Tips on Building a Successful Relationship with Communication

If you’re looking for ways to build a successful relationship with communication, you’re off to a good start. Communication is one of the best foundations for a relationship, and many sources agree that communication – good or bad – can make or break a relationship.

Here are some tips on building a successful relationship with communication.

Understanding versus Agreement

Understanding someone’s point of view is not necessarily the same thing as agreeing with it. It’s possible to hold different opinions on some matters, and in fact, that’s what makes a relationship interesting and challenging. If someone agrees with you on everything, he or she may be pretending!

Understanding means really “getting” what the other person means. Let him or her know you “get it” by paraphrasing what you think he/she means. This makes it a lot more palatable if you don’t agree with him/her; at least the other person knows you do understand, and have thought about the issue.

Building Trust through Vulnerability

This can be a tough one for some, but being vulnerable in a relationship and recognizing and respecting the vulnerability of the other person is an important building block in your communication foundation. No one is perfect, of course; feelings inevitably get hurt at one point or another. But working on sharing those vulnerable tidbits and respectfully listening to those of the other person can go a long way toward building trust.

Mistakes Happen

While good communication is a vital aspect of building a successful relationship, “successful” is not the same thing as “perfect.” There’s no such thing as the perfect relationship! Understanding that mistakes are going to happen and you will get irritated with each other at certain points helps you weather these rough spots. You know they’re temporary, and you know you can survive them.

Even if both of you are trying to apply good communication to your relationship, mistakes will happen. Try to be understanding – you’re going to make mistakes, too!

What Do You Want?

When you first meet someone, your expectations for that relationship may be in one place, but as you get to know him or her more closely, those expectations may change. If you don’t communicate those changing expectations, disaster may result. It’s a good idea to periodically communicate about where you are, what you both want, and where you’d like to go.

Remember, it’s not all about what you want; it’s about the relationship, which is almost like a third entity that you have to consider between you. It’s made up of the hopes, dreams, desires, and potential of both people.