You know that stage in a relationship where all those things that you previously thought were adorable – like, we don’t know, breathing – suddenly make you want tear your partner’s head off? It’s that danger zone in a relationship where the tiniest things can often mean make or break for it's future.
New research published today says that if you’re at that stage you need to buy a dog. A study of 2,000 Brits commissioned by Irwin Mitchell Solicitors found that buying a dog, quitting Facebook and ditching ‘unsuitable friends’ are the best ways to save an ailing relationship. Heading off on a ‘make-or-break’ holiday together and being more honest and open with each other were also relationship savers for more than three quarters of the people polled.
Now, we’re all for the mini-break and the talking and stuff, but we’re not 100% convinced that buying a dog is really the relationship saver that the study implies it is. A pooch might seem like an adorable idea until you find yourself shaking a shoe filled with poo at your partner while you accuse ‘his’ dog of ruining your life. And giving up social media? That’s just never going to happen, is it? We reckon there are much more effective means of resurrecting a broken relationship. Here are our alternative relationship lifesavers:
Put the take away menu down
Listen: we get that you’ve been together for months and getting a takeaway is just easier than actually leaving the house, but eating curry off the floor in your living room doesn’t exactly shout sex does it? Pick yourselves up and get yourselves out of the house. You look like slobs. With that in mind…
It’s quality not quantity
We’re not saying you have to go out for dinner all the time, but the occasional proper ‘date’ will give you the chance to actually have a conversation with each other, rather than that slobbing around in front of the television followed by a spoon ‘thing’ you’ve been doing recently. Ask him a couple of questions about him – you might just actually remember why you liked him in the first place. And, if not, there’s always pudding.
A small kind gesture can go a long way
Grand gestures like roses and spending a fortune on a weekend away might seem like a good idea, but really that kind of behavior is impossible to maintain and will probably just breed resentment when the gestures inevitably dry up weeks down the line. The nicest thing a guy has ever done for me was to wake up in the morning, unprompted, to buy me a pot of Marmite because I’d run out and he didn’t want me to go to work hungry. You can shove your grand gestures, that’s Casanova shit.
Go on at least one night out a week solo
All this going for dinner and buying each other Marmite is great, but if you’re living in each other’s pockets you’re going to end up decapitating each other in no time. Make sure you go out and get wasted with your mates at least once a week – no one likes to feel like their partner is stopping them from having independent lols.
And when things get dire, there’s always Wild Things
Sex isn’t that high on your agenda at the moment. We get that. But if you ever want to get your relationship to work then you’re going to have to get into getting jiggy again. Don’t worry, five minutes into the scene in Wild Things when Neve Campbell, Denise Richards and Matt Dillon have a threesome in a pool and you’ll both be so horny, every annoying thing the other person has done in the last six months will be immediately forgotten. You’re welcome.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophiecullinane
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.