Relationship Maintenance
There is a great description on LinkedIn about the purpose of regular mechanical maintenance on your car or machinery. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/maintenance-purpose-suleyman-kalemci/ The author describes maintenance as “cleaning, lubricating and making minor adjustments, minor problems can be detected and fixed before they become a major problem that could shut down a production line.”
Could you think about regular maintenance in other situations?
If you have regular physicals, regular dental cleanings, eat a well-balanced diet, hydrate, participate in regular activity/movement and get enough sleep each night, aren’t these examples of maintenance, too? Of course. You are maintaining your body.
If you have a house, you probably do regular maintenance on your home as well. You might have your furnace, A/C unit, chimney and gutters serviced annually. You probably also mow your lawn, shovel snow, and tend to your flower or vegetable gardens. All are maintenance on your home.
But have you ever thought about performing regular maintenance on your relationship with your spouse, partner or significant other? Maintenance is just as vital for the health of your relationship as it is on your car, body or home.
Periodic Maintenance
Periodic maintenance is an action or behavior that has become a routine. It can occur daily, weekly or monthly. The idea behind periodic maintenance is that you are able to know your significant other well enough that during the inevitable rough patches there is enough mutual good will to carry you through the difficult times.
Examples could include:
- Saying “I love you” every day
- A weekly or monthly “date night”
- Intimacy, from hand holding to being sexual
- Being able to disagree, to have conflict all while fighting fair
- Showing appreciation and gratitude, maybe with a text or phone call
- Doing things together, for example, taking a walk together or folding laundry together
- Finding the humor in situations, being able to laugh together
- Listening and respecting each other’s words and body language
Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance on your relationship occurs during difficult times that can be foreseen in a relationship. Every relationship goes through cycles of ups and downs. Sometimes you know they are coming (the holidays, birth of a child) and sometimes they are a surprise (lay-off at work, health concerns). Understanding these tough times will happen, you can show understanding and appreciation for your significant other.
Examples include:
- Holidays
- Visits from in-laws
- Birth of a child
- Children leaving “the nest”
- Retirement
- Job loss
- Health problems
- Death of a family member or pet
Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance on your relationship occurs when you are making a concerted effort to make sure the relationship is thriving.
- Believing that the relationship is more important than your individual ego
- Spending time together, doing something or doing nothing, just time
- Equally dividing household chores like meal prep/clean up, doing laundry or handling childcare duties
- Developing, maintaining and enforcing healthy boundaries
- Listening twice as much as you talk (good communication)
- Learning to trust and rely on your significant other
- Getting to know each other by talking about ideas/goals/dreams, not just childcare pick-up time
- Not just saying, “I am sorry”, but developing a plan for eliminating the behavior that was harmful to the relationship
Relationships Relearned: Learn. Unlearn. Relearn
To be in a healthy, successful relationship, what you learned in childhood about relationships may need to be unlearned and relearned in a different way as an adult.
When you were a child, you may have learned home maintenance or the importance of taking care of your body. Your parents or caregivers may have even had you mow the lawn! They also probably told you to brush your teeth every night and stressed the importance of getting enough sleep. You probably didn’t realize what you were doing as being maintenance, but it was.
With the high number of relationships and marriages that dissolve each year, it is likely you may not have learned or observed a maintenance routine for a healthy relationship. This is where unlearning may come into play. You may not even know what you don’t know!
From observation you may have learned what not to do, but not what to do. Maintenance in a relationship is thinking outside of yourself, outside of “the box”.
Relearning maintenance in a relationship may be taking the initiative to ask your significant other or partner, “What are your goals and dreams?” You may have had these types of philosophical discussions when you were dating, but they went to the wayside once there was cooking, laundry and children.
Summary
It is likely you will get out of your relationship as much as you put into it.
To maintain a healthy, successful relationship, you should plan on devoting as much energy and effort into your relationship maintenance as you do on the maintenance of your car, truck, house or body.
For more information about healthy relationships, please read my book, Relationships Relearned: A Guide to Achieving Healthy and Successful Relationships.
With warmest regards,
Thank you so much for reading this blog. If you enjoyed the content, please check out other blogs at:
https://relationshipsrelearned.com/my-blog/
https://rvingnomads.com/blog/
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