Is New Year the time for relationship resolutions?

Take the Etch a Sketch wiper to emotional scribbles you’ve amassed, says Alison Taylor

According to English and German folklore, how you spend New Year’s Eve, and who you kiss, sets the tone for the rest of the year. By that rationale I should probably have joined a drag troupe by now and/or be in rehab. It is, I think we can agree, claptrap.

Rather than focusing on whatever lawless carnage or devastating boredom embodied your New Year’s Eve – it is a night of extremes, after all – I would suggest using today, 2 January, to focus on what lies ahead, and what you want. You had yesterday to feel remorseful and hungover. Today you shower and seize the year.

New beginnings, especially in matters of the heart, can be really powerful. A shiny new year is a symbolic fresh start – a chance to take the Etch a Sketch wiper to emotional scribbles you’ve amassed.I took this approach a couple of years ago when I woke up at a sort-of flame’s house and he hurried me out of the door before noon – on a bank holiday too!

I knew this guy wasn’t that into me, probably because all he could do was whine on and on about his ex, but still I accepted the invite to his New Year’s party and lived in hope and gave him the benefit of the doubt. New Year made me see sense on that. I wiped a few other hangers-on from the picture, too.

My clean slate last New Year led me to a relationship come March. Now I’m thinking about how a new year could benefit my relationship. I definitely want to moan less (I’m terrible of a morning), and I need to make fewer assumptions about what my boyfriend’s thinking before actually asking him (doh!).

Mainly though, I think anything’s possible. I’m looking forward to new adventures. It’s kind of exhilarating to think: what will this year bring? Who will this year bring? Give it a try.

@lovefoolforever