It’s worth noting that crises may happen even with the strongest relationships. Having difficulties is normal. Sometimes a crisis can become an important stage in the relationship. When it’s going to be over, you will only get stronger and become more mature. It’s not always necessary to “cut from the shoulder” and tear up established relationships.
Signs that everything can be saved:
1. Boundaries
There are no obvious unrecoverable wormholes in the relationship (we are talking about the cases when a partner beats, drinks, systematically betrays you, humiliates, tyrannises, and so on). You’re not afraid of your partner.
2. Presence of feelings
You both have feelings for each other. This is a very important point that can soften even quite serious contradictions, because loving people really want to be together.
Important: we need to distinguish love from anxious attachment and unhealthy dependence. The need for obsessive control, the acute desire to be necessary, the mad fear of losing, “I will die without you”… this is not about love.
3. Common values
This is not about the fact that you have to love the same things and walk only by holding your hands together. You may have different musical tastes, styles in clothing, or favorite genres, but there are similarities in fundamental ways. You may have similar views on life, shared values: spiritual, social, and ethical. Values are about the meaning of life in general. Someone may have creativity, another wants children, and someone has professional self-realisation.
4. Balance of 70 to 30 and higher.
The positive things in your relationship outweigh the negative ones. This requires analysis, since these concepts are clearly subjective. That’s how it should be. It’s your relationship, so only your assessment matters. See the good and bad things in the relationship, and see the balance.
5. You remain a team.
In all the cases, you are able to overcome it together and support each other. Even in the case when you are angry and irritated.
What it looks like:
- Responsibility for what is happening is divided into two: the partner doesn’t blame you for everything, presenting himself as a victim;
- There is a willingness to compromise in order to fix everything;
- There is still contact between you: you are able to discuss and search for a solution.
6. Common plans
If they exist, then each of you sees each other in your future. You can continue to look to the future with the knowledge that you want to be together, even when you are terribly dissatisfied with some of the partner’s decisions.
7. Solid bridges
Even in the most serious quarrels and conflicts, you don’t “burn bridges”:
- You try to filter what you say, because it is very difficult to go back after some words;
- You never shout about breaking up;
- You never use abusive and offensive words;
- You never blackmail the other person.
