Being married for 10 years has had its ups and downs like most, and we certainly don’t spend every minute of the day together, I believe in personal space even being in a relationship, but I do also like our together times too.

We aren’t all over each other like a rash and we don’t always cuddle up at night. I like being left alone for some of the night, as I feel that this is my time to try and switch off and be in my own thoughts.

What we do have is understanding. We know we want to have that time together and when we want that space. You just sense it by the body language and the fact that my husband has his face berried in his tablet like myself at times.

Building relationships whether it be romantic or not, is part of the human being. Learning how to be around other people, respecting the other persons boundaries, even though you do get those who try and break them. You learn how to compromise and how to pick up tips from other people, which can inspire us.

We look at someone who we idolise on the TV as an example and we see the life they have to what we have, and we think “Wow I would love to experience that” so even though you haven’t met the person, you have already formed a relationship with that image of that person. You build up this admiration for them, you love their voice, what they have to say, their talent and sometimes you can feel as if they are a part of you. You want to know how they are like that and how can I be like that too?

Above is a photo of the extreme, those who go to lengths to look like someone else, but is this a good relationship.

I always think it is dangerous route to take. Idolising someone is different to copying someone completely, and that can be a bad relationship.

You can never be like someone else. You don’t know their thoughts unless you are a mind reader, only the person themselves know what is going on in their head, and your chasing something you’ll never be.

However you can also learn from this too. Look at how they walk, talk and stand, why they have so many people admiring them, and you can use their body language to help you too.

Language can really help when building relationships, as a lot of the time when a relationship breaks down, what usually comes up is the communication. The lack of it. When they talk to you it feels like an attack or a criticism. We can often feel that they don’t love us anymore because they are talking to us differently.

We can often put up a barrier in our communication, because of our tone of voice. We can sound like we are too busy with something else other than that person who loves us, but we don’t mean to, we get caught up in the everyday and we forget “Oh this person loves us”.

Or when we try to talk to our partners we can often feel they no longer want to talk to us, when if we waited for them to finish what they were doing, and be patient then that person will talk to us, once they are ready too.

We can be demanding “Why aren’t you talking to me” “Why are you not responding the way I want you too”. We often complain because we expect at times for our love ones to read our minds, but they are human too, and no man or woman is really a mind reader.

I am no relationship or marriage counsellor but I am a married woman, whose parents divorced when I was reaching the end of my teen years, and it was tough seeing the break up and being in it.

Once we take the pressure off from a relationship then both parties can feel relief. I know when I have piled too much pressure on mine and my husbands, because I have had too much of an unrealistic expectation. Like on days out and he hasn’t wanted to walk on further along the river, he can’t see what I had planned, he didn’t play out my head to see “Oh she wanted to go and walk along the River Thames to have a drink by Tower Bridge” no it was all in my head, but as soon as he didn’t want to walk that far, I felt hurt that I had spent all that time planning in my mind of the day. I felt he didn’t care because I had this ideal image of the day, that I never mentioned until he didn’t want to go there.

How was he supposed to know?

I kind of expected him to know. How?

If I had said from the beginning I would like to go and have a drink near tower bridge, I had planned it since planning this day, then I am sure he would have said “Okay” but I didn’t.

This again, was down to me not communicating correctly, which once I realised that I quickly learnt from. My job in customer service, one thing it teaches is how to form good relations with customers by using certain words and effective communication, but when it comes to using these lessons at home, there is often a communication break down.

So from looking outside of my relationship and from others I have witnessed, the important parts of building a relationship is quite simple.

Understanding, communicate effectively, pressure off and compromise when required.

Many thanks for reading,

Carrie X