Relationships: Tools And Improvments Essay Sample

Although I enjoy a healthy relationship with my current romantic partner, there are things that need to be addressed and worked on, as there always are in relationships. I have found that while I maintain other relationships quite well throughout various circumstances, my personal romantic relationships are relationships that I struggle with in certain circumstances. I recognize that my personality is somewhat strong and can be abrasive over long periods of time because of the expectations that I have for a partner; however, in my current partner, I have found an individual who matches well with my personality type and can relate well to me, regardless of the mood I am in or the issues that I am experiencing at any given time.
My current relationship is one that I would describe as “fine,” or even “good”—we enjoy each other, and when we spend time together, we have a fantastic time and make each other laugh. However, one of the problems is that we are both extremely busy people. Between work, school, and outside activities, we have to make time to see each other, which is something that happens fairly well on weekends but with much less success on weekdays and weeknights.
We have had more than a few arguments around our inability to see each other, especially when a miscommunication is what keeps us from seeing each other. Sometimes I am too distracted by something that I should be doing or something that I enjoy doing to make time to spend with my partner. This has led to arguments in the past, although my partner is generally extremely understanding and supportive of me, and wants me to build a life of my own that I can be proud of. Despite how much I enjoy the relationship, our communication and priorities need to be shifted so that they are more in line with each other; this will make maintaining the relationship easier in the long run.
I recognized the potential weaknesses in my relationship early on, and I began to make changes as soon as I recognized that I was beginning to fall into a pattern of poor communication. Luckily, the relationship itself is quite strong—my partner and I enjoy each other’s company, and generally our fights are only about the problems of communication and prioritization that we have in our relationship. The first step, then, to dealing with the issue of communication was frankly just to start a conversation.
Starting a conversation with a partner about things that are making the other partner unhappy can be very difficult, and it was indeed difficult in this case, which is why I put off the conversation for so long. However, my partner was indeed receptive to the discussion, and confirmed what I had suspected: my partner was also feeling as though we had priorities that lay in different places, and that those priorities had to be rearranged a little and our communication had to be fixed so that we could more easily address issues. I ensured that we had a good amount of time to have a discussion, because I was certain that once we started talking it would be very hard to stop talking and then revisit the discussion—this was very important for a successful conversation.
Because the prioritization was mostly a problem on my end of the relationship, I communicated why it was important to me to maintain outside interests and not fall into the trap of investing my whole life into a romantic partner; I utilized “I” statements heavily during this conversation to make my partner feel as though I was discussing the issues, not making accusations. I also did my best to allow my partner to communicate how they were feeling after I made each of these statements. I learned that utilizing “I” statements and allowing for open and honest feedback is the best way to develop trust in a discussion. It allowed my partner to communicate freely without worrying that I would become angry or upset at the feelings that were being communicated; I felt as though this discussion was extremely beneficial for both of us.
Next, we determined that we needed to try to get out of our “comfort zone” more frequently. Our weekends previously had become routine, and we decided mutually that we need to do more outside of our comfort zone of home, movies, and dinner. We mutually made a list that enumerates the many things that we would like to do or try together, and that has been what we have been working off of since we had this discussion regarding the state of our relationship a number of weeks ago.