When we are okay with ourselves, we are better together

When our self esteem (how we feel about ourselves) is high our ability to manage our stress and anxiety levels is great improved; and it can help us to recover from psychological stress such as rejection, abandonment and failure.

I also believe it can help us recover from physical illnesses which may manifest themselves as an indirect result of our poor self-esteem.

Boosting our self-esteem can also benefit our relationships. Obviously our self-esteem fluctuates over our entire life span so it will do so within our relationships. Life events can strongly influence our self-esteem and relationships satisfaction as well as the circumstances in which we find ourselves: age, health and employment status.

It follows then that changes is self esteem over time are probably strongly related to changes in relationship satisfaction - increases in individual self-esteem often lead to improvements in relationship satisfaction whilst drops in individual self-esteem predicted drops in the couple's satisfaction.

When we report improvements in self esteem we often report being happier in our relationships as well - and that their partner seems happier, too. When life events conspire to decrease an individual's self-esteem, such changes are often accompanied by reports of experiencing their relationship as less satisfying.

The link between individual self-esteem and relationship satisfaction is key because it suggests that one partner can improve her/his self-esteem and this is likely to benefit the couple as an unit.

Individual counselling and other self-improvement programmes can benefit individuals as well as their partner.