So far this week, we’ve established that:

1. Nourishing personal relationships are crucial for health and happiness,
2. Quality is much more important than quantity,
3. Quality relationships are characterized by good feelings, natural empathy, and complete trust. 

Today’s post will complete this little story with some ideas for building and maintaining nourishing relationships. 

Fill buckets (even if you don’t feel like it)

Smile, add humor, compliment, praise, give, express gratitude, listen, and validate.

These simple little tools are guaranteed to bring the best life-enhancing biochemical responses out of the relationship, both for you and the other person. 

And they’re especially important if you don’t feel like it. Remember that filling another bucket fills your own as well. If that other bucket is very dear to you, so much the better. 

Don’t empty buckets (even if they deserve it)

Do not sulk, scream, belittle, neglect, forget, gossip, or destructively criticize.

Sometimes the other person will tick you off, and you’ll feel like they deserve a good bucket dipping. 

Don’t.

Face up and calmly tell them what they did wrong and how it made you feel. Often, you’ll find they didn’t even realize they’re doing something wrong and would happily fix it. 

In the rare event that they were hurting you on purpose, it’s time for a sensible grown-up conversation. The longer you wait, the tougher it’s going to get.

Catch yourself when getting defensive

Any relationship will have times when you don’t see eye-to-eye. To ensure that these times are rare and undramatic, make sure to avoid arguments where one or both parties get defensive. 

Resolving any argument will require that one or, preferably, both parties make a change. A defensive attitude makes it all but impossible to accept such a responsibility to change. 

If you sense strong defensiveness, shift your objective from finding a solution to restoring both attitudes to a point where a solution is actually possible. Postpone the conversation if needed.

Value each other’s time

Relationships take time. There’s no argument that they are an essential priority, but there are many other priorities in life (including other relationships).

In my experience, building good relationships is a lot like building good habits: The number and quality of repetitions matter much more than the duration. 

Try to regularly spend relatively short periods together. And in these periods, be 100% there and 100% engaged. 

Try to avoid talking for hours on end, even if it still feels good. Politely ending the conversation when both parties are still enjoying it ensures that the next one will be even better. 

Be proactive

People often say that relationships are complicated. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say that relationships are complicated when things start going wrong. 

If both parties are in a good place, dedicated to bucket filling, determined to avoid defensiveness, and respectful of each other’s time, relationships become surprisingly simple. 

Proactively getting your closest relationships to this point can add many years to your life and much life to your years.