When you and your partner first got together, you likely felt deeply connected. This connection was filling, safe, meaningful, hopeful, and you likely believed it would carry on like this forever. That's part of what we call New Relationship Energy. It's all the exciting good feelings at the beginning of a relationship that fill us with hope for the future.

And if you're like most people, life happens. You get busy, you have fights, you have things that stress you and pull you apart. And you may find yourself wondering what happened to the deep love and meaningful connection that you had early in your relationship.

How to keep the connection strong in your long term relationship: marriage counseling in Temecula

We know that continuing that kind of connection is possible, it just takes some work and intentionality. We suggest that couples create rituals of connection. These are things that you and your partner do on a regular basis to continue to prioritize your relationship and to promote opportunities where you can feel deeply connected and loved by each other.

Those opportunities don't just happen when you are spending all of your time rushing from one thing to the next or when you are only talking about the logistics of living life together, running a house, paying bills, going to work, and caring for your loved ones.

Rituals of connection should happen in your relationship on a variety of timelines. You might have some things you do every day, some things you do once a week or once a month, and maybe other things that you do once a year or once every few years. This post is to give you some ideas for how you can start establishing rituals of connection in your own relationship or how you can intentionally prioritize things that you are already doing so that they don't fall by the wayside or get neglected.

Daily rituals of connection

• If you're lucky enough to see your partner everyday, hug them. And give a long kiss, at least 6 seconds. This physical connection is so good for our nervous systems and our bodies and promotes a lot of good feelings between the partners.

• We also recommend the stress reducing conversation. We've written a whole article about the details of that and highly recommend it check it out here.

• Do you eat lunch or breakfast or dinner or have coffee together everyday? If that's possible, prioritize it.

• Can you and your partner work out together everyday?

• Do you share a commute?

• Do you go to bed together or wake up together or read together?

More than anything we would love for you to have at least one but hopefully multiple of these little touch points every day where you and your partner have tiny moments of connection together. You might have opportunities for connection right in front of you that you’re missing. Put down your phones, and connect with your partner. Or pick up your phone on a break, and call your partner.

Weekly rituals of connection

• A weekly date is a great idea for every couple. This doesn't have to be something expensive or elaborate, which can be especially challenging for parents of young kids. Your weekly date could be breakfast that you make for each other. It could be a walk that you go on together. It could be going out to the movies or out to dinner. Whatever you do we would love for the two of you to have time every week that is set aside just for your relationship, for y'all to have fun together.

• A weekly logistics conversation is another great opportunity to lay the groundwork for connection. This is the time where the two of you are talking about what chores need to get done, what bills need to be paid, who needs a ride, or when one of you will not be home for a normal evening. This may seem pretty boring, but it actually can be really helpful for you and your partner to feel connected. You get to know what's happening in the other person's life. And having a regular conversation about logistics helps to prevent surprises later which might leave one or both of you feeling left out or underappreciated. It's not that you can never miss a dinner at home because you have a work obligation or a friend obligation, it's just important that you communicate with your partner in advance so that they're not surprised when you're not there or they can make their own plans when you are not going to be there at a time you normally would.

• You may also decide to have a weekly check in on the status of your relationship. We call this a state of the union conversation. It's a time where the two of you check in on what's working well in the relationship, on little things that need to be addressed, on apologies that need to be made or offered. It's a time for us to do the problem solving conversations that every relationship needs.

  This might not seem like a ritual of connection but it really is! When one of you brings up a problem that needs to be fixed in the relationship, it means that that person has trust in the other--trust that the other person values their comfort and values the relationship. If I think that you don't care about whether we're happy and connected or not, I won't even bother to bring it up. So the fact that I am bringing it up means that I have trust that you care and that our relationship matters.

  And having these regular conversations about the status of our relationship means that we might get to tackle some of the problems in our relationship when they're really small, but if we wait until something is a huge issue instead of having some small problem-solving conversations we may have more big fights. And so this is how a regular State of the Union conversation becomes a ritual connection for the relationship.

Monthly rituals of connection

Depending on your needs and preferences for the relationship you might do some of the things I listed in the weekly section on a monthly basis. Maybe your logistics conversation or your state of the union conversation needs to happen on a monthly basis instead of a weekly basis. The specifics of your situation, how many people or creatures depend on you, and how busy the two of you each are would determine whether these are things that need to happen on a weekly or monthly basis. We do recommend that you not go more than a month without a logistics conversation or a state of the union conversation.

Less frequent rituals of connection

• A night or weekend away. It can be so much fun for your relationship to get out of your regular routine and get to explore somewhere new. You may decide that this is feasible for your relationship once a month or maybe once a quarter or maybe for you guys that's just once a year but we would love for you to have a regular time to go away together. This can be whatever fits your budget. It might be one night camping, it might be staying at a family member's house when they are out of town which would be free to you, or it could be a weekend away to somewhere tropical if that's what's in your budget. What matters is that you are making time for just you and your partner to have a little vacation together, some time where you get to leave the routines, leave the pressures and responsibilities of home and you get to explore and play together. I'm a big fan of people exploring new things with our partners. There's something about exploring something new that opens up our creativity and opens us up for more connection. We might try something like a dance class or paddle boarding or a soundbath. You don't even have to love that thing for forever, you might only do it the one time. The point is that you and your partner are doing something fun together, laughing and exploring. Getting outside of your comfort zone is part of what sets the condition for the two of you to feel more deeply connected with each other. So please make time that you get to have a little time away together at whatever frequency makes sense for your relationship

• Vacations. Again the frequency of this is really determined by your circumstance, but you and your partner need more than one night away to be together. You might decide that you're the kind of people who want to explore somewhere new every time. Or you might be the kind of people who want to have a tradition of always going to the same place: you stay in the same hotel and visit the same restaurants and that's fine too.

Your to-do list from your marriage counselor in Temecula:

• Share this post with your partner.

• Pick one ritual connection from each of these lists to work on together.

• And then share with us and let us know how it's going! We love to hear your ideas and we love to learn from each other.

Get help for your relationship with marriage counseling in Temecula

If you find that you and your partner have so much conflict or resentment or unresolved issues between the two of you that you're having hard time connecting when you sit down to do the rituals of connection, please call us. Sometimes we've got enough old hurts or unresolved problems we really can't be open to connection even when we want it. And you don't have to stay like that forever.

Some sessions of couples therapy with an experienced couple therapist can really make a difference in helping you figure out how we can resolve those old problems and also make space for connection even when we have some conflict or some disagreement.

It is so important to figure out how we can still connect with each other even when we have problems or areas of difference in our relationship. Figuring this out fosters a lot of goodwill in the relationship. It's like putting deposits in the emotional bank account of the relationship. And all of those deposits in the emotional bank account--all the goodwill that we engender as we engage in these rituals of connection--are the things that actually make it easier for us to resolve the problems. When we sit down with our partner to problem-solve and we have very recent experiences where we remember that we love each other, where we have laughed together, where we have felt physical safety in the presence of that person, we’re more generous, less likely to be defensive, more open, and more kind. And that’s ALL good for problem conversations.

So please don't think that this suggestion of prioritizing time for connection is only for people who don't have problems. If you have lots of problems in your relationship it's even more important that you figure out how to make space and time for connection between you and your partner. And if you need help with that please don't reach out or please don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can do a free phone consultation with one of our therapists or intake coordinator who can answer all of your questions about our services and explain to you what to expect from us, and then you can get an appointment scheduled so that you can start seeing some changes in your relationship right away!

Quality marriage counseling in Riverside CA, Temecula CA, and online couples counseling in California

At Inland Empire Couples Counseling we offer the best marriage counseling we can! Our couples therapists are trained in helping couples heal from infidelity, substance use in relationships, childhood trauma, communication skills, as well as providing the LGBTQIA+ community with pride counseling. We have online couples counseling in California. We have couples therapy in Riverside, CA. We also have marriage counseling in Murrieta CA or the Temecula Valley. Please reach out for help by clicking the button below to schedule a free 15 minute consultation with our Intake Coordinator.

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