5 points to expect from a healthy relationship.

Curiously, how you felt about the people who cared for you as an infant may have shaped your expectations of love. If your caretaker was understanding and caring about what you needed, you trusted them and the emotions you felt for them. But if
your caretaker was confused, frightened, or hurt you, your expectations of love may have become colored by these experiences. This relationship with your primary caretaker may also have made you feel uncomfortable with emotions–both your own and other people’s.

Most relationship advice comes from the observation of people who are in either very good relationships or bad relationships. People who want their relationship to be good are given advice such as to fight fair, avoid taking out their problems on their partner, and to expect ups and downs. This is good advice, but it doesn't take into consideration how negative early life experiences  shape many people’s view of love and relationships. To change this view, you need to understand why the experience of feeling loved is so important to your brain and nervous system as well as your heart.

Understanding love relationships

Human love has an evolutionary purpose.  When we experience feeling loved our brain and nervous system become more relaxed and efficient and we feel happier and are healthier. Feeling loved is nature's antidote to stress. There is no quicker or more effective way to override too much stress and upset than positive face-to-face communication with someone that makes us feel understood, safe, and valued.

Falling in love is often an experience that seems to just happen to us but preserving the “falling in love” experience takes commitment and effort. Given its rewards, though, it’s well worth the effort.

Here are some of things neuroscience has taught us about preserving the falling in love experience—perhaps for a lifetime

Relationship advice tip 1: Invest quality time in face-to-face contact

We fall in love looking at one another and listening to one another and if we continue to look and listen in the same attentive and approving ways, we will sustain the falling in love experience. You probably have fond memories of when you were first dating your loved one. Everything may have seemed new and exciting, and you may have spent hours just chatting together or coming up with new, exciting things to try. However, as time goes by, children, demanding jobs, long commutes, different hobbies and other obligations can make it hard to find time together.

So much face-to-face communication has been replaced by digital screen communication. While that's very good for some purposes, it does not positively impact the brain and nervous system in the same way as face-to-face communication. The emotional cues we and others need to feel loved can only be conveyed in person. Without this kind of investment in quality face-to-face time, communication and understanding start to erode.

Relationship advice tip 2: Keep physical intimacy alive

Touch is a fundamental part of human existence. Studies on infants have shown the importance of regular, loving touching and holding on brain development. These benefits do not end in childhood. Life without physical contact with others is a lonely life, indeed.

Relationship advice tip 3: Stay in touch emotionally

Emotional communication—awareness of what you’re experiencing emotionally and what your partner is experiencing emotionally—is a fundamental part of good communication and a healthy relationship.

When people stop understanding or having an interest in their own or their partner's emotions, they stop relating well, especially at stressful times. There is no reason to fear emotions. They are just feeling messages that our brain sends to keep us alive and well. What we do with these messages is a choice. As long as you are connecting emotionally, as well as intellectually, you can empathize with your partner’s experience and work through whatever problem you’re facing.

Relationship advice tip 4: Stay connected by being a good listener

A good listener is someone who hears more than the words being spoken. He or she can pick up on the emotional overtones and undertones in what is being said. Listening in this way engages the brain, the heart, and curiously, also the stomach, which alerts us to danger.

Good listeners are rare, but when we find them we can't get enough of them. People who listen to us make us feel understood and valued and the good feelings we get about ourselves make us want to be with them. A great deal of emphasis is put on talking, but if you can learn to listen in a way that makes another person feel heard and understood, they will value being with you. Good listeners are often regarded as “charismatic” because we can't seem to get enough of them.

The ability to listen is at the very heart of conflict resolution. Few people will listen to us unless we have the ability to listen to them first! Listening doesn't require us to agree and it won't change your mind but listening will help you find common points of view that can help build consensus.

Relationship advice tip 5: Do things together that benefit others

One the most powerful ways of staying close and connected is to jointly focus on something you and your partner value that creates a common focus of interest outside of the relationship. A cause, a project, church or political work that has meaning for each of you and jointly engages your interest and effort can keep a relationship fresh and interesting. Doing things together that we view as beneficial to others is a process that our highly social human brain experiences as rewarding. It is also a way to stimulate the relationship by exposing it to new people and ideas.

Sometimes the interest that aligns us is a physical or adventure activity that we can have fun exploring together.  We renew interest in one another by jointly.