A relationship is one of those experiences that take time to nurture and grow. Much like a child, relationships can turn out nasty if you are not careful. Most guys avoid relationships as they do not like all the pressure and restrictions it places on them. Moreover, most want to avoid the mess that normally follows their relationships, like a psychotic ex girlfriend trashing your apartment.

Making a relationship work is not an easy task. In fact, it may be the hardest thing that you could do. Getting a good job or buying a house may be easier because there’s a road map to follow. If you do things right, you will have a good career and a beautiful home. But with relationships it’s a whole different matter. You can read all of the advice available online, be great at school, have a lot of friends and family, yet still fail in relationships.

So what does it take to have a successful relationship? It all comes down to one word: communication.

One of the best relationship tips that you will ever hear has to do with communication. Have you ever reached a point in your relationship that you find you don’t have something to say to your partner? Do you find yourself constantly running out of things to talk about? More importantly do you confide in your partner?

In any relationship, communication is its base. Learning how to communicate with your partner in a way that makes them feel more involved in your life is a crucial skill that will help you immensely along the way.

A number of people comment that their relationships failed simply because they stopped talking to each other. It is normal to fail to have something to say. However, when it reaches the point that you can’t confide in your partner any more, then their trust and faith in you slowly wanes and dies out.

While you may want to keep your non-relationship life separate from your personal life, in a relationship there will come a time that you will have to blur the line. Of course, you won’t always need to. However, with the right person, you should be able to communicate with them freely; expressing exactly how you feel about everything and anything. However, be sure not to tell all your secrets all at once lest you scare them off.

When talking about relationship advice, you need to know that there are times to spend apart and times that you need to be together. Nurturing your relationship involves allowing your partner as well as yourself to fall more and more in love with the other. However, this is not done through spending all your time together. While you should spend time together, you should also spend some time apart where you can still be independent and keep your sense of self. In this way, you avoid suffocating each other.

So what is important when it comes to establishing a solid relationship is to find the right balance between talking too much and talking too little.

As far as online dating goes, when it comes to knowing something about the other person, you don’t have much to go on. You have a picture, a paragraph and some of their basic details. It’s during the first few emails back and forth that you can get to know someone better. Women almost always want a confident man, financially independent, intelligent and well mannered. So guys, when it comes to writing a message to a woman online, use good vocabulary. Remember it’s “the” not “da” and “this” not “dis”.

Show her that you took the time to write out something good just for her. If she is a beautiful and well education woman, imagine the massive amounts of messages she receives. Since she has to narrow down her options and one good way of doing that is by eliminating those guys who write sloppily.

Lavalife started way back in 1983 as a personals service and has now transitioned into an online dating site. So they know a little something about connecting compatible singles.With over 20 years experience in the dating sector you can imagine the number of success stories they have. Upon reading some online reviews submitted by former and current Lavalife members I concluded several things. There are indeed real members on this site. There’s also a good mixture of men and women here. However you must exercise your due diligence when talking to someone. Apparently one former female member from Canada was contacted by a male inmate from Bangladesh. So there’s no such things as background checks here that’s for sure.

Lava Life caters to three different types of relationships. These include casual dating, in which couples are just interested in dating and meeting new people. Lavalife also caters to serious relationships, in other words, people who are interested in building a long term partnership with someone which could lead to marriage and children. Finally LavaLife also caters to those who are looking for an intimate relationship, a no strings attached sexual experience or a discreet affair. You can state what you’re looking for in your profile and when browsing profiles you can also choose which relationship type you want to appear in the search results.

This image is a tag cloud showing the most common words used in online dating profiles, separated by men and women. You can use this keyword list to see what interests the opposite sex have. If you want to have more matches with the opposite sex you might consider using some of the words in your profile. Only do this if you genuinely enjoy those things though. Here are some interesting things to note.

- Women are more social than men. We see this in the tag cloud as women use words like: family, traveling, laughing, family and friends.

- Entertainment is big. Both men and women like music and movies evenly.

- Men use the word cooking more than women do. This doesn’t mean men cook more than women do.

- Women like family and reading, while men like sports and outdoor activities.

When people try online dating for the first time they make lots of mistakes. The rules of meeting someone at a bar and meeting someone online are completely different. You have less to go on, so the little things tend to matter more. Did you know that you could be turning off potential mates without even knowing it? Here are some common mistakes to avoid.

- Use a recent picture. If you’re fat, don’t use an old picture of when you were skinnier. People like all sorts of body shapes, but almost nobody can stand a liar.

- Don’t lie. Guys, if you’re not a millionaire don’t say you are. It might get you some first dates but it won’t get you any second dates. After all, you want someone who likes you for you.

- Write correctly. Show them that you have some level of intelligence by spelling correctly. Don’t abbreviate things too much. The other person may not be an internet pro like you are. Don’t write in all capital letters. It’s the equivalent of shouting in person.