How pressures of life can affect your relationship

Provided By: Jawhara Arabia

Work, lack of sex, children, body image and even social media are causing us to be a nation of stressed individuals. Whether your vocation is a stay-at-home mum or a working mum, you will find it difficult to juggle all of your daily tasks effectively and be an excellent wife.
Our busy lives and daily pressures can cause emotional instability and subsequently impact our relationships. It is important to identify how to achieve a healthy work/life balance before our personal lives begin to suffer. Here are some suggestions.

Break the routine
Whether you work in an office or you are a full-time mother, life can become mundane and boring. Daily routines overwhelmingly dictate our mental state, even to the point where small changes can get blown out of proportion in our minds. Help to keep life in perspective and be prepared to make changes. Allow time to see friends during the week to alleviate work pressures, arrange weekend breaks and even consider changing your job. Remember a change can be as good as a rest.

Eat better
The food we eat is said to be the most important part of looking and feeling good – 80% in fact – so it is worth taking some time to consider ways to improve your diet. A good place to start is with breakfast – a meal that the majority of us skip – that consists of slow release energy to stop us snacking mid-morning. Try oats and bran with low fat milk, fruit and yoghurt or eggs and whole grain bread. For main meals replace a meat dish with a fish one, a minimum of three times a week. Fish oil (omega 3) is a great boost for your brain, keeps joints supple and best of all, its low in fat. Finally eliminate carbonated drinks from your diet. The sugar rush causes our blood sugar to peak and then crash, has us reaching for the biscuit tin and also depletes your bones of calcium, the mineral they need to stay strong, keep blood healthy and help muscles to contract. Diet drinks are just as bad. Drink water instead.

Sleep more
Getting plenty of rest during the working week will help you to relax. This sounds obvious, but it is easy to forget that lack of sleep can make us feel artificially wired and also makes our body crave food we do not need in a bid to replace low energy levels. If you struggle to sleep, consider taking up regular exercise. Along with depleting your energy levels, it helps the brain to organise thoughts and tasks so you can drift off with a quiet mind. Go to bed early five nights a week and discover how much better you feel. You may also lose a bit of weight.

Work less
Take time away from the office and spend more time with your spouse. This means more than just sitting together to watch TV. Make time to eat meals together and turn off TVs, phones and laptops. Intimacy with your partner is found in many ways other than just good sex (although this is important). Closeness with your husband comes from communicating with him, telling him your worries and concerns and discovering what it is that is stressing you out. It is easy to say 'I'm feeling stressed!' but equally as important to find out why.

Avoid conflict
It takes more energy to be miserable than it does to be happy and smiling is proven to boost our endorphin production; the natural chemical in our bodies that makes us feel good. Endorphins are also produced in our bodies when we exercise. Our tip: walk away from arguments, avoid negative people, smile more and go for a jog.