If there’s anything that’s illusive and confusing about intimate relationships (and we realize there’s a lot to be confused about them), it’s that closeness can come and it can go without us really knowing what happened.
Here are 3 secrets that we’ve discovered in keeping the spark alive long after the honeymoon in our own relationship that we want to share with you so you can experience the intimacy you want…
1. Get on the same team
This seems so obvious but “getting on the same team” and getting the two of you lined up in the same way and focused in the same direction is one of the real challenges of relationships.
We can tell you from personal experience that when you get yourself and your partner working as a team as you move through life together, you can literally conquer anything and everything that gets in your way of keeping the passion, love and connection alive and your relationship close.
When you create a sense of working toward a common objective and lined up in the same direction with the same purpose, everything seems easier. Disagreements are less intense and don’t last as long.
Most couples don’t feel they’re always (or even sometimes) on the same team and you can’t get closer when you’re not. Now having different desires is a normal process of living. The magic’s in how you deal with and navigate those differences.
When we got together, we made a decision and the intention that we would be allies and supporters of one another on the path to love. We didn’t discover just how important it was until we started clashing with one another and would lose our connection.
We learned ways to get back into delicious oneness feeling and to get on the same team and we suggest you actively do the same.
2. Find and use ways to calm and soothe yourself when things get tough.
One of the things you can absolutely count on in a relationship or marriage is that there will be challenges.
There will be times when the two of you are at odds with each other (because we all have different desires and they sometimes clash) and you’ll argue, have small (or not so small) disagreements and even fight. For some couples these challenges can be so intense or painful that you just want to throw in the towel and give up. But you don’t do this because the love (at least at some level) is still there. You STILL care about each other and you still want to be together.
When challenges come up (and they will), it is critically important that you have ways to calm yourself and “soothe” yourself no matter what is going on or how crazy the situation is.
Calming yourself down and being able to “soothe” yourself is so important if you want to “get closer” because if you’re not able to do that, you both get defensive, resentments get inflamed and the walls get built in your relationship. As you probably already know, you can’t get closer if you are upset, agitated and not able to look at, talk to and treat your partner with the same kindness love and consideration that you would give someone who was a friend.
In a perfect world, we’d all like to be calm all of the time but because of stressful thoughts and the way other people act that we think they shouldn’t, we sometimes lose it—and we aren’t calm. And our relationships suffer and may eventually end if we don’t learn this very important relationship skill.
One way to learn to calm yourself is to come into awareness of what you do when you get agitated. When you know what you do, that’s a signal to take a deep breath and to challenge your untrue stories about the situation. When you challenge your untrue stories, you’re better able to listen to your loved one with more of an open mind rather than one that’s already made up something that might destroy your relationship.
3. Recognize your relationship dance and learn how to change the music and shift out of gridlock when you’re out of step.
What we’ve discovered both in our personal relationship and in working with hundreds of coaching clients is that EVERYONE who is in a relationship or married has a particular “dance” or “pattern” that goes on between the two of you that causes almost every one of your fights, upsets or disagreements.
This is the way it is for us and almost everyone. One of our coaching clients put it THIS way: “It’s almost like we’ve repeated the same fight and had the same argument every week of our marriage for the past 30 years.”
This is crazy, isn’t it? But this is what we do in our important relationships. We take a position and we fight and hold on to our desire to be “right,” almost at any cost.
It’s helpful to become aware what your “pattern” of upsets in your relationship are and to work to recognize this “dance” that goes on between you and your partner. Then shift out of the dance and out of gridlock if you get stuck.
Everyone that’s in a relationship has habitual patterns–how you think, react, respond to each other—and it gets really interesting when your habits and patterns cause you to get “out of sync” with your partner.
These dynamics that get created when our wants, needs, desires and ways of looking at the world are what we call the relationship dance.
Once you recognize your particular relationship dance, you then experiment with ways to shift it.
If you don’t, it’s relationship gridlock—where the same pattern comes up over and over–both people know they’re right—and nothing gets resolved.
Relationship dances are habits that you’ve created—maybe this is the way you watched your mother treating your father or maybe how someone treated you as you were growing up.
You are worth more than to spend your time hurting someone else with these behaviors or possibly getting hurt by the other person.
Getting stuck in any of these and feeling disconnected for days is not what we are willing to do anymore. We made a conscious commitment to stop when we’re in one of our relationship dances, bring ourselves into remembering our agreements, to listen, to act like we’re best friends, and to take responsibility for the situation.
We invite you to use these 3 secrets in your relationship so that you can have the intimacy and closeness you’ve always wanted!
Enjoying a Happier, Easier Relationship