How To Become A Better Person In A Relationship (23 Ways To Improve Yourself)

Choosing to be a better partner in your relationship, is the first step to achieving a healthy relationship. The mindset involved in wanting to become a better partner greatly determines the outcome of the entire relationship. This is because trying to force your partner to change wouldn’t necessarily push you closer to your relationship goals. 

On the other hand, starting the change will bring faster results, and possibly inspire your partner to become better as well. If you’re desirous of becoming a better partner in your relationship, then take a look at these 23 ways to achieve your goals.

23 Ways To Become A Better Person In A Relationship

1. Be Yourself

The most important thing you want to remember when trying to be a better partner is that you don’t have to change your personality to do that. You have to start from who you are now, to achieve what you want to be. Being yourself also indicates that you have to live as an individual first, before considering your partner and other relationships.

So how do you know who you really are? Well, the first step is disassociating yourself from negative words like angry, jealous, stingy, bitter, unforgiving, and the likes. That’s not who you are, they are just behaviors you’ve become accustomed to, they’ll also sink any relationship faster than the Titanic. 

Define who you are outside what people probably complain about, look for other traits that are positive, and focus on highlighting those ones instead. 

2. Take Responsibility For Your Actions

Most times, your partner isn’t fully responsible for the bad behaviors you exhibit. These traits could have spurred from other toxic relationships with people in the past. Instead of using your partner’s behaviors to justify your actions, you have to take full responsibility for it, and figure out a way to end such behaviors. 

Taking responsibility for your actions makes you more cautious about how you act and is the first step to being a better partner.

3. Practice Gentleness

Are you hot-tempered, quick to react, aggressive, and maybe even violent? These are not the words many want to hear when getting into a relationship. As I said before, that’s not who you are, if you put your mind to it, you can react more calmly instead of lashing out in anger. Your spouse may not be the best person, but you have to practice gentleness. 

Taking care of your spouse in a gentle way is important, and helps you refrain from emotionally or mentally hurting them. Be the one to hug them when they get home, practice holding their hands and speaking slowly instead of shouting, take deep breaths and think first before you speak. 

4. Exercise Gratitude

If you’re not grateful or content with your spouse and your relationship now, then the association wouldn’t progress as it should. Being content fully prepares you to receive more, because your mind isn’t constantly dwelling on the shortcomings your partner has. 

Plus, you will find it easier to appreciate your spouse. You will also find saying thank you easier, which will guarantee more progress for you and your spouse.

5. Spend Time With Your Partner

You‘re working on being a better partner for your relationship, right? In order to achieve this, you will need to spend time with your partner. This will help you focus on building something profitable with your spouse and fully understand their perspective of life.

Rather than just dominating conversations with your views, you need to listen more. This will make your spouse feel like they have your undivided attention, and that they matter to you.

6. Support Your Partner’s Dreams

Support is important in relationships whether they are platonic, business, or romantic. One way to make him feel supported and loved is to be his biggest cheerleader. If you’re not sure what your partner’s dreams are, then talk to them about it. 

Simple words of encouragement will go a long way into encouraging your spouse to pursue his dreams, this will also ensure growth in the relationship. 

7. Focus On Improving Virtues

In relationships, the ideal character is described as someone who is romantic, sweet, and generally knows how to make their spouse smile. Though all these are quite important, being a better individual has to do with building important virtues such as honesty, maturity, integrity, alongside others. 

This will reflect your personality and will determine how ready you are to work with your partner to tackle challenges.

8. Respect Your Partner

Your achievements or status should not affect how you treat your spouse. The way you respect your partner basically reflects the type of person you are and is an essential aspect of building a relationship. 

Your partner also has rights, needs, and desires, which shouldn’t be ignored when you have the opportunity to fulfill them. Every other aspect of respect should be put into place if you’re going to be a better partner in the relationship.

9. Do Something Nice Frequently

The act of kindness generally improves relationships. It can positively turn everything around in your relationship when you implement it more frequently. You shouldn’t just do nice things for your partner once in a while, but make it a duty you accomplish every day. 

This could be as little as helping them out on a task, saying thank you when they’ve done something, or even giving a massage when they need it. 

10. Love Yourself

If there’s a deficiency in the love you have for yourself, you will always find a problem in the way your partner loves you. Even so, you will have multiple expectations which your partner cannot fulfill, simply because you’re not loving yourself enough. 

Make sure you take care of yourself, and more importantly, love yourself first, to be able to take care of your partner, and love him even more. 

11. Forget The Past

What’s one way to ensure you have a better future and establish better relationships? It’s not so simple, but it’s called letting go of the past. Your decision to become a better partner indicates that you’re willing to move on from what has already happened, in order to build something beautiful. 

As such, it’s important to forget about the wrongdoings of your partner, and start everything on a fresh note. More so, forget about previous relationships, and never compare your current experiences to a previous one, or you might never truly move forward.

12. Act Rather Than React

Most times, it’s easier to react to certain circumstances in your relationship, rather than take active steps to solve them. The problem could be your partner’s behavior, or in certain issues, the both of you are trying to solve. 

Instead of complaining about how the situation is affecting you or the relationship, it’s better to show your partner that you want things to change by taking active steps to solve these problems.

13. Be Honest

Honesty is crucial for your partner, but more importantly, crucial for yourself as an individual. Being honest means you’re real with yourself – and the more you accept reality, the easier it will be to become a better individual. 

Don’t try to cover up who you are, or what you’ve done, with lies. This will be harder to break out from eventually. Simply stick to the truth, and maintain your integrity at all times.

14. Accept Your Partner

In every relationship, people often expect the views of their partner to match theirs. However, this isn’t always the case. Your partner’s views aren’t supposed to mirror yours all the time, because your partner isn’t you.

On the other hand, your partner should complete and balance out your deficiencies. Learn to listen and accept who he is, rather than being judgmental. The more you do this, the more you will see completeness, as opposed to seeing differences.

15. Be Empathetic

If you want to know how to be a better person, then you must be willing to increase your empathy level. This will greatly determine how your relationship blossoms. If you’re unable to comprehend how your partner feels, or the condition they’re in per time, then it will be difficult for you to show optimal love and affection when needed. 

16. Exercise Patience

Most times, a test comes before something good shows up. Before you can reach your goals, you would have to exercise patience to see results. This is simply because patience is a strong virtue that determines the end result of anything; most especially, whether people eventually see the outcome of their expectations. 

More so, in relationships, being patient means desisting from complaining, getting angry, or misbehaving when your spouse isn’t living up to certain expectations. 

17. Work On Building A Healthy Lifestyle

A healthy lifestyle is crucial in producing a healthy relationship. You want to inspire your partner to live healthy, which will, in turn, make the both of you committed to building something beautiful. 

Lazing around or being unproductive will not guarantee results in your relationship. Rather, eating healthy, staying fit together, setting timely goals, or even going for a walk will improve productivity and a better bond.

18. Stop Trying To Be Right

If you’re always trying to dispute what your spouse is saying, then you must understand that your partner is thinking and speaking from another perspective that may be valid. Since you cannot fully visualize all angles to an argument, trying to be right would only make the relationship subjective. 

It feels good to be right, but your spouse will feel bad. Instead of trying to win every argument, work on understanding one another more. 

19. Be Humble

As much as you want to dwell on the errors of your partner, or the problems in your relationship, everyone, including you, has certain flaws. They might be small, but they are quite significant in helping you remember why humility is important at all times. 

If you lose sight of the fact that you can also make mistakes, your ability to show care, love, and support, will be tremendously reduced, affecting the progress in your relationship. 

20. Build Wealth Together

Contrary to spending money on frivolities all the time, it’s also important to work towards a financial goal with your spouse. Encourage him to save more, and make less expenses. Even so, encourage your partner to invest time in achieving something productive in the future. 

The more both of you work together to achieve something positive, the healthier the relationship will be. 

21. Love Your Partner’s Friends And Family

If you want to know how to be a better person to your partner, then learn to love your partner’s friends and family, and not just your partner. This will show that you care about every aspect of your partner’s well being, and you’re willing to compromise to make your partner happy. Your partner will notice your commitment, and would be moved to make positive changes as well.

22. Know Your Partner’s Love Language

Your plans to become a better partner may be futile if you don’t fully understand your partner’s love language. This is solely because your spouse can interpret love in many different ways. This is why it’s crucial to find out exactly what it is. Once you do, loving your partner would be easier, and would help your relationship blossom. 

23. Love Unconditionally

Loving someone unconditionally means you’re choosing to love without reasons. If you’re constantly attaching your emotions to what your spouse does, eventually, those things will fade, making your love for him depreciate. 

Understand that love is a choice, and the more you consciously make efforts to love your partner, the more the both of you will experience what true love really is. 

FAQs

To Conclude

Did you enjoy this article on being a better individual for your partner? If you ever feel discouraged, or impatient with the process to become the best you can be, simply remember that nothing will improve if you stop the process. Kindly leave a comment below, and share this article with friends if you liked it.