What does evaluating your relationship mean?
Why do we need to evaluate our relationships in the first place?
What are some specifics to look for when you look deeper into your relationship?
Being able to evaluate your partner as well as your relationship will give you a blueprint of the areas you and your partner need to work on as well as what you both are doing great currently. Evaluating your relationship will create the space to become more conscious and aware of how you are showing up as well as how your partner is showing up.
Let us look into the 7 ways to evaluate your relationship:
Playing together.
Ask yourself how often do you and your spouse have fun together? How much play time is involved? How much belly laughter can be heard in your relationship? Laughing together is a really, really great sign that you guys are in a healthy relationship. Another thing is to make sure when your guys are doing something together, whether it is an outing or whether it is doing something around the house, make sure it is something you both love. Now, this is not always going to be the case every time, however, you want it to be the majority of the time. Making sure you guys play together more often ensures that the relationship is light hearted and you both feel closer to one another.
Sharing dreams.
The second thing is how often are you two sharing your dreams? How often are you guys allowing each other into one another’s deepest inner thoughts? Sharing your dreams is very important. Also, when you share your dreams, do you get the sense that you can share it freely, without judgment? How often can you share your thoughts with your partner without any type of fear? Do not hold back what kind of dreams you want to share. I want you to share the dreams you totally want to venture into whether it is a place you want to travel to, or whether it is something sexual, share the things you are learning when you read books or listen to via podcasts or in music.
Trust
The third one is trust. We all know trust is one of the foundational pieces we must have in our relationships. If you do not have trust, you need to work on cultivating trust and rebuilding that foundation. Can you speak without feeling embarrassed or your partner making a joke about you or the thing you are speaking about? How often are you taken seriously in your relationship? Trust is the core of having a healthy relationship. Trust also is an area where our listening skills come into play. This is where they are the most important because you want your partner to be able to hear what you are saying, not just hear what they want to hear, or what they think you should be saying.
Working as a team
How often are you two working as a team? Do you both usually work alone or are you guys finding yourselves working together more often than not as a team to solve life’s problems? Do you find yourself figuring out life’s issues alone or together? It is better to work together as a team. You will only go so far in life when you are constantly doing things on your own. You can reach your dreams, goals and aspirations a lot faster with you and your spouse working as a team versus always separating things. You must be able to rely on your spouse without feeling concerned that he or she will renege on their part of the commitment?
Successful debaters
Are you guys successful debaters? Debating comes from the argument phase that ebbs and flows in everyone’s relationship. So, how successful are you two at arguing? How successful are you at debating? Do you find yourself mostly yelling, screaming, fussing and fighting or do you two sit down and have adult conversations where you say what you need to say and he or she says what they need to say? Do you two come to an agreement and say, “You know what I don’t agree with what you are saying, but we do not have to fuss and fight about it, we can move on.” Or say “You know what, I’d never looked at it quite like that. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.” This is what an adult conversation looks like. Neither of you have to be rude, mean or nasty. Also, the couples who can disagree with compassion, respect and support of one another, are more likely to find solutions versus going round and round and round in a circle, never getting to any solutions while remaining frustrated.
Parenting the child in your partner.
We have a tendency to parent the inner child within our partner. And then our partner’s have a tendency to parent the inner child within us as well. This can be quite disturbing being your spouse’s parent in the moment. Whatever they need help with, maybe you need to guide them a certain way or tell them to do a task a specific way. This is what our parents did with us, right? So symbolically, you are parenting the inner child within your partner. This can be the most difficult time in the relationship because none of us want to be parented to. We think that once we grow up, we leave the house and we stop answering to anybody. So, this is one of the hardest areas that many, many couples, a lot of my clients, even some of my friends and family members struggle with. None of us want to be told what to do, not realizing this is where the gems are coming from. If we learn to stop taking things so personally and really hear what our partner’s are trying to say, listen for the value, listen for the gems that are inside of what he or she is saying to you, then you can have a much better relationship overall.
Would your inner child want your spouse as their parent?
This is basically the opposite of the previous one. Your partner is parenting your inner child. Now, ask yourself this question because your spouse is definitely going to parent your inner child as well. The question you really want to answer is, would your inner child want your spouse as their parent? Your response can run the gamut from being totally satisfied in the relationship to filling deeply unsatisfied. We often take offense to these things and they increase over time. If you do not watch what you are saying or continue to be intentional about the things you are doing, it is crucial that your parental behaviors do not rewound you as they did when you were a small child.
Once you evaluate these areas in your relationship, ask yourself some tough questions and answer them,
then you can get a better understanding of what you and your spouse need to work on. But specifically, you because you only have control over you.
I created a free relationship resource library just for this season. Because a lot of times we have questions, we might not have somebody to answer them. We don’t know where to go and look. The link is bit.ly/relationshiplibrary. Download your free resource today.
All the best,
Marshaun Olaniyan
Life & Relationship Strategist