For many people, having a healthy attitude about life means that you regularly take stock of your goals and whether or not you’re making progress in achieving them. In your personal life that might involve having a regular exercise routine. You commit to a few days at the gym and a long walk or hike once or twice a week. Then you check your calendar weekly, perhaps, just to check off how many times you made your goal (or not). In business, it might mean developing a budget and then checking to see if you’re on target with sales, expenses and so on.

Why then, do so many of these same people let their romantic relationships cruise on auto-pilot? Having a goal for a relationship is hardly the same thing as maintaining an exercise routine or hitting a quarterly sales goal. It’s a lot more subtle. It involves self-reflection about your daily habits, an honest appraisal about how you communicate, an acknowledgement about the roots of any negative feelings you may be harboring.

The question then is: How do you achieve such an elusive goal — keeping a romantic relationship vibrant and growing? Writing for Psychology Today, Mark Travers, Ph.D. recognizes the important role communication has in keeping a relationship healthy. He says, “Romantic relationships, akin to all other connections we cultivate, demand our time, effort and undivided attention. If you do not have the time to sit and talk about your relationship with your partner, consider scheduling monthly relationship check-ins. Check-ins involve sitting down with your partner, creating a safe space and asking each other crucial questions that can improve your relationship.” In short, it involves deep and meaningful conversation.

Travers offers three topics that are vital to keeping a relationship healthy and offers questions that may help you delve into each one.

 “Did you feel supported and appreciated in the past month?” There’s a valuable concept, introduced by John Gottman, known as an Emotional Piggy Bank. It suggests that healthy relationships thrive when partners consistently make emotional deposits into each other’s accounts and minimize emotional withdrawals. Support and appreciation are wonderful ways to make emotional deposits.

Taking this idea even further, Travers writes, “A 2023 study published in Current Opinion in Psychology shows that feeling understood and appreciated by a romantic partner can promote positive cycles within the relationship and boost connection. Appreciation further helps in buffering against negative experiences.”

That buffer against negative experiences is one of the foundations of the Emotional Piggy Bank. It simply recognizes the reality that it’s more difficult to build trust than to tear it down. Criticizing your partner or, worse yet, breaking trust one time negates countless positive emotional deposits. Simply checking in with your partner once a month may help you avoid emotional withdrawals.   

“Are there any challenges or conflicts that we haven’t fully resolved?” Resolving a problem is hard work. It takes honest communication, often involving allowing yourself to be vulnerable, and a willingness to admit errors. Sometimes — make that many times — it’s easier to just ignore an issue. Do so at your relationship’s peril! As Travers rightly points out, “Arguments or topics of discontentment are often brushed under the rug to avoid dealing with them. These issues can bubble beneath the surface, festering and spreading until they turn into inescapable emergencies.”

Avoiding an emergency begins by honestly confronting challenges and conflicts. You may not be able to resolve an issue in a single conversation but showing your partner that you deeply care about finding an answer may be the first step toward conflict resolution.

“Is there anything you’d like more or less of in our relationship?” A good way to begin this conversation is by focusing on the first half of the equation: what you’d like more of. Accentuating the positive puts you both in an excellent frame of mind for a more wide-ranging discussion. Travers backs up this contention, saying “A 2022 study published in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that reminiscence of positive memories results in higher relationship quality and optimism about the relationship. A monthly check-in to recall and share positive romantic experiences can work like magic and strengthen your relationship.”

These are not the only questions you may want to ask on a regular basis, but they are a good model for developing your own questions that show your partner you care deeply about them. Make deep conversations a part of your relationship and then watch it thrive.