If you’re in a good relationship, you probably tell yourself, “Things are going great. OK, sometimes we argue, who doesn’t? No need to complicate things. Just enjoy and get on with it.” If you then ask couples with serious relationship issues, they would say, “I remember I once thought exactly like that, if only I wasn’t complacent.…”
You may also be saying, “This won’t happen to us; we regularly check on our relationship, and I know it’s going great.” But are you using the right gauges? The majority of advice out there tells us that if we want to see how well we’re doing, we should measure things such as mutual respect, compromise, dependability, and caring interaction. But aren’t these also the gauges for work colleagues, neighbors, and not so close friends? What about play, laughter, mischief, and freedom of uncensored honest expression? Aren’t they far more telling gauges? If we think about it, these are the very gauges we use to measure close friendships.
Christmas is a time of play, a time to reconnect with your childish side. As a gift to your relationship, why not gauge the play in it, and see if it’s still as it was or is it getting less? Here are some useful gauges to do just that:
