Blog Audit: Reflection

As I have written my blogs I feel like it has made me see what is a relationship more rather than just being in relationship. It's the "doing" rather than just "being". I feel willing to continue on being in my relationship and trying to work it out now that I have a better understanding. The blogs made me feel better because it gave me the chance to express my relationship. Since it has been rough, I feel like it was good for me. I was also able to get advice from others which is a great feeling as well. It's about knowing people are there for you. I had a lot more understanding about my relationship. 

Throughout the course of Healthy Couples Relationships, I have written blogs that are mostly based on my relationship which I have been in for four years now. Our relationship has been a lot of work, still needs work and has been very complicated lately. It needs a lot of improvement if we want to help to help stay together and to be a healthy family. One thing I had noticed as I read through the blogs was that it was more about him rather than the "us". It takes two to make a relationship work out. Therefore I need to be a part of these issues. The question towards some my blogs are what can I do to be supportive to help my boyfriend change his bath habits, where are my flaws, what do I need to change or improve one in our relationship? I did have a few blogs that were not based on my relationship but what I thought a relationship should be or look like. These journals were political and economic coupling which I could not image having a relationship like that, and lee's love style which was based on my results from the inventory and my life from past relationships and now.


From my learning the biggest changes I was able to make is to start using "I" statements and letting my boyfriend know the how important quality time is to me. It got him to ask me to do something as a family. I feel better when I use "I" statements. With writing my my blogs, I really value how much it helped me see where my relationship is. It helped me see the issues, the values, and the languages in my relationship. In learning about different types of conflicts, the dissolution, and infidelity, it helped me understand other factors in my relationship such as what conflict do we have and what would I like to have. The dissolution helped me with knowing where my relationship is and that there can still be hope in making it better. 

So now that I have learned about what makes a healthy relationship, there are quite a few topics that would be great to revisit to help my relationship. First off, we need to get on the right page about infidelity. Where are our limits? Though, I believe cheating has not played will will an effect on our relationship, we accuse each other a lot about it when we are angry and it needs to stop.  We need to discuss our love languages for each other because I can see we are complete opposites here but we need to balance it. After learning about this, I have been mentioning quality time up more lately. It has made me realize  and think more clearly about another issue I have with him. It's about not having quality time together. This is rare and it is hurting me.
 Intimacy poisons is the next strong topic to revisit. We need to actually sit down and discuss his habits and how it affects me and our son. For me, it's his nasty habits or smoking, gambling, and drinking. This goes back to the question, "What can I do to support him and Encouragement him to quit synthesis nasty habits?"

There are some topics that could be revisited later on but does not necessarily need to be right away. A topic I know I would revisit is marriage. Though, we should talk about what we think about the idea of a marriage. What does it mean to the both of us?  I would also like to revisit Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love. It was interesting to see for myself where my relationship sits. But, I think it could help if he was able to view this for himself too. I think this could give a better understanding for both of us and on our relationship. I think if we revisited Miller's list together as a couple, it would help us understand where our relationship is unhealthy, where it is unhealthy, and where we improve.

Overall, I believe if we discussed some of these topics it could help us gain a healthy relationship again. These blogs have really helped me reflect on my relationship as a whole and where my struggles are with my boyfriend. It opened me up to see what is in a relationship. Though, I based many of them on him and only him, I think it would be interesting to see what he could say about me, to see where he would rank as well in the inventories I took, and just to get his opinion on how he sees our relationship if he can agree with these theories and categories (marriage, intimacy, and infidelity). I would like to hear his opinion on if he thinks these theories with the inventories express our relationship and if the categories help with other factors that need to be worked out in our relationship.