Relationship goals: Things your girlfriend wants but won’t ask for

Characterised by intense physical attraction, sexual interaction, and euphoria, romance leads to an emotional roller coaster ride, which only plateaus when a couple learns companionate love.

A relationship blossoms only when there is a healthy balance between romance and companionship. While romance is what spurs the relationship at its beginning, it is not everlasting.

Relationship goals: Things your girlfriend wants but won’t ask for.(Unsplash)

Characterised by intense physical attraction, sexual interaction, and euphoria, romance leads to an emotional roller coaster ride, which only plateaus when a couple learns companionate love. A study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, revealed that companionship plays a more important and varied role in sustaining emotional well-being than earlier thought.

While communication is the key to a successful connection, there are times when a relationship requires extra sensitivity and perception than one realises. There are times women would expect their partners to do something without directly having to ask for them. Here is a list of 5 such things:

Importance of saying ‘I love you’: Sometimes saying those three magical words out of the blue will mean the world to her and show that you really care, even though you might be deeply in love. Walk up to her while she is busy with some chore and give her a peck before saying, “I love you.”

The three simple words not only reinforce the power of the relationship but highlight how much you care. In a 2011 study published in The Journal of Social Psychology, research authors said that while men confessed their feelings barely weeks into a relationship, women took longer, highlighting the importance of the term for them.

Touch: It does not necessarily have to be sexual in nature. Holding hands while walking down the street or clasping her hand while at the movies could go a long way in making relationships last. These are little intimate touches that your girlfriend might like and feel reassured by without directly asking for it. This is further expounded by the fact that a DePauw University, USA study found that humans have an innate ability to decode emotions via touch alone.

Expressing feelings: Your girlfriend will be more than happy to learn of how you feel about her. Telling her how she makes you feel and how much she means to you could go a long way in making the relationship stronger.

At the University of California, Los Angeles, brain imaging study found that verbalising feelings into words have therapeutic effects on the brain thus keeping a relationship more sorted and last longer.

Always treating her right: You cannot be a certain person when alone with your girlfriend and completely change when your friends come alone. Sometimes guys tend to act in a certain manner with their girlfriends when alone and different when he is with friends, when in a relationship. While your girlfriend may not be vocal about it, such changes in behaviour do tend to hurt.

Surprise: While organising a surprise party may seem like a great idea, there are countless other days throughout the year when you could surprise her a little and make her day all that better. From buying her a random gift to cooking a surprise dinner for her to giving her flowers, nice sweet surprises could make the relationship more beautiful.

In a study conducted by scientists at Emory and the Baylor University College of Medicine, researchers found that the reward pathways responded much more strongly to the unexpectedness of stimuli instead of their pleasurable effects. Researchers also found that pleasure centres in the brain do not react equally to any pleasurable substance, but instead react more strongly when the pleasures are unexpected.

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