Strengthen the connection in your relationship with the stress reducing conversation and Couples Therapy in Riverside
You and your partner are so busy. Between work, family, hobbies,interests, taking care of your home and paying your bills there's just never time for you and your partner to really connect. You love each other, you love the life that you've built, and it feels like you just don’t have time for each other. Sometimes you feel like strangers or roommates, and you want your connection to each other to be more than just talking about the bills and the chores and the pets and the kids.
Do you want to get back to the time when you were dating and you felt really filled by your conversations with one another and deeply connected after spending time together?
Help for building the connection in your relationship from a couples therapist in Riverside
I'm going to introduce a tool that you and your partner can use daily to feel more connected. I'm saying “daily" here because that's ideal, but really if you do this regularly you and your partner will feel closer together and more involved in each other's lives. Regular connection is better than no connection.
The stress reducing conversation
The relationship tool is what we call The Stress Reducing Conversation. This idea is borrowed from the work of Drs Julie and John Gottman. Here’s what you’ll need to do:
Set aside the time for the two of you to talk.
You will each get exactly half of the allotted time. When you're new to this it's important that you use a timer, because sometimes people have the impression that they're contributing equally to a conversation and not realize that one person is actually doing 80 to 90% of the talking. So at least to start out, use a timer.
Take turns talking and sharing.
When it's your turn to talk, you share about your day or whatever is on your mind or heart. You might share about what happened. You can share about your worries. You can share about something interesting or funny that you learned. You can just vent about stuff that's stressful. It doesn't really matter what, it matters that you are sharing a part of yourself with your partner.
It's important to note that this time is not for solving problems in the marriage. This is not a time that you are sharing your complaints with your partner.
This is also not a time that you are doing planning or solving logistics for any of the other parts of your life. This is just a time that you get to connect with your partner and let them in on these little parts of your world and experience.
Take turns listening and supporting.
When you're the listener, your job is to be your partner's cheerleader. They are sharing a part of themselves with you, and it's your job to accept that with love and grace and openness.
There can be a temptation sometimes to want to give advice or maybe even to point out ways where we know that our partner gets in their own way.
This is not the time to tell them that maybe their boss is right about their habit of showing up late. This is the time that you say “I'm so sorry your boss yelled at you, baby. I know that's embarrassing and hard for you to hear.”
Your time as the listener is to be a support and cheerleader for your partner. You are creating for them a safe place to fall at the end of their day.
When you have a chance to share for half of your allotted time, then you switch roles and you get a chance to be a listener and receive the sharing that your partner wants to give you with love and grace and acceptance.
Tips for a successful stress reducing conversation from your couples therapist in Riverside CA
It's important that you treat this daily / regular time of connection as sacred. If you have very young kids, do this when the kids are in bed. If your kids are a little bit older let them know that you cannot be interrupted during this time except perhaps if someone is bleeding or there's some true emergency. Your kids can be fine for 20 to 30 minutes solving their own problems or without your direct supervision.
Don't interrupt or don't allow other things to interrupt you during this time because this time is just for the two of you and your relationship. We communicate where our values are and what's important to us by what we allow to interrupt other things, so for this amount of time everyday you can say “my relationship with my partner is the most important.”
I suggest pairing this stress reducing conversation with something else that's really enjoyable for both of you. Maybe you make and enjoy a cup of tea together. Maybe you go for a walk. Maybe the two of you take turns massaging the other person's feet or rubbing a nice lotion into the other person's hands. The point is that you make time for each other. And anything that you can do to make that even more connecting and something that you really look forward to the better.
Doing some type of movement like an easy walk is also beneficial in that walking produces some feel-good hormones and can help you have a sense of having really processed or moved through something and a beneficial way.
Benefits of the Stress Reducing Conversation
One of the benefits of this type of connection is that it gives you ongoing insight into what's happening in the life of your partner. There are some things that are kind of small or small enough that they may not get mentioned if you didn't have this dedicated time to spend chatting with one another. But because you took the time to listen to each other, maybe you know when a big meeting is coming up, or you know when a deadline is due, or you know that your partner is stressed about a meeting at work. When you know that information then you have opportunities to provide some additional love and support. So maybe you send a text the next day right before the meeting that says “You got this! I love you,” or you remember at lunch time to check in and say “hey, how did it go?” So the stress reducing conversation itself provides you the information that you could use to build more moments of love, connection, and care as you move through your day.
Remember this daily / regular connecting time is not for solving problems in the relationship, it's not for practicalities and logistics. This is the time where each of you gets a safe and comfortable and supportive place to land at the end of the day.
Those other types of conversations are important and you should have times where the two of you can sit down and talk about problems in your relationship. We recommend when you have a problem in your relationship that you need to talk about, you ask for the other person's consent and even set an appointment. That might look something like “I would like to talk to you about [whatever the thing is] and I'm wondering if now's a good time for that or could we talk about it sometime this weekend?”
You also need to have talks about logistics. Those things are really important. But don't let that stuff get in the way of this connecting time for your relationship.
So here's your to-dos:
Introduce the concept of the stress reducing conversation to your partner.
Decide when you will do this.
Decide how much time.
Get a timer ready.
Enjoy!
Please share this blog post with your partner. If you have really great results with this, email us or contact us on our social media to let us know. We would love to hear how it's going and to celebrate your success! And if you would like and if you need some one-on-one support to help your relationship, please reach out to us today to schedule with one of our fantastic people therapy specialists.
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