Those early days in a relationship are the easy ones when everything about your partner is seen through rose tinted glasses and any character flaws are overlooked in favour of those adorable features that make everything so perfect. Needless to say, not a thought goes to how you keep that perfect catch or what it takes to make a long term relationship work. The whole concept that you would ever be seeking help for a failing relationship, to rescue it from ultimate disaster, is a totally alien concept.
Relationships are complex things, the ground rules are ever changing, people change, times change and situations change, sometimes it's just really hard to keep up. It doesn't mean to say that you no longer love each other and it doesn't mean to say you can't sort problems out but it does mean that you've had a wake up call, an advanced warning that you need to drop the complacency, do something to help your relationship, rescue it before its too late.
Relationship rescue in many cases isn't too hard, relationships usually respond well to a little time and effort, some understanding, a little give an take and quite often all's it takes is a little TLC.
Often you can trace the initial breakdown in a relationship back to lack of communication, so in looking at what you need to do to rescue a relationship communication is generally the first port of call.
When you consider the consequences, the final nail in the coffin, and the main reason why someone goes in search of guidance for their failing relationship, to rescue it and save it from final break up, most things can be traced back to prove that communication failure was the root cause.
Even major betrayals such as infidelity can often be traced back to a communication breakdown. People can spend weeks, months or years unhappy in their relationship and, in their eyes, begging for things to get sorted out, but from their partner's point of view everything appears OK. You might ask just how can that happen, how can one partner so obviously see that something is wrong and the other carry on regardless, presumably happy in the knowledge that their relationship is rock solid?
It's pretty obvious when you think about it. Just consider how information gets passed from one person to another and how it gets slightly misinterpreted at every stage until what the last person in the chain hears bears no relation to what was said in the beginning. Once you put everything into the right perspective it is easy to understand how, even the apparently most perfect couple can just get it wrong, misinterpret a situation, perhaps over a period of time and gradually the relationship can start to crack. At the end of the day relationships can be minefields, especially if you take your eye off the ball and most relationships struggle at some point, but the majority can be rescued if at least one of the partners recognises there is a problem and takes action.
Relationships are complex and can be difficult at times, but with most things in this ever changing world or ours, relationships just take a little time and effort to keep on top. Relationships need to be respected, nurtured and cared for, partners have to understand that relationships rarely just bumble along (and survive) without a little effort to keep them alive. Relationships need intimacy, surprises, and that all too forgotten relationship time. Just because people live together it doesn't mean to say the relationship no longer requires attention and that the partners no longer need to feel special. If couples loose sight of what bought them together it is so easy to loose focus as to where they are heading.
If you've come in search of relationship rescue take some time and put in some effort into recognising and understanding when things started to go wrong. Look to the communication in your relationship and consider what has changed since you first set out. Above all don't forget that relationships take time and effort to keep them alive which is no more than such a special union deserves. |
