Stop taking relationship advice from Twitter

Many people take to social media to give advice or rant about all topics of life. Relationships are one of those things.

While some of the tips are helpful, a lot of them simply don’t work for everyone. The vast majority of Twitter users are not licensed therapists, which is who you should actually be going to if you’re having issues with a partner. 

A healthy relationship can look very different from couple to couple, simply because people have different needs. There are five languages of love; words of affirmation, physical touch, receiving gifts, quality time and acts of service. 

If your love language is words of affirmation, you may want to hear how much your partner cares about you and having that communication is very important. Physical touch, receiving gifts and quality time are pretty self-explanatory. Acts of service may be something as simple as helping your significant other with homework, according to growthtrac.com. 

Sitting down with your partner and actually having a calm, adult conversation is better than passive aggressiveness and snarky retweets. 

I’m not saying that social media is totally unreliable — just be careful whose advice you’re taking. Even if you follow professionals in the field, chances are the articles they’re writing aren’t going to be perfect advice for your relationship. 

Relationships are often times very complex, so trying to apply a vague concept to one without knowing more information is not going to help. That’s why it’s always better to meet with someone who has been trained specifically for solving relationship problems. Wouldn’t it make more sense to take advice from someone who knows you, opposed to a complete stranger?

You might not have thought about it, but the Cook House on campus actually offers services for couples’ counseling. That’s a free option that USD students are able to take advantage of while they’re here because let’s be real, relationships in college are hard. 

I know it might seem easy to tweet negative things about relationships when you’ve hit a rough patch, but if you really care about your partner that will only damage the relationship you’ve built. It’s 2019 and we need to start practicing healthy habits.