Recipe for a healthy relationship | Valentine’s Day. #NehaManoj

I woke up this morning to a flurry of forwards, status messages, videos, memes of Valentine’s day. Some talking about being single forever, some about their partners, some about tips on how to not be single and many more about what to do if you are single! And I decided to add my recipe to the mix. What are the right ingredients to keep up a healthy relationship?

I have heard so many people talking about birds flying, guitars playing, magical feeling and so on when they first saw their partner. I do agree to some extent, I also felt the same when I first saw Neha. But guess what, this is the easy part. From getting to know this person until you get married and live happily after that, the journey is long and is not as magical all the time. There are good times and bad times and during all of this, you need to remember the recipe for the journey to be smooth.

Love.

The first and the foremost is of course love. The magical love that happens at first sight will be tested multiple times through the journey. And the only way this love can sustain is to keep your ears open. How much ever you love your partner – without listening to their needs, without understanding their problems and without giving them the space they need – love will not help. So, I made it a point to keep thinking about our (NehaManoj) communication ease. Whether my thoughts are going across the right way to Neha and also whether I am able to understand what Neha thinks.

Patience.

The biggest weapon is patience. And this was never my forte. I am very impatient and jump to conclusions easily. If there is one thing that I learnt over the years after meeting Neha, it is patience. I am not claiming to be very good at it even now, but I have improved from the baseline. When you want to get things done, you need to be patient and you need to wait. The story of #NehaManoj is built on this. There were so many instances where Neha or I could have simply said “Let’s forget it, this is not working”. But we did not and in the end #NehaManoj happened.

And the Little Things!

A little more love. It always helps to have a cherry on the cake! Those little moments of PDA, those gestures of appreciation and the little things that delights your partner. There is no harm in doing any or all of this!

That my friends is the recipe for a perfect relationship, in my opinion. Do share your thoughts and experiences on this!