How to Keep a Healthy Relationship

Not many of us would expect a new car to run well for 40 or 50 years if we never did anything to it. If we never maintained it, changed the oil, etc., we might not even expect it to run for longer than the factory warranty! Why would we expect relationships to be self-maintaining?

In my professional life as a psychotherapist, I am often asked if I think that everyone who is having a problem needs to seek professional help. The short answer is, "Of course not." But, in that answer, there is the presumption that people can do lots of things to help themselves. Although it can include these things, self-help isn't just about seeking support groups or reading books about someone else's notions and suggestions about how to be of help to yourselves and each other.

It is more about what you know is needed to improve the quality of your important personal relationships, and then to take the necessary steps to act on what you know to be needed. This article focuses on the issues related to helping ourselves sustain and improve our most important relationships. It is about working on them before they begin to sputter and break-down. Consider, please, the need for the preventative maintenance of relationships.

The 'oil change' simile works pretty well here. Everything that involves change or motion, tends to create some kind of friction and requires some regular attention to its smoothness and functioning. Some lubrication, if you will. (No sexual inference intended.) In this way, a relationship is a lot like a car.

Changing the oil doesn't mean the same thing to every person - but, given a little thought, it means something personal and important to everyone. It is regular, relatively inexpensive, usually quick and simple. Without them, the engine will simply lock up and grind to an abrupt and perhaps dangerous halt.

A kind comment, an expression of appreciation, an unexpected hug or simple expression of fondness or empathy can go quite a long way toward keeping the workings of that important relationship rolling along. Of course, there are always bumps in the road - for cars and for people alike. But bumps needn't send us flying off of the road and into the hospital. A well maintained relationship tends to weather those bumps much better than one that has been neglected. Don't forget to check the shocks from time to time.

Just like cars, our relationships have 'warning lights' on the dashboards. These are the equivalent of those little red lights that cause our insides to tighten up if they come on while we are driving. They mean that something is wrong (or is just about to go wrong) and the manuals generally instruct us to pull over and stop or get to the closest service center as quickly as possible. In relationships, too, there are warning lights. They are not the same for everyone or for every relationship - but if you have been with one person for a while, you know well what they are.

Sometimes, it's a look or a comment that just doesn't feel quite right. Sometimes, it can take the form of a customary activity being ignored or a routine expectation being neglected. Watch out for those lights! Because, like with your car, if you ignore one (the relationship equivalent would be 'denial') your relationship engine might just blow.

Checking the tires on our relationships is as important as checking them on our cars. Has the traction diminished? Lots of wheel spinning? Not enough air in the tires? All is repairable until they are ignored long enough that a blow- out happens while you are doing 70 MPH down the Interstate (or on a vacation where you really want everything to go just right.) Relationships have wheels and tires as well as engines.

Of course, most of the time, relationships are not guaranteed by Lemon Laws - Returning one after deciding in a brief trial drive that it isn't the one you really want tends to lead to multiple failed relationships. Primary prevention would involve making careful choices. It is also difficult to find Marriage or Relationship Insurance, although it is said that Lloyd's Of London will insure just about anything - for a price! It is, in many ways, a lot easier to change cars than it is to change relationships. For one, we spend money - for the other, our hearts and hopes.

So choose well, exercise good preventative caution and develop a program of Preventative Maintenance. In this way, you are less apt to lose the thing/person that really matters most to you in the world.

The people who are most important to us are worth At least as much attention as the vehicle we depend on to get from place to place. A program of regular preventative maintenance will help assure the smooth running and reliable operation of the relationships that really matter the most to you.

I think that those famous brothers from Boston who laugh their way through "Car Talk" on National Public Radio, Click and Clack, would agree!