Look after yourself by looking after your relationship

With Valentine’s Day now seeming like it was a lifetime ago, I thought it was time to write about relationships.

Back when wedding day celebrations were frequent and almost every weekend, I stumbled through my front door sometime after 10pm, it always amazed me how every wedding could leave me so uplifted. I analysed my feelings all the time and eventually realised that the best thing about being a wedding photographer is getting to share joy and love.

It’s easy to take seemingly simple emotions for granted and in reality a lot of us only really appreciate them on special occasions – birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, anniversaries… But what if we made the effort to do it once a week? Can you imagine how loved we’d feel if mini celebrations were something we did without thinking about it?

I know that the devastating impact of Covid has caused a number of us to think more about what’s really important – but beyond Covid, how many of our good intentions will actually last? How quickly we will all fall back into our old habits?

For the past 6 weeks, my social media feeds have been full of messages about self-care and showing love. What if we combined those things? What if we made showing love part of our self-care?

Healthy relationships start with making time for each other – yes work gets in the way, babies and children get in the way, commitments with friends and family get in the way… Ask yourself - honestly – have you spent more time with your other half during this last year than at any time in the past? I have. My husband and I were great at planning time together when we organised trips but other than that, our time together was always our daily walk with the dog and maybe a meal in a restaurant once a month. Obviously, trips are currently off the cards, as are restaurants, and the dog walks are probably more frequent and longer but I really feel we’re spending more time together than we’ve ever done. Like many couples our interactions are limited to voice and video calls, so we’re relying on each other to listen to and talk to one another.