Love laws for that new relationship

It’s an exciting time if you’ve met someone new, you seem to click, and your first few weeks, or even months together, have gone well. Of course, not everyone who is dating is looking for something serious. But if you are, how can you build on this blissful time together? How can you maintain that good feeling?

Here are a five ‘love-laws’ for that new relationship - 

Never compare: There’s no one size fits all with the definition of love. Which is why you shouldn’t look at friends’ relationships and think: “that’s what I want, too”. Because no relationship is the same. It’s great to bounce thoughts about your developing relationship off your friends but remember not to compare yours to theirs .

Set boundaries: With all the worries that go with the first couple of dates, to falling in love, sometimes you let your expectations slip and accept less-than-good behaviour. If you want a future with her or him and suddenly they, e.g., don’t do as they say they will, pull them up. 

Set your boundaries and reboot your relationship. Love ‘slippage’ is okay because we all slip up! But only a slip - that behaviour shouldn’t become permanent. Get strength from loved ones or your friends if you plan to tackle them if they start slipping up. Moral support is fantastic in these situations.

Avoid the blame game: Sometimes when things are going wrong it’s easy for you - or them - to hide behind a wall of finger pointing. You think it’s all their fault. Or they think it’s all your fault they say. This isn’t good for your new love. This ties into both of you taking responsibility for your share of how well your dating is going.

Keep listening: Don’t just pay lip-service to what they say when you might have been hanging onto their every word. Let’s be honest, the first couple months you only have ears for them but as we become more secure a fatal mistake is to stop listening. Put down your mobile or laptop, face them and listen. This goes both ways and there are more likely to stay listening to you.

Change your default ‘fall-back’ mode: If you’re honest with yourself you probably have a habitual way of behaving when stressed or angry. This is what I call your default fall-back mode. Think through how you react to stress or if you’re feeling angry and you probably tell yourself, for example, yeah, I do tend to panic when I’m upset. If you want things to work with this new person, then break this bad habit and learn new ways to deal with stress in your relationship. 

Good luck and happy dating, Pam x

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