It's our wedding anniversary — five years together. Here are five simple principles that help Nastya and me build our relationship.
Today is our wedding anniversary — five years together.
All systems normal. When both people work on the relationship, married life can exceed your wildest expectations.
I don’t romanticise family life. There were some difficult stretches over these five years. But love covers everything and helps in any circumstances.
There are a few simple ideas that help us a great deal in building our relationship.
- We don’t try to remake each other. We don’t try to break the other person or manipulate the one we love.
- We let each other stay ourselves. We respect personal boundaries. We don’t interfere with each other’s free will.
- We aim to talk absolutely everything through, even the trivial and seemingly insignificant things. We don’t want any negativity to pile up.
Doing this in practice isn’t easy. There’s often a fear that feedback might hurt the person you love.
- We’re learning to genuinely hear each other’s needs and meet them. If you pay attention to what the person you love wants, it’s very easy to make them happy.
- We forgive easily and let go of the situations that wounded or stung. A happy family life doesn’t need a long memory for grudges — a bit of amnesia is just the thing.
What I notice is that if you do the right things, every year the relationship can reach a new level of depth and trust.
And how many years have you been in your relationship?
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