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PREPARE/ENRICH

A woman riding on a mans back in a green field.

Break Your Communication Barriers

By Relationship Basics5 Comments

“If there’s an issue, make sure you always communicate,” they said.
“It’s the key to everything,” they said.

If only it were that simple. We’ll be the first to admit we’re big on emphasizing the importance of quality communication in your relationship. And it is important. It’s the foundation for staying connected, working through conflict, and the key to so many other aspects of your relationship. But as straightforward as that sounds, that very basic thing can actually be very difficult. You might feel like, “Oh geez, if we can’t even do the basics, where does that leave us?” That can be very discouraging.

Sometimes when we’re trying to work through a conflict or a contentious issue, things quickly devolve into an unproductive argument. Once again, nothing gets resolved. Why does this keep happening? There may be barriers preventing us from letting down our defenses and being vulnerable so that we can truly hear each other.

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October 14, 2020
Love0
A couple hugging in the snow.

Your Relationship Winterization Checklist

By Relationship Basics, Resilience4 Comments

Here in Minnesota, we have to do something called “winterizing.” If you live in a region that gets cold in the winter, you probably know what this is, but if you live somewhere that’s warm year-round, you might be saying, “Huh?”

Winterizing is basically adapting or preparing something for use in the winter. For example, you might winterize your car by replacing the wiper blades, switching to snow tires, testing the battery, and making sure you have a winter emergency kit in tow. You winterize your house by checking your furnace, sealing up drafty window and doors, and putting away the patio furniture.

The idea is that you know a new season is coming, and you’re taking proactive measures to avoid ending up in a less-than-ideal situation, such as coming out to a dead car battery in a snowstorm or paying a sky-high gas bill because the heat is literally going right out the window.

Does your relationship need winterizing? Perhaps your “winter” is a new addition to the family, or a new career, or your kids entering a busier, more demanding stage of life. How can you take stock of your relationship and prepare it for what’s to come?

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October 7, 2020
Love0
A couple laying on the ground in the forest.

The Key to Combating Relationship Complacency

By Connection, Relationship Basics7 Comments

If you Google “quotes about complacency”, you will see many different iterations of the same idea — complacency is the enemy. Companies get complacent, and they begin to lose customers to their competitors. Employees get complacent, and they are shocked when they are passed over for promotions or are let go altogether.

Complacency slowly corrodes the motivation, desire, and potential for progress, improvement, change, growth, and ultimately success. Apply that to relationships, and… yikes.

The scary thing about complacency in relationships is that, by nature, it silently takes root and eats away at intimacy. You don’t notice it lurking because hey, things are “fine.” You’re both just busy with work, and the kids, and your separate hobbies, and any number of other things. Why rock the boat? Then one day you find yourselves standing on opposite sides of a Grand Canyon-sized chasm, wondering, “How did we get here?”

But that doesn’t have to be your fate. You can combat relationship complacency. How, you ask?

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September 30, 2020
Love0
An engaged couple sharing coffee.

How to Create “Feel Good” Habits in Your Marriage

By Connection8 Comments

Everyone knows we should all be striving to create healthy habits in our daily lives, and we also know the struggle that can sometimes be. It’s hard! Habits are little behaviors, routines, or rituals we do on a regular basis – sometimes they just kind of happen over time, and other times we’ve worked to make it happen. In addition to the healthy habits we have, we also likely have some unhealthy ones that we try to break. That is also hard!

We most often think of habits when it comes to things like lifestyle: nutrition and exercise, or maybe even more relevant these days, work life, specifically productivity as so many of us have transitioned to working from home. However, there’s another part of life that can benefit from healthy habits – your relationships! And specifically, your marriage.

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September 23, 2020
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A couple sitting together looking at a bridge.

5 Tips For Making Date Night A Reality

By Quality Time7 Comments

A regular date night always sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? In theory, it seems easy enough to follow through on. But while some couples are great at making it a priority, others struggle to make it happen. There are just too many things that can get in the way. Maybe it’s your season of life, or your jobs, or your finances. You’ll always be able to come up with reasons why a date night just isn’t in the cards this month.

But here’s the only reason you need for why it should be: your relationship is worth it.

Your relationship deserves, and benefits from, intentional time together. And we want to help make it easier for you. Here are 5 tips for making date night a reality.

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September 16, 2020
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A couple walking on the traintracks.

10 Tips For A More Balanced Relationship

By Connection, Quality Time, Relationship Basics7 Comments

We all know that one couple that seems to do everything together. You know the one. They share every leisure activity, and rarely, if ever, does one partner make plans that don’t involve the other. Maybe you see this in your best friend’s relationship, maybe in a relative’s relationship, or maybe in your own!

Maintaining a sense of emotional closeness with your partner is important; it is one of the major pillars of a healthy intimate relationship. That being said, you can have too much of a good thing.

Here are some tips for achieving a healthy balance of “I” and “We”:

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September 2, 2020
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A couple cooking together.

5 Questions to Replace “How was your day?”

By Connection24 Comments

When you finally get the chance to reunite and reconnect with your partner at the end of the day, what do you say?

“How was your day?”

There’s definitely nothing wrong with this question! It shows you’re interested in each other’s daily lives and can be a great way to start a more in-depth conversation. But when you both start asking the question mindlessly and responding with one-word answers, it might be time to say hey, we can do better!

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August 19, 2020
Love0
A couple with a moving box.

3 Keys to Decision-Making Without Resentment

By Conflict, Relationship Basics8 Comments

We make decisions every day. In fact, research suggests we make about 35,000 choices each day as adults. That’s a lot! Decisions range from minuscule to significant. Some of these small decisions we make every few seconds are things such as taking a sip of coffee, responding to a text message, or even readjusting in our chair. More medium size decisions are things like what to have for dinner, plans for the weekend or even what color to repaint your living room – decisions we make that are fairly low risk and usually don’t require our finances to take a large hit. These medium decisions are where you may start seeking input or opinions from others. Oftentimes the first person on your list will be your spouse, especially if that decision, like the ones in our examples, impact them as well. They’ll eat the dinner you selected, likely enjoy the weekend plans with you, and of course, live in the repainted living room – hey, you may even make a decision that requires their help to execute it!

At the far end of the decision-size spectrum are the big decisions. These are the ones that are life-changing or at least feel significant because of the financial impact.

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August 12, 2020
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A couple being playful with each other.

What’s Wrong With Being Right

By Connection, Relationship Basics16 Comments

It feels good to be right about something, doesn’t it? Imagine you’re talking to a friend about a movie you saw recently, it has that one guy from that one show – what’s his name? You think it’s one person, but your friend is very sure it’s someone else. So you look it up… and ha! You were right! You feel a brief good-natured sense of satisfaction and share a laugh together.

If only issues in relationships were this easy to sort out. You could simply look up the answer and declare who is “right.” Your arguments would be solved.

Hold up. It isn’t that simple – and it shouldn’t be. Here are two things to focus on when you get caught up in winning the argument.

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August 5, 2020
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