The Golden Rules of Relationships

Let’s Talk About the Rules

Let’s talk about the Golden Rules of Relationships.

These are the “make or break” rules for increasing intimacy. We either embrace them, or the relationship stagnates (or worse). So here they are.

Feel Your Feelings

Feel your feelings is about checking in with ourselves, finding out what is really going on inside emotionally. This might at first be experienced as a physical feeling (“I feel heat as I notice I am getting angry”). Or it might be getting in touch with an underlying sadness or depression.

These experiences can be explored and then be spoken of truthfully to our partner (see Tell The Truth below).

Tell The Truth

We were recently listening to an audio piece by Neale Donald Walsch on relationships where, in his inimitable style, he speaks of his top three rules for relationships. In no particular order, these turn out to be:

1. Tell the Truth.
2. Tell the Truth.
3. Tell the Truth (Neale’s now shouting).

It’s that simple really, the relationship can’t move unless truth-telling gets to this level of importance.

And truth-telling, to be really effective, is about our feelings. To tell the truth about our feelings is to be willing to show who we are, to be vulnerable, and this is the key to increasing intimacy.

Keep Your Commitments

Last year we posted an article The Hendricks and the Essential Co-Commitments We want to ask, How are you going with these? That’s because we know how important they are, and how effective they can be (in our own experience, in our own relationship).

And to gently ask, if they don’t seem so important, what’s standing in the way to them being stated in your relationship, in being a regular topic of conversation with your partner?

Call us!

If you’d like support with these Golden Rules, please give us a call.