Intimacy is a critical element for successful, peaceful relationships. To share intimacy in a relationship you must be present with each other. You cannot share love if you are not there.

“Be Here Now!” How elusive this often is. We can all benefit from finding ways to stay in the actual here and now. Most of the practices that we outline for a peaceful and successful relationship are predicated on being present, both with yourself and with your partner.

Your relationship can, over time, take a back seat to life’s busyness: shopping, cleaning, childcare, parent care, friend care, health care, finance care... Relationships need to be experienced in the present. To have a partnership filled with living peace, it is necessary to share peace together as a tangible reality.

Ensuring that core values match is an important part of establishing a new relationship. Whether you are aware of yours or not, they underlie all your behavior. They are the principles you live by. These are not intellectual constructs, but rather deeply felt truths that arise from your inner being.

Our togetherness isn’t fueled by needs – neither of us is looking for the other to fill holes in our lives or our being. This kind of connection enables each of us as individuals to develop and prosper, and at the same time, feeds that energy right back into our relationship.

Unconditional acceptance of your partner is a baseline for a peaceful relationship. Being treated with total acceptance calls forth a markedly different response in all of us. When you know that you won’t be attacked or criticized, an amazing feeling of true peace and calm settles within you.

Our experience is that by exploring how we feel about a problem we’re not only telling each other what is of meaning to us, but we understand our own voice better as well. This happens because of the safe arena of communication created by our joint understanding of the “we”.

Learn to recognize your partner as an entirely different and unique individual. They don’t think, say or do things exactly the way you do. These differences aren’t a threat because they arise from the same core values. You are being offered alternate ways of seeing, doing and feeling.

In a relationship, a mutual solution is a resolution that works for both people. It is something that is created together by the contributions of two different viewpoints. It is not something that either can come up with alone because each person brings different knowledge, views and insights.

Active listening is paying attention to what the other person is saying without preparing a response. In practice, responses and ideas come up as the other person is speaking and it can be a considerable effort to both hold on to those thoughts and keep following the speaker.