationships is pretty superficial. We tend to think mostly in terms of what our partner can and should do for us, how much time we spend together instead of the quality of the time, and how much our partner "loves" us without really understand what that "love" means to entails.

Many of us also have a very resigned kind of attitude towards our relationship, believing for example that, "well, it's supposed to feel dull after a while", or "We are not young anymore, we can't do those things again!".

But lie any endeavor, a relationship benefits immensely from critical evaluation - "what are we doing right?", "what are we doing wrong?", "what can we do to make things better?".

After all, we are talking about the person we claim to love, and in some cases, the person we swore to take care of for the rest of our lives. We often forget that, and only think about how our desires can be met. So consider your partner's physical and emotional needs. Do you even know what they are? Are you fulfilling those needs?

Think back to the times when your relationship was at its most fulfilling. What were you doing then that you are no longer doing? We can often get so comfortable in a relationship that we don't feel the need to do anything exciting or surprising anymore. But those little thrills are what keep the fire of romance alive.

And if you were to assess yourself as partner, how would you score? Would you be happy being in a relationship with yourself? What changes you make to become a better partner? We often blame the "natural course" of things or the other person when really we aren't doing much ourselves to make the relationship work better. So take a critical look at your role in the relationship. Isn't there more you can do?

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Eugine Loh, 938Live, MediaCorp Pte Ltd