Success, joy, love name it. All the best things in life depend on one’s ability to create and maintain great relationships. Knowing that good relationships are a source of happiness, it’s disheartening to know that however much people try, relationships are hard to maintain.

Oftentimes, relationship problems are due to a breakdown of emotional balancing. Emotions are the building blocks of each relationship in our lives, and the power of those emotions cannot be overlooked.

Emotions override our thoughts and profoundly influence our behavior – often without our awareness. In life it’s very hard to deal with emotions.

How did you react when you lost a relative, how about when your best friend ‘snaked’ (betrayed) you or when your husband cheated on you?

The way we react to things affects us even more than the disasters we face in relationships. Fortunately, it’s never too late to develop and raise your emotional intelligence abilities. Mastering emotions means mastering a relationship.

If we are to control our emotions, we have to manage stress. Stress shuts down your ability to feel, to think rationally, and to be emotionally available to another person, essentially blocking good communication.

In such a case, always avoid thinking too much about issues you can’t do much about. Rather open up and talk about them with your partner. This will help you not to be stressed over anything. It’s also essential for one to learn how to communicate nonverbally.

"When I get emotional, I can barely speak yet I mean well,” says Lillian Uwineza.

The most powerful forms of communication contain no words and take place at a much faster rate than speech. Using nonverbal communication is the way to attract others’ attention and keep relationships on track.

Eye contacts, facial expressions can develop stronger feelings.
Try humour and playfulness in your relationship. Shun off those tough moments with a smile or a joke. Playfulness and humour help you navigate and rise above difficult and embarrassing issues.

Mutually shared positive experiences also lift you up, help you find inner resources needed to cope with disappointment and heartbreak, and give you the will to maintain a positive connection to your work and your loved ones.

Not to forget is the ability to solve conflict in a relationship. Do you shout about it or expose it to all the relatives? We should be mindful of the impacts of unfairly resolving problems in a relationship.

Not only in love, but even in professional relationships the way we resolve conflict and problems can earn us hostility from the concerned people.

Once you know how to remain emotionally present, and manage stress, you can avoid overreacting or under-reacting in emotionally charged situations.

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