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Love may start with feelings, but research suggests long-term relationships survive through two emotional skills practiced every single day.<\/span><\/p>\n getty<\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Love is often represented as a feeling or emotion that you passively experience, but this is simply untrue. Love is a \u2018doing\u2019 word. It\u2019s a verb. A set of actions. A pattern of attention, repair and effort repeated over time. In other words, it\u2019s a skill you actively develop.<\/p>\n Couples who treat love as something they either \u201chave\u201d or \u201cdon\u2019t have\u201d are usually the ones who end up saying things like, \u201cI don\u2019t know where it went wrong,\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m not sure what, but something just\u2026 changed.\u201d And in most cases, the feeling<\/em> of love isn\u2019t what changed \u2014 at least not at first. More likely, the act<\/em> of love has.<\/p>\n Love, like anything you deem valuable in your life, requires some degree of protection. Passion and chemistry can certainly help sustain a relationship early on, but they\u2019ll only take you so far; neither is powerful enough on its own to carry love indefinitely. What determines the health of a relationship over time is how two people behave when things are ordinary. It comes down to how you handle tension, misunderstandings and boredom.<\/p>\n Here are two such skills that can take a relationship from struggling to flourishing, according to psychological research.<\/p>\n Just about everyone knows that communication is one of the most important aspects of a romantic relationship<\/u>. It\u2019s one of those buzzwords repeated so often that it starts to lose meaning. Yet ironically, ask anyone what good communication actually entails, and they\u2019ll likely struggle to give you an answer. <\/p>\n In fairness, this is the case for most people, because communication isn\u2019t a skill that we\u2019re explicitly taught how to hone. Most of us learn it indirectly through trial and error, but without ever really definitively realizing what it takes. But thankfully, psychological researchers have spent decades attempting to conceptualize \u201cgood communication.\u201d <\/p>\n While there isn\u2019t an exhaustive guide, there is at least a general consensus regarding certain elements that contribute to it. A 2018 review<\/u><\/a> published in the Journal of Psychology in Africa<\/em> synthesized findings on marital communication and identified several consistent communication patterns linked most closely to high relationship satisfaction. <\/p>\n Ultimately, the authors outline five primary patterns of communication. And for couples who consistently have trouble \u201ctalking things through,\u201d the absence of at least one of the five patterns below (if not more) is usually what\u2019s to blame:<\/p>\n These five skills entail so much more than simply expressing yourself more clearly. They are instrumental in shaping partners\u2019 emotional and psychological experience of their relationship.<\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to claim strong communication in a relationship if any one of these elements is absent from daily life. No one is exempt from practicing them \u2014 not new couples, and not couples who have been together for decades. If anything, long-term relationships require even more intentional communication than new ones to keep running smoothly, not less.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n Being able to convey your thoughts and feelings to your partner is just one half of the job. The other half is what happens when your partner is the one speaking, and you\u2019re the one responsible for receiving what they are saying. Again, this is another skill that most take for granted: active listening. <\/p>\n Most of us have never been explicitly taught how to listen well; we\u2019re simply corrected whenever we don\u2019t. This is because listening is a skill that tends to go underappreciated, especially when it is done well. <\/p>\n Poor listening is easy to notice: the listener interrupts, looks distracted, changes the subject too quickly or responds in ways that feel dismissive. But when someone listens well, it often passes without comment \u2014 because, if anything, the point of good listening is that it shouldn\u2019t <\/em>be noticeable.<\/p>\n Thankfully, decades of psychological research have also helped clarify what \u201cgood listening\u201d actually involves. According to a 2014 study<\/u><\/a> from the International Journal of Listening<\/em>, active listening is defined as \u201cthe process of receiving, constructing meaning from and responding to spoken and\/or nonverbal messages.\u201d The most important part of this definition is that listening is conceptualized as an active effort, rather than just passive hearing.<\/p>\n The authors of the study break down the process even further into three distinct but equally fundamental components:<\/p>\n What makes active listening so valuable in a relationship, beyond allowing partners to remain close and avoid unnecessary arguments, is that it instills a much-needed sense of psychological safety. If you trust that your partner will truly listen and absorb what you have to say, you\u2019re much less likely to fear speaking your mind \u2014 something essential for creating a safe space, yet incredibly rare.<\/p>\n And this is precisely where communication and listening intersect as skills<\/u>. Good communication is wasted in value if it isn\u2019t received properly. A carefully expressed feeling means just about nothing if it\u2019s met by a listener who\u2019s distracted, defensive or just waiting for their turn to speak.<\/p>\n Regardless of whether the topic is something small \u2014 a story from work, a passing thought, a joke \u2014 or something dire to the health of your relationship, the same principle should always apply. Listening isn\u2019t something reserved for crises. It should be a standard daily practice.<\/p>\n When one partner communicates, the other listens; this is the non-negotiable rule that you and your partner must take turns to uphold. If one of you is upset, the other has to listen to actually understand why before responding. And if one of you has something positive to share, the other must listen in order to share in that positivity, too. Good relationships, more than anything else, depend on both sides of these exchanges. <\/p>\n Think you\u2019ve got good listening skills? Take this research-backed to find out how well you actually absorb, understand and respond to others: <\/em>Active-Empathic Listening Scale<\/u><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n1. Communication Skills<\/h2>\n
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2. Active Listening Skills<\/h2>\n
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