Creating Better Relationships

The most important achievements you can ever have in this life is your own Happiness.

And the majority of all the Happiness you will ever have, will come from your personal relationships. Your interactions and the time you spend with the people you care about will be the major source of the pleasure, enjoyment, and satisfaction you have on a daily basis.

The key to a happy family life is communication and the amount of time you spend with the people you love. It is not the quality of time, but the quantity of time that counts. The expression "quality time" is used by people to justify and excuse the fact that their lives are so disorganized that they do not spend much time with their spouse or their children. The fact is, that quality time is a function of quantity. Quality moments are those little moments that are precious, unexpected, and important. They arise during the process of spending a large quantity of uninterrupted time with another person. You can't dictate these moments in advance and you can't decide to have quality time. You don't go to it. It comes to you.

There are many ways to get the greatest amount of quality and Happiness from your relationships with the members of your family. Perhaps the most important is to spend uninterrupted time with your spouse on a daily basis. You should set aside time together each night to talk after your children have gone to bed. But, it is equally important for you and your spouse to take some time every morning to communicate and interact as well.

Studies have shown that one of the most important things a man can do in a marriage is to help out with the various household and family responsibilities. Help prepare the meals, or take over the responsibility of cleaning up afterward. Help to get the children ready for school or for their activities, and take them there personally so that you can have one-on-one time with them.

One of the most important things that couples can do is to spend the first 30 to 60 minutes after work talking about how their day went. When they come Home, many men have the habit of talking about their own days and then watching the television or reading the newspaper, while their wife is left to deal with the children and prepare dinner. And this inevitably causes stress and problems in the relationship.

The key to your emotional stability, and peace of mind is Happiness and harmony within your family. So if you're a man, take the time to ask your wife about her day and then listen to all the things that she has to deal with before you start talking about your day. Most men are surprised when they first do this. They find that their wife's day has been equally as interesting as their day has been, if not far more interesting.

One of the most common problems in any relationship is stress. Stress often comes about because we think we know our spouse really well. This knowledge can become a dangerous thing. It can become a communications trap and cause a great deal of stress in a relationship. A communications trap is when we try to read our spouse's mind and then interpret and anticipate what he or she is feeling.

For example, we will often see an expression on our spouse's face that we think we recognize or we think we hear something in his or her voice, and then we act on what we assume he or she is thinking or feeling. But, often, these assumptions aren't reflective of what our spouse is actually feeling. In other words, we're acting on misinformation.

It is important in any relationship to be able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Between what you actually see and hear, and what you imagine or assume you see and hear. Just because your spouse