Exercise and being fit has great health benefits but also has a lot of other benefits too. Not only does exercise give you more confidence but also it helps in your relationships. It helps build better connections and gives you higher satisfaction in your relationships. Lacking fitness can have a negative impact on your relationships in lots of different ways. That’s why it is important to exercise not just for your health but for other reasons too.
How it affects relationships
There are different types of relationships that lacking fitness can affect relationships like your partner, children, family, and friends. It’s important that you look after your fitness in order to better your relationships with people. Lacking fitness can lead to things like mental health issues, stress, and confidence issues among other things. These things can affect your relationships.
Stress
If you don’t exercise, then you’re more likely to become stressed and this can cause mental health issues. Your mental health is important and your need to look after it as mental health issues can cause a negative impact on your relationships with people. Being stressed for example can cause a problem in your relationship with your partner. Stress can make you distracted and withdrawn causing you to be less affectionate with your partner. Also, not just your relationship with your partner, stress can affect other relationships like with your children. It can affect your parenting; stress can make you irritable and lead to you getting overwhelmed with your child. Children can sense when their parents are stressed and can cause your child to feel stressed too.
Confidence
Lacking fitness can cause you to have lack of confidence as a result it can lead to having an impact on your relationships. If you’re lacking confidence, it can affect your self-esteem leading to jealousy and insecurities in your relationship. This is not good for your relationship with your partner as this can cause all sorts of problems. For example, you may question why your partner is with you and are you worthy of them. It can leave you questioning if your partner is being loyal to you, this is not good for your relationship and may cause it to break down. Not only can it affect your relationship with your partner but also friendships too, if you’re lacking confidence, it can leave you not wanting to go out and socialise. Your friends are asking you to go out, but your low self-esteem and confidence is making it hard for you to leave the house. Not socialising with your friends can lead to friends distancing away from you.
Motivation and energy
Exercise gives you motivation and energy without it you may lack the motivation and energy you need to build on relationships. For example, your relationship with your children takes up a lot of energy. You need energy for things like taking them out to the park or going on adventures with them. Lacking fitness means it affects the energy you have for your children. They really want to go to the park but not today you’re too tired or you can’t motivate yourself to get up and go. This can negatively affect your relationship as your child may see it as you don’t want to spend time with them. Also, absent exercise can have an impact on your sleep, if you’re not getting good quality sleep it can affect your mood making you irritable and angry. This isn’t good for your relationships as if you are irritable it can impact on the way you act and speak to your partner. If this becomes a regular thing it can push your partner away and affect your overall relationship.
Depression
Fitness and exercise can affect your mood if you’re not looking after your fitness it can lead to having low mood and can even lead to depression. As you may know depression affects your life including your relationships. Those who suffer with depression may find it hard to build up relationships and may find it affecting the quality of their relationships. Depression may be the cause of you paying less attention to your relationship with your partner. It can lead to being less involved and not enjoying your time together which as a result leads to your relationship to weaken. Depression can affect your sex life also as it can affect your sex drive as well it can leave your feeling hopeless about your relationship and have doubts. Depression can also lead to negative interaction and less interaction with your children affecting your relationship with them. As depression is a mood disorder it can affect your emotions leaving you to act and feel a certain way that may affect your relationships.
Tips on how to use exercise to keep your relationships healthy
- If you have children, include them in some exercise activities like going for a walk or jogging around a park. You could go for a nice long walk with them. This will allow you to exercise and bond with them at the same time. Also, things like taking them bowling, trampoline centres and bike rides.
- Practise stress releasing exercises for example yoga, dancing, or swimming. Using exercise to release stress can have great benefits on your relationships as less stress means better mood and happier relationships.
- Exercise can build up your confidence and help you feel better about yourself. This lifts your self-esteem and can overall benefit how you feel in your relationship with your partner. When you feel good in your body you will show self-love and allow your partner to love your body too.
- Allow yourself some time, this could be going to exercise classes or physical hobbies like gardening or golf. Giving yourself some time to focus on yourself and your fitness will put you in a better head space allowing better quality within your relationships.
- You could have a friend or your partner as an exercise partner, go to the gym together. This will help build your relationship and benefit your fitness.