Key To A Successful Relationship: Trust and Communication

Our marriage is like anybody's marriage. We have fun times together wherein we laugh out loud like two crazy people. We have serious times together when we would exchange our thoughts and opinions over the current events in Germany and in the whole world. We fight, so often than you could imagine, over reasons that are sometimes already categorized as unreasonable. I am not proud of that. As much as possible I do not want to fight. But there are things I am proud of that I hope all other relationships in this world would have: trust and communication.

It is not really easy to give more than a hundred percent trust on your partner. Especially in my case, we have totally different culture, and he had a lot of past to tell. Despite it all, I decided to give him my full trust. I believe and hold on to his words that "he had already seen the world." Sometimes, we fight over his habit of staying up too late because of computer game or simply the internet. As somebody who grew up in a strict household, I find it hard to accept. I wanted to change his lifestyle. I wanted him to go to bed the same time I do. We fought too long over this. Too small thing but we usually argue endlessly. But because we do our best to communicate, we were able to sort this out and the solution we found is simple:TRUST. He asked me to trust him, that he knows what he is doing and everything is planned and will not affect his working condition. I listened to him and trusted him about it. Since then, it became easier for me to sleep at night (no more uneasiness nor insomnia), and surprisingly, I can feel him going to bed earlier than when we still fought over it. Indeed, trust helped us to have a more harmonious relationship.

We still fight, but it is not like before that we fight almost every week. It is also because we communicate healthily. When something bothers me or bothers him, we speak it truthfully. "I don't like what you said," "Your opinion hurts me," "I don't feel like talking today." These are just some of the phrases we use to communicate. He either stops talking and simply hugs me or asks me further why I feel this way. When I feel not talking, I tell it to him and go to the bedroom. I sit an hour or two drafting a letter. Either I leave the letter by the fridge door or send it as an e-mail. When he goes to bed, he will hold my hand and squeeze it tightly and kiss my forehead. We usually wake up with our hands still holding. Then he would tell me whether he understands the cause of my "tantrum" or if he got other solution for it. The fight is resolved. We then become more loving of each other than before.

Ours is still young, I know. I admit I am not a "professional" to say that ours is the healthiest marriage or whatever. However, I am positive that what we have shall last a lot of years, hopefully until forever, because we practice the important values a family should have: LOVE, TRUST, RESPECT, UNDERSTANDING and COMMUNICATION.