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Relationships can be a bit of a balancing act!
There are many issues that affect the happiness or unhappiness, and the harmony or disharmony that couples experience. One of the biggest culprits is finding a good work-love-life balance.
In fact one major piece of relationship research found that in the under-thirties balancing work and life enjoyment, financial concerns, and sexual relations were the three main reasons why relationships break down. In the over-thirties work-life balance, sexual concerns and bickering over household jobs were the three most common reasons for relationship unhappiness and break down.
You might find yourself disagreeing on subjects ranging from how to discipline your children, to which parents deserve the next visit from your both, but maintaining your work-love life balance is even more important to the health of your relationship.
Achieving work-life balance
As with all things in relationships prevention is better than cure. If you haven't already discussed your work-life balance it's time to do so. If you're already having difficulties in this area you can change that and work things out.
1. Discuss your feelings towards quality time. You may have wildly different attitudes with one of you being happy with one evening a week together and the other feeling you should spend most of your waking hours together. If this is the case you'll need to work out a direct compromise.
For example, you meet roughly halfway. Or you alternate weeks where one week you spend less time and the next week you spend a lot of time together.
2. One of the most "fun" ways of maintaining a good work-life balance is to ensure that you keep your sex life in sparkling form. That doesn't mean you have to be at it like rabbits - as you were during the initial "honeymoon phase" of your relationship. However it does mean that you schedule in regular dates for sex. Forward plan in both your diaries some Saturday afternoons, Sunday evenings, even a whole weekend from time to time where you devote the entire time allocated to indulging each other.
If you've worked particularly hard just before one of these special rendezvous-dates you can both agree that this time doesn't necessarily have to be about full sex but simply enjoying time where you ban talk about any problems and spend time laughing and relaxing with each other.
3. Look for common ground in your interests. When couples have some common ground, and both enjoy something together, they're more likely to ensure they have that leisure time together and not let work over run their schedules.
Some of the happiest couples I know have very different interests and hobbies however they usually connect over one of them.
If you don't share an interest our hobby than ensure you share as much chill-out time as possible.
4. Successful couples understand that the ebb and flow of work demands. No one should always have work dominate their evenings and weekends. However in most careers there are busier and less busy times. Ensure during the busy times that you give each other love and understanding. You're more likely to get back to a good work-life balance when you keep clear communication going during a busy time rather than simply take your partner for granted.
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