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As we're entering into the year of 2014, for a lot of people, it's pretty common to start thinking about where you'd like to be, and goals, and areas for growth, and resolutions. Oftentimes people will concentrate on diminishing or lessening behaviors that they don't want to do as much of.

When you're trying to understand your partner's emotions, the first thing, and the most prominent thing that couples come in to counseling for, is having a hard time communicating, and having a hard time with miscommunication. That's because communication can be really difficult. One of the things I would focus on is the ability to listen. Listening skills become really, really important in terms of really understanding our partner and being able to resolve conflicts.

I'm going to talk today about some tips that will ensure healthy and lasting bonds in relationships. I have five components to share with you that, if followed, could lead to health and happiness.

First of all, I think it's really important to remember that it can take a while to adjust to your new living environment. I'd say it can take anywhere from six months to even a year to really get acclimated to your new city. So I think it's important to remember to just be easy on yourself and to allow yourself to really experience the transition.

There are many different approaches to counseling, but a good counselor makes every effort to get to know you. A good counselor shows empathy and concern and gets out of their own way so that you can do the work that you came to do. A good counselor isn't a perfect person, but they're someone who's supportive, engaging and offers a valuable, professional opinion.

Couples usually come into counseling when there's unhealthy patterns in their relationship that are leading to resentment, frustration, defensiveness, or loneliness. Counseling can help offer an opportunity to bridge some of those gaps, to work on communication, and to experience new ways of interacting with one another. Hopefully, when leaving counseling, you have the opportunity to grow closer together, to experience a deeper level of intimacy and connection, and to know one another in ways that you weren't able to know each other previously.

As I think first and foremost, isolation. Isolation if you notice that you just tend to isolate and withdraw. And that can look like a number of different things. It can look like sleeping all the time. It can look like not returning phone calls, not reaching out to friends and family. That's a pretty significant sign.