And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

Podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you

can be. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols and this is episode 154. It's titled, What Makes a Good Relationship?

And if you're ready, we'll start the show.

Hey pod fans, it's February. And you know what that means? Yep, Valentine's Day.

One of the few reasons the high street shops still exist, so that blokes can rush into town straight from work and find the nearest card shop. But hey, if it helps keep the town centres alive, I can see the reasons behind it. So, with Valentine's Day replacing Christmas as the primary way of tricking you into parting with your cash, I thought I'd spend some time talking about relationships. Because

although I'm not a relationship coach or a couple therapist, is what it's traditionally known as,

in the business, I'm a one-to-one therapist and couple counselling is a totally

different domain, different rules, different methods, totally different. But a lot of clients

will come to one-to-one therapy and discuss their relationships, past, present and future.

And many of them, they say things such as,

I don't know what a real relationship is supposed to feel like. And I think that in a society that

looks at so many things in life as disposable, it can be very hard to think of something in your

life as permanent, might even be a bit scary, which is why so many

people say to me that they feel trapped when they're in a relationship, but they feel lonely

and insignificant when they're not. Now, something I wrote about in my book, 15 minutes to happiness,

available in all good bookshops, folks, is the problem with putting too much

importance on a relationship when you're single? Because there are, and always will be, happy,

single folk. You don't need a permanent romantic partner to be happy in life. It's nice and all.

But if you think that settling down and getting married is the only way to be happy, life, it's nice and all. But if you think that settling down and getting

married is the only way to be happy, you could get quite disappointed, because if that's your only

expected source of contentment or happiness or security or whatever you think a relationship provides,

...