Season 1, Episode 1: Ingredients for a Successful Relationship
The relationship you have with your partner can bring so much joy and meaning to your life. But these relationships aren’t without their challenges. Despite the love you have for each other, a healthy relationship requires intentional focus and commitment.
On this episode, we talk with registered social worker Anna Hemens about the key ingredients to a healthy relationship. Learn important communication methods, how you and your partner can bring the fun back, the different love languages, and other tips to help your relationship flourish.
This podcast episode has been adapted from a Facebook Live interview on August 11, 2021.
Learn more about how to build a strong relationship with our one-page guide.
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Anna Hemens:
You know I'm a therapist, it all comes back to communication, right. So, in terms of a healthy or an unhealthy relationship, that's number one, again, is about communication and it's about how that communication looks. So first of all, it's: are you able to communicate to your partner or do you actually not communicate because you're worried about their response?
Katherine Hurtig:
Welcome to “Living Fully”, a Calgary Counselling Centre podcast. Each episode, we'll bring you insights from our expert counsellors and tips and strategies to improve your mental well-being. I'm your host, Katherine Hurtig. In this episode, we'll be discussing intimate relationships and some simple things you can do to help keep your relationships strong and healthy. To discuss this topic, I reached out to Anna Hemens, registered social worker with Calgary Counselling Centre. Anna talks about the importance of communication, what love languages are, bringing the fun back into your relationship, and much more.
If you could narrow it down like just the top three most important things you think couples can do to maintain a good relationship, what would they be?
Anna Hemens:
Number one, of course, communication. Right? These conversations are talking about how you're feeling don't have to be bad. They need to be about the hard times, absolutely. But they also need to be about the good times, right. And so being able to say: Oh, I'm so happy today because this happened and I wanted to share that with you.
Katherine Hurtig:
Yeah.
Anna Hemens:
And, so, being able to share those happy moments as well as those sad moments, to me, that's the most important brick in the foundation of your relationship is having that kind of communication with each other.
Number two: appreciation. I think that's so important. An appreciation for the small things; we're not talking about the really big things, but just being able to say to your partner how much you value and appreciate them. And sometimes when we've been in a relationship for a long time, that's a really easy one to let slide. Life kind of takes over and you know to begin with, we're in that honeymoon period. I'm sure that we do right that we do talk more and we do, but it's about putting that in throughout the relationship and continuing to do that.
My third thing is about dedicated time together, right. But how you choose to do that is different for everybody. The idea of a date night, I would say, well, every now and then it needs to be a date night. Like you get dressed up, like going out for dinner. Whatever that looks like for you. Get dressed up. Make that effort. Both of you. This is like a special night for you to go for dinner, right? Or cooking a meal at home and being able to like set a movie aside and and having the just to yourselves. Building new experiences — miniature golf, right. You know, things like that. Like different experiences that you can do, which also brings in that element of fun.
Katherine Hurtig:
“Couples relationships” is consistently one of the top reasons that people seek counselling at Calgary Counselling Centre. Every relationship will go through highs and lows. Couples can face all sorts of speed bumps in their time together, and sometimes they need a little help getting over that bump. It's completely normal to need help sometimes. A counsellor can help you and your partner build your skills as a couple so that your relationship can thrive.
So when you say communication like that was the first thing that you mentioned. Is that gonna look different for each couple?
Anna Hemens:
Yeah, I I think so. And I think it's one of the building blocks of a successful relationship is about the kind of communication. If your communication is like life admin, you know, like I've got to put things in the cupboard, and like we've got these bills to pay, the car needs servicing the dishes need doing. To me, that's not really what I mean by communication. What I mean by communication is having a space where you're able to talk about how you're feeling, what's going on. For you what it is that you need. Sometimes it's just the space to talk. Your partner doesn’t need to respond. Often, it's just a space where you can be like: Oh God, I'm feeling really — I'm feeling really angry today, I'm feeling really sad today.
Katherine Hurtig:
Right.
Anna Hemens:
Happens right? You know I'm a therapis. It all comes back to communication, right. So in terms of a healthy or and unhealthy relationship, that's number one, again, is about communication and it's about how that communication looks. So, first of all, it's are you able to communicate to your partner or do you actually not communicate because you're worried about their response? It's there's not a space that's comfortable for you to do that, you know, that that's kind of a marker of an unhealthy relationship, if that communication can't take place. And I think a part of that is about trust. I think healthy relationship trust is a huge part of that, having trust in your partner and them having trust in you.
Katherine Hurtig:
OK.
Anna Hemens:
And if that trust is broken, then that's a time when maybe you want to come and talk together about ways in which that trust can kind of be rebuilt.
Katherine Hurtig:
And trust doesn't necessarily always have to mean about, like, being faithful, it can apply to other areas of the relationship, right?
Anna Hemens:
It can apply to — I think, trust and honesty are the other key, because I think that's when trust is broken is when honesty is broken, right? So when there's something that's not been shared, there's something that's happened that's not been talked about with your partner and then they find out about it, whatever it.
I think another thing about a healthy and unhealthy relationship is connection, right, and about and that's — all these things blur together. They're like blurry lines that blur together, but when that connection for whatever reason is broken. Right. And how we can rebuild that? I think a marker of a healthy relationship, which might not be there in an unhealthy relationship, is about appreciation. Telling your partner that you're appreciated.
As a part of what I would encourage is being kind of proactive, right? So as we've already talked about, getting into the habit of sharing how you're doing with each other on like a regular basis. So that when things come up, then there's already a habit that's put in place for you to work through. And there's an environment where in a relationship where you feel that you can. So that's a proactive work, right? It's doing that. But if that isn't in place and conflict kind of comes up, I think it's about approaching your partner or the person that you're in a relationship with and finding time for both of you to sit down and talk.
I think a really successful tactic in that is using kind of “I statements” right, because there's a conflict emotion from both of you, right? And sometimes it can end up being finger pointing, right, and finger pointing just produces a response if somebody's finger points at me, I get defensive and I get, like, my back gets up right? Yeah, same as in relationships. So being able to just talk about things from your perspective: I’m hurt, I'm angry, I'm upset, because this happened. Then “here's what I need”.
If emotions do get raised — because they do, right — Sometimes it means that you need to walk away. Because we say things in the moment of anger or when we're really upset that we don't mean, right. And so I think if that situation happens, having an agreement that it's OK to walk away. As long as you come back and talk to it when you've kind of cooled down.
Katherine Hurtig:
The idea of love languages is that we all express love and desire to receive love in different ways. Some ways to express love are words of affirmation, spending quality time together, receiving or giving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.
Anna, can you talk a little bit about love languages? I mean we've heard that term little bit.
Anna Hemens:
Yeah, yeah, I think it's one of those terms that's become pretty normal that everybody's kind of throwing around about love languages, and rightly so, because I think it's really important. So we all have ways of showing love in our relationships and family, friends, and romantic relationships. We show our love in different ways. There are five: words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service, and receiving gifts. Right. So they're the five. We all use a combination of these and our different relationships use different ones. Our partner might say their love in a different way than we say our love and we might not know that that's them showing their love.
So an example is a friend of mine is having a really hard time. And I drop off some freshly baked cookies on her door. Right. That's both an act of service and that's also a gift.
Katherine Hurtig:
Mm-hmm.
Anna Hemens:
That’s a service because I baked the cookies. The cookies are the gift. Right. So that's kind of a combination of both of those two. So it's about working out, how do you show love in your relationships? How does your partner show love? How can you meet — like, if that's how he shows love, maybe you should reflect that back to him. If your partner takes the car to get serviced, would you see that as a form of love? Right.
Katherine Hurtig:
I would.
Anna Hemens:
You would, OK, I wouldn't. And then for them, that might be a sign of them showing love. So sometimes we might not be able to pick up on what our partner is showing us. That's why communication is so important.
Katherine Hurtig:
Having fun is a foundational aspect of a healthy relationship, whether it be small surprises or scheduled activities together. Be sure to dedicate time to keep the fun in your relationship.
It's common to hear that relationships take work. What do you what do you think that means? What does that mean to you?
Anna Hemens:
I think that means to me the attention that we all need to pay in relationships. And again, I'm going to say all relationships, we're not just talking romantic here. We're talking friends, we're talking family — any relationship needs attention from us to maintain it. And that does mean work, right? That does mean, you know, reaching out to people. That does mean being there when people reach out to you, and it means for your partner and you, you know, doing these different things to build healthy communication, to build time just for the two of you.
Katherine Hurtig:
I like how you put it: they need attention, and attention doesn't sound bad.
Anna Hemens:
Yeah, that's it. And we need attention if we're the person in a relationship, we need that attention. Right.
Katherine Hurtig:
I definitely need attention.
Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s it, and that attention makes us feel valued. And you know, and important to our friends, to our, to our family, to our partner. So yeah, that's that to me that's what that means.
Katherine Hurtig:
And how important do you think fun is in relationships?
Anna Hemens:
I think it's one of the most important parts of a relationship: play together, stay together, right? And again this is this is true for all relationships here. I think having fun means that whatever it is that you're doing to have fun brings you together as a team, and takes you away from the serious stuff. You know, because we have all these serious, kind of, life issues that come up, and having fun just takes away from that and kind of brings you together and enjoying being together.
Katherine Hurtig:
Right.
You've been listening to “Living Fully”, a Calgary Counseling Centre podcast. Thank you for tuning in.
This episode was produced by Luiza Campos, Amelia Hawley, Eric Tanner and by me, Katherine Hurtig. A special thanks to Anna Hemens.
If you or a loved one is struggling with an emotional issue, you don't have to deal with it alone. All Albertans can access counselling through Calgary Counseling Centre and Counselling Alberta. There's no waitlist or financial barriers. Find us online at calgarycounselling.com or counsellingalberta.com.
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