Many of us start out wonderfully in fantastic new romantic relationships. We soak in every moment of our partner and relish in every word. We feel connected and stimulated both in and out of the bedroom. While the initial merger may seem natural, maintaining the relationship may not come so naturally.

There are a number of techniques necessary to build relationships that transcend time, but both partners must have the emotional intelligence to effectively communicate with each other and overcome the obstacles that life hurls their way.

build relationships
To building relationships that are strong, we must build our foundation upon seven pillars. The first pillar is honesty. You must be honest with yourself and with your partner to create close interpersonal relationships. With honesty comes trust, and you must be able to trust your partner in every way and put keeping their trust as a top priority. The third pillar is respect.

You must respect each other’s strengths, shortcomings, dreams, goals, personality and opinions. The fourth pillar is communication, which requires time, attentiveness and good listening skills. Attention is the fifth pillar, which means showing that you’re thinking about your partner, enjoying time together and sending positive energy their way on a regular basis.

The sixth pillar is intimacy. This entails more than just love and relationships but also letting your guard down, trusting, sharing and respecting the other person. The last pillar is commitment, which is essential to a good, strong relationship.

There are five key skills needed to build relationships that are strong, positive and enduring. Knowing how to manage stress is the first skill of emotional intelligence. Stress has the potential to disrupt communication, drain you of energy and damage the relationships.

You’ll need to recognize when you’re getting stressed and practice relaxation techniques to maintain control of your emotions. The second emotional intelligence skill is having the ability to control your emotions. It’s perfectly natural to feel anger, sadness and other emotions, but it’s how we communicate those emotions that matters.

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You must be in-tune with yourself to recognize how your past has shaped your present. Nonverbal communication is emotional intelligence skill #3. Eye contact, good posture, touching one’s arm, keeping a calm tone of voice and smiling are all techniques to use when communicating with your partner. The ability to use humor and play is the fourth key to happy social relationships and the ability to resolve conflicts is the fifth skill.

Almost all relationships advice centers on making time for one another. Once you build relationships, quality time spent together is the glue that holds intimate relationships together. “Couples need to spend a lot of time with each other,” says Dr. David Kaplan, chair of the counseling department at Emporia State University in Kansas. “There is no substitute for quantity of time.”

He advises spending at least 15 minutes each day with a personal one-on-one conversation. Additionally, he says couples should take half a day each week to go out on a date. Getting physical is also essential, whether you’re 20, 40 or 60.

interpersonal relationships
Relationships sex may not need to happen every day, but partners should be on the same page for how often it should happen. You may feel guilty taking off work on Saturdays to plan a date with your spouse, but quality time is the best way to make old, stale relationships feel like new relationships again.

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Healthy love relationships and marriages are based around communication, intimacy, friendship and time spent together. When romance relationships graduate to marital relationships and child rearing relationships, it’s easy to get blown off-course.

Many parents focus all their love and attention on the children and lose sight of their own needs and desires as a couple. Instead, parents must put their love marriage priorities first so the children can learn love from their parents’ example.

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The first step for creating happy love relationships is fixing any communication problems. Dr. David Burns suggests overcoming the silent treatment through a technique called “multiple choice empathy,” where you take on full responsibility for the other person’s feelings.

You might say a statement like, “I see you don’t want to talk to me. Is there something you’re upset about? Perhaps I didn’t listen to you as well as I should have or I tried to tell you what to do. I feel really bad that I’ve done this to you.” In most cases, the other person will open up.

If your partner is overly critical of you, the best move, Burns says, is to accept responsibility and make the statement more positive. For instance, if your partner accuses you of being a control freak, you might respond by saying, “I’ll admit I have a tendency to be controlling at times.” Then reaffirm how much the person and relationship means to you, mentioning your desire to make things right.

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The next step for creating happy intimate relationships is to share experiences together, no matter how big or small. Some couples get into a TV series together to spend that time cuddling on the couch, eating ice cream, laughing and discussing episodes together. With many top TV series available on DVD now, you can even indulge without all the time-wasting commercials!

In fact, it’s a great way to unwind from a long day and relax. Other couples may prefer to do something a little more active by taking a post-dinner bike ride, a Saturday morning hike and picnic or a daily treadmill workout at the gym. Creating time for each other doesn’t always come naturally. To borrow from an food analogy, think of relationships like chocolate cake: after five days of eating chocolate cake, it might not taste as good, yet after five days of talking about it, that chocolate cake sure sounds good!

interpersonal relationships
Another method to bolster love relationships is to get spiritual together. A University of Chicago survey of married couples found that 75% of Americans who pray with their spouses report their marriages are “very happy.”

Religion promotes many values that apply to building relationships, like respect, humility, faith and selflessness. You can have the satisfaction you desire if you are determined to get it.

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