Mel’s guide to a good relationship

Be friends. So often we see relationships where a couple are not a team and it can just unravel so quickly. Invest the time to be friends, to be partners, to be a cohesive united team and have each other’s backs. Talk to your partner the way you would talk to a friend. Show that respect and interest. It sounds really basic but sometimes we see couples talking to each other in a way that they would never talk to a friend.

Don’t be friends. Or don’t be just friends. Friend zoning in relationships can be a problem and can often signal the unravelling of a relationship so this is about the emotional and the physical intimacy. It’s very easy to take your partner for granted and just have them there as your housemate almost. Make the time even if that means a regular date night or something that means something to you as a couple. Keep the fires going.

Invest in screen-free time. Put your phone down. Stare into your partner’s eyes. This comes up all the time and we’ve actually had issues with this in this season of Married At First Sight as well. It’s such an intimacy breaker, not only because you can’t maintain eye contact if you are looking at a screen, but also you are signalling to the other person that, ‘You are not as important as what is happening on my screen’ or, even more so, ‘You’re not as important as the person I’m chatting to on my screen’.

Conflict is necessary. It can be very easy to sweep things under the carpet, to avoid things, to go into denial – sometimes that’s a really comfortable place for people – but it does not go away. Just keep in mind that if an issue comes up today, if you don’t talk about it, don’t pull it apart, understand it, talk it through then it’s going to come up again. So deal with stuff. Rip the band-aid off and deal with it.