How to Create Balance in Your Relationships

In today’s technology boom, we have access to personal growth and development tools like never before. Our society has a better understanding of emotional intelligence thanks to our access to and exposure to mental health professionals and relationship advice online. With all of these resources so readily available, it’s easier now than it ever was to find the vocabulary to keep the peace in and strengthen our relationships.

That being said, it’s also easy to go overboard in our relationships now that we have so many ways to stay in constant connection with one another. That’s why today, we want to talk about the importance of balance in your relationships, and how to create and maintain healthy, balanced relationship dynamics.

Perhaps you’re trying to navigate a new relationship, support your partner through a hard time, or make more time for yourself and set boundaries. Regardless of if you’re feeling overwhelmed or underwhelmed in one of your relationships, here are some tips to help you feel like you can still be yourself and keep your relationships balanced with the rest of your life.

You Don’t Have to Be Right

Let the habit of needing to defend yourself or sound important go so that you can hear your partner and allow them to feel heard. Have you heard of ‘holding space’ for someone? Well, it means you don’t tell them what to do or how to feel, but rather you create a safe environment for them to express themselves and feel accepted doing so. This helps create balance in relationships because it also opens the possibility for you to get the same type of gift in return.

The next time you get into a conversation, hold the intention to really hear your partner without needing to respond. Just allow them to really feel that you want to be there for them to value what they have to say. This removes the sense of competition or the need to impress each other that can create an unhealthy dynamic and really make you both feel insecure. If you disagree on a hot button issue like politics, sex, or religion, allow them to have their opinion without trying to change them. It’s good to be sensitive to their passions and give them room to be themselves.

Take Time Apart

It’s easy to fall into the habit of spending every night and weekend together, but this develops unhealthy codependency in relationships. You need to practice having autonomy, which means making decisions for yourself and spending time with your own thoughts so you can determine what your opinions and emotional needs are separately from your partner’s.

Look at spending time apart as the water to your relationship garden. Without water, it can’t grow, right? It doesn’t mean you need to spend a whole week apart, but you should feel like if you did, you would be fine.

Spending a few nights a week with your friends or even doing something on your own is a healthy way to keep balance in your relationship. Just meeting your friends for dinner, going to see a movie with a family member, or spending the evening reading a book in another room are ways you can have alone time. This helps you feel comfortable being by yourself and helps you feel safe being by yourself so that you don’t smother each other or get insecure when you’re not together. Being apart is something you practice so you are used to it and so that your body and brain don’t have a freak out when life circumstances come up and you have to do things separately.

Make Time to Share Openly

Make it a regular practice to have deep conversations with your partner about how you’re both feeling. Setting aside intentional time to talk about your feelings, things that are bothering you, your dreams, your ideas and what may be happening at work. That means you stop being busy or rushing from one thing to the next so that you can check in with each other and just each other space to vent and be loved in the process. Without taking time to get things off your chest, you can start stuffing your emotions down or even start to build resentment about little things, like who is taking out the trash or walking the dog.

Bringing up little things as they come up in your relationship on a regular basis will help keep you from having blow-ups that can happen when you don’t have a candid relationship. Tell your partner they can share directly with you and phrase things in a loving way when you do share so that you get in the habit of using a loving tone and a calm manner to speak to your partner. Of course, you can’t have check-ins all the time because it would feel emotionally overwhelming so read the energy and ask if it’s okay to talk beforehand. Make sure that you’re not always dumping on your partner and that you both do equal amounts of talking. If they are venting but not willing to hear you, you can share that as well.

Support Each Other’s Goals

When it comes to feeling like equals in a relationship, one of the best ways to keep that feeling of mutual respect is to check in with each other about life goals. Cheer each other on and be okay if life goals are undecided or change. Give each other time and space to pursue what is in your heart to do with your lives and be each other’s support system. When you validate your partner’s dream by saying you want to help them live the life they truly feel called to live, you help them feel like it’s safe to be themselves. When you share from your heart what you really want and take time to pursue it, you channel a lot of your extra energy in a healthy way so that the relationship doesn’t become the sole recipient of your passion.

You each need to have other passions besides each other to maintain a healthy balanced relationship and being supportive of each other’s goals will help keep you both inspired. You can make vision boards together, meditate and visualize together and check in with each other at dinner about the progress you each are making. This helps your friendship grow so that your relationship is much deeper than just physical attraction.

Understand & Accept Your Differences

This is probably one of the most challenging tips and yet it can open your heart the most and help your relationship and you become more balanced. Being able to accept different opinions, beliefs or desires is something that requires compassion. Practicing compassion allows you to see that it is possible for two good people to see the same issue with different viewpoints. Having different opinions is a given in any relationship and trying to force someone to agree with you while always refuting their feelings is a warpath.

The alternative to fighting is that you know and expect yourself to have differences, perhaps even stark contrasts that feel like they are major. Love can help you build a bridge instead of burning it. If you want that person to know that they are worthy of love and feel loved even when you disagree and that you can allow them to be themselves, you will find that you’re not going to have as many petty disagreements like arguing over food choices or car fuel efficiency which can become issues when people don’t hold onto the intention to look past differences. There can be healthy debates but not if they are bashing the other person or bullying.

Practice Total Transparency

This is perhaps something that can build the most respect and trust in your relationship. When you take your walls down and share in a vulnerable or truly honest way, you can see each other without pretension, without the facade of trying to impress the other person and without fear of losing the other person. When there is this level of honesty, you can see your partner in totality instead of just seeing what you want which helps you see that they and you are humans trying to make sense of it all which can be complicated.

Saying that you’re not feeling up to a dinner that has been planned, or saying that you’re too tired to have a serious conversation can help you feel like you’re setting healthy boundaries for yourself and not giving too much. Saying even that you’re struggling with something emotionally can help you feel like you have support and that it is okay to be confused, natural even. When you open up, it encourages your partner to also be themselves and feel like they truly have a partner to go through this wild thing called life with. Don’t feel like you need to impress your partner; instead, bring more truth, soulful communication, and vulnerability to the relationship.

Closing Thoughts…

You have now equipped yourself with some really positive tools to create and maintain balance in your relationships. We truly want you to be empowered to be able to have happy relationships and keep a balance between your goals, your love and your own sense of self.

Love makes life fun as long as we are able to maintain balance in life. We believe that having time for friends, spirituality, health, work, family, fun and relaxation are all parts of life. You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to obsess over being perfectly balanced. You also don’t have to obsess over the tips in this article, but keep them handy so that if you start to feel imbalanced, you can refer to them and see where you can redirect your own time and energy.

Remember not to take things too seriously and that your own attitude and positive energy can help you get through even the most seemingly stressful day. Thank you for being a part of our online community and consider sharing this insightful article with a friend so they can enjoy the gift of life with a partner!

Related Article: 7 Ways Your Friendships Improve Your Mental Health