You have to keep moving forward

- an interview with life coach, broadcaster and author Anna Williamson (Psycholgies.co.uk, April 2022)

"Mutual hard work and constant investment is fundamental to the success of any relationship.

A relationship that is stagnant is a very unpleasant place to be.

You have to keep moving forward, keeping things alive and checking in. A realistic relationship is not always going to be rosy - and that's OK.

Do your own things at times - he goes for a walk and you do the same and then its important to initiate couple time together.

Most importantly, learn to argue effectively. This is vital. All relationships will feature conflict and understanding how to resolve friction quickly stops it being a negative experience.

The key to long-lasting love is creating a realistic relationship where couples work through problems and don't confuse disagreements or non identical behavior or ways of thinking with incompatibility.

Opposites can attracts and when you start to understand each other, respect each other for being individuals then come together as an interdependent relationship, that's a relationship that thrives.

It's about understanding the compromises and tweaks you can make in order to fulfil and respect each other's feelings without actually changing one another.

It's about giving each other clues while staying true to the notion of the argument, and then being big enough to accept and listen to what the other person is saying before it goes from zero to a hundred in the other direction.

Relationships thrive on communication, honesty and trust and you can only have honesty and trust when you're communicating.

To stay emotionally on tract be fastidious about self-care."

Read more about this amazing life coach and author in "Where is the love?" - the honest guide to dating and relationships.