New Parents: Preserving Your Relationship with Your Partner

You have to work at a relationship to make it rewarding for both of you, especially now that there are more demands on your time and energy. These tips may help your relationship with your partner to grow stronger. Share them with him to help him preserve and improve your relationship as a couple. Your relationship involves two people!

• Take time to work at your relationship with your partner, even if you're both very busy.
• Be kind to each other. Compliment one another.
• When talking and interacting together, focus on what's important. Always show respect for the other person.
• Thank your partner for what he or she does for you.
• Set aside time each day for the two of you to be alone together. Give each other your undivided attention.
• Make an effort to remain close. Hug and kiss each other, even if you're not having sex.
• You may have to "create" time to be together. Let some things go. Cut corners in other tasks. Devise shortcuts.
• Go out alone together at least once every couple of weeks. Go to dinner or to the movies, or meet for lunch. Call each other on the phone to "connect" at least once a day.
• Leave messages for each other on the answering machine. Take the telephone off the hook some nights to give you private time together.
• Do tasks and chores together to cut the time you spend on them and to share an activity.
• Admit it's OK to have differences of opinion. Just be willing to try to understand how and why the other person thinks that way or wants to do something differently. Accept the fact that there are many "right" ways to get a job done.

Excerpted from:

Copyright © 2002 by Glade B. Curtis and Judith Schuler. Excerpted from Bouncing Back After Your Pregnancy with permission of its publisher, Perseus Books Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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