Archive for the ‘Relationship Advice’ Category

Have you been getting your love relationship advice from Cosmo or Esquire? Well, there’s your problem right there. Popular magazines and Hollywood movies may offer plenty of tips on finding dates and what to do with your date later that night, but they rarely give you anything you can use to build a strong, long-term relationship. Here are some tips you can actually use:

Build trust

A lot of love relationship advice focuses on trust because it truly is the foundation of a loving relationship. While trust sometimes develops on its own, putting a little work into building it never hurts. How can you do that?

First of all, be reliable. Call when you say you’ll call, and show up at the time you promise. Also try not to make promises you have no intention of keeping, like “Yeah, I’ll help you clean the kitchen later.”

When you have a disagreement, be fair and don’t take jabs at your partner’s weak spots. Respect your partner’s feelings and avoid telling them they “shouldn’t” feel a certain way just because that’s not how you’d feel in the same situation.

Don’t ignore money matters

This may not be very common love relationship advice, but it is important. If you share any financial responsibilities, you owe it to each other to communicate on this issue. Sure, it’s not much fun to talk about money, but it’s even less fun when you’re in serious trouble due to poor planning. Don’t let it get that far.

Even in a marriage with only one bread winner, both of you should be involved in financial planning. To keep problems at bay, put aside time once a month (while you’re doing the bills is a good time) to discuss your financial situation. Once you get used to it, it’ll become a lot less stressful.

Learn to end arguments

It’s bound to happen: your partner does that really annoying thing yet again and suddenly you’re yelling at each other. The important thing isn’t so much stopping it from happening as knowing how to stop it when it does happen. In fact, the ability to diffuse post-argument tension can make or break a relationship. How’s that for valuable love relationship advice?

So, when you realize your gripe session is getting out of hand, try a little gentle humor, say something kind to your partner, or acknowledge that the two of you ultimately share the same goals. If you’re still feeling snarky, take a break to clear your head.

Talk about what matters

Ever hear people say they and their spouse lead separate lives and wonder how a marriage ends up that way? Most often is starts with a lack of deep communication. Real relationship-sustaining communication does not mean talking about when the dog’s due for his shots or when you’re going to get that leak fixed. It means talking about your feelings from day to day, your hopes for the future, and even your fears.

Keeping a relationship going strong takes trust, good communication, and attention to the things that really matter. Don’t get sidetrack by the magazine headlines because the best love relationship advice isn’t all about when to send roses or what to do in bed.

Are you really in love? Quizzes can help you find out, but you have to make sure you take the right ones. Take one of those short little tests you find in popular magazines and you’ll probably just end up even more confused than you were before. Before you make that mistake, here are some guidelines for finding a good quiz.

What the Quiz Can Tell You

Most of the time, it’s hard to go wrong with trusting your “gut instincts.” For instance, if you feel like you’re in danger, it’s nearly always a good idea to get out of the situation even if there’s no obvious sign of danger.

Well, the problem with here is that both love and infatuation are such powerful emotions they cloud your ability to tell which is which (Yeah, like you really need me to tell you that). Sometimes, you just can’t trust your instincts to lead you to a good relationship.

By asking questions that help separate feelings that could lead to deep, long-lasting love from those that will disappear, “are you really in love” quizzes keep you from wasting energy on mere infatuation or lust. Even more importantly, they then help you from getting sucked into what could be a very unpleasant, messy romantic entanglement.

What the Quiz Should Ask You

If you actually want to get some real benefits from taking one of the “are you really in love” quizzes available, you need to know how to sort the accurate ones from the useless ones. Usually, just glancing through the questions will give you a good idea of how accurate the quiz will be. This is usually easy enough to tell by glancing at the questions. The quiz should be asking such things as whether you are willing to share your deepest secrets with this person or is he/she in the top 5 of the people you respect above all others.

It should also include questions that help you separate initial infatuation that could bloom into a deeper, true love from feelings that aren’t likely to lead to anything serious. The test should ask how your love makes you feel about yourself, what emotions characterize your relationship, and how much you sacrifice for your partner. Questions like these zero in on common differences between love, infatuation, and lust.

Where to Find Quality Quizzes

As I mentioned above, popular magazines really aren’t the best places to find quizzes. The problem is, unless the writer’s bio is included, you can’t be sure the person who created the quiz is a true expert on relationships or not. That’s why it’s better to look for quizzes in books and Web sites written by credible relationship experts.

Taking a few well designed quizzes can give you a lot of insight into whether or not your relationship has any real future. Finding out early on if your relationship is on the wrong track can save you a lot of stress and heartache in the long run. Just make sure you get your quiz from a credible source, be completely honest in your answers, and read the results of “are you really in love” quizzes with an open mind.