Reflecting on Your Intimate Relationship & Your On-going Issues with Your Partner Can Help & Improve Your Bond

Sometimes, as you wonder about your relationship with your partner, you might wonder how it goes with others’ relationships: Are your issues similar to theirs? How do others combat, struggle with and solve their problems? How happy others are? How often do they make love – and whether whatever you are going through with your own partner is “normal”, is “o.k.”, and acceptable.

One way for you to find out is to read studies conducted with others, and compare yourself to them. A word of caution: different studies might come up with different findings, depending on the location of the study, on its purpose, on the sample they use, and on other compounding variables. In addition, it is important that you remember that whatever results a certain study shows, if you find out that your relationship looks different from the major findings in the study, it does not, by all means, say that something is wrong with your relationship. Each couple’s relationship can be a unique experience. Most important of all is that you feel happy within your relationship.

Still, at times, in order to think and reflect upon your own intimacy, it might be helpful to realize what others think and feel about their relationships.

The following study, conducted in The Netherlands towards the end of 2012 involved 800 women (Source: Libelle, February 5, 2013). The findings were as followed:

- 78% feel that it is important for them to be complemented by their partner;
- 77% believe that it is possible to revive the relationship after a crisis.
- 74% said that their relationship gets better and better with time;
- 71% said that they feel overall happy with their relationship;
- 48% would like their partner to behave differently;
- 25% feel that talking and discussing issues together strengthens the relationship;
- 23% feel that doing things together is the most important;
- 23% have regular arguments;
- 22% of them thought regularly about separating from their partners;
- 21% said they have sex at the most 1 time in a month.

As you look at these findings, contemplating your own situation, you may also want to know how long these women were with their partner:

36% of them had a relationship for over 20 years;
23% were with the same partner between 1 to 5 years;
18% were between 5 and 10 years with the same partner.
The remaining 23% of the women were with their partner less than a year of more than 20 years.

When you read these findings, what comes through your mind? Do they surprise you in any way? Do you feel satisfied about your own relationship? Do these findings bring to mind issues you want to deal with? Do they make you think about whatever changes you would like to make within your relationship?

No matter how much these findings reflect to your own relationship or not, what important is that they stimulate you to reflect upon your own relationship. Such a reflection can always enhance the relationship, help solve issues you and your partner might struggle with, indicate to you whichever changes there might be necessary or emphasize to you, once again, how good a relationship you have.

Such a reflection, done on a regular basis, is always helpful.