Staying Well Informed
Making Your Relationship Work

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Being in a committed relationship can be very exciting and personally rewarding.

Your relationship can also provide you with important emotional support as you cope with the demands of school, work, athletics, and other responsibilities, but at the same time your relationship can place additional responsibilities and demands on your time and emotional energy.

Not surprisingly, trying to meet the challenges of both, being a student and being part of a committed relationship, can be a confusing and frustrating experience.

As a couple, the nature of your expectations, the way you communicate, and the way you handle "boundary issues" can greatly influence the quality of your relationship and the quality of your college experience at BSC.

EXPECTATIONS

As a student, you may expect to lead irregular hours and drop everything else in order to finish a paper or "cram" for a test. Also, you may place a high value on independent, spontaneous activity. Your boyfriend/girlfriend, on the other hand, may expect you to provide predictable time, to work together, to play, and especially to communicate.

A successful and satisfying relationship is one where both people understand what the other’s expectations are, reduce or modify certain expectations as needed, and then learn how to go about fulfilling those readjusted expectations.

COMMUNICATION

Maintaining a successful and satisfying relationship requires communication. Partners need to express positive and negative feelings, complaints, needs, and above all, affection.

Men and women, in general, communicate differently. A man, in general, is often quite happy to just be together with his partner without any words being spoken. When men do communicate verbally, they like to get things said in just a few words – they want to get to the point. Women, in general, use language as an emotional expression, not just for the purpose of gaining information. Both partners need to understand and appreciate these differences.

When you wish your partner would treat you a certain way, or would stop doing something, and you wish this without telling them, you’re hoping they will be able to read your mind. That’s not possible and it almost always leads to misunderstandings and disappointment.

BOUNDARIES

are the physical and emotional limits a person establishes in his/her relationships. They can also be the limits the two of you set as a couple in relation to the outside world.

They are important because in school it almost always seems like there is not enough of you to go around. There never seems to be enough time to do all the things you need and want to do.

In healthy relationships boundaries are respected. In unhealthy relationships boundaries are violated.

Each of you needs to learn to say "no" to outsiders’ requests for time that exceeds the priorities the two of you have set. Learn to consult each other when making significant decisions that will impact the boundaries the two of you have set.

Information found on this flyer was obtained from Rice University Counseling Center.

Last Modified: January 14, 2004