Is your relationship worth saving? YES, it is!
We often consider giving up because we don’t see a way out from our difficulty. We try what we know and what others tells us to do—but they don’t work.
You start feeling hopeless because you feel something that was once great slipping away. You start seeing other people as being attractive—people you wouldn’t have noticed when you and your partner still had that passion.
Revive Your Relationship
Here’s the deal: the problem isn’t you, your partner, or even the relationship. It’s the model that we all inherit, from our culture and from our families. During our formative years, many of us never saw relationships that thrived. We were never given the tools to build an amazing relationship.
Here’s a short course in how to bring back the passion so you can connect to your partner.
We get amnesia about how we created passion without trying. In the beginning, the challenge was not creating it; the challenge was controlling it so you wouldn’t wear yourselves out.
Think back to how you felt during the early times in your relationship. What activities were you doing? Who were you hanging out with? Start doing some of the things you did then.
The Relationship Connection
One thing you did during these early times was be vulnerable. You shared parts of yourself, maybe parts you never share before, with your partner.
Start sharing these parts again with your partner—right now. Share what is true for you, what is scary. Sharing these feelings is not complaining; it is being genuine.
Share how you want to have what you had. How you miss that love and passion. How you feel scared you won’t get it back. Slow down, feel. Once you have even the littlest feeling, share it. As you open and risk, more feelings will come up.
Revealing your feelings and thoughts is risky, but, push yourself even more. Speak the unspeakable not as an attack, but as a reveal. I have seen many relationships and marriages saved by brutal honesty. What’s brutal is not the intent or impact—what’s brutal is that your words cut to the core of what you have held back.
Just the other day, a client told me that, after working with our group, he mustered the courage to tell his partner he wanted a divorce. His partner understandably sobbed, as she was so upset by this news. He decided to have compassion for his partner, and he called in sick to work that day to stay home and cared for her.
The next day, his partner woke up with a question: could they make their relationship work? He recognized that they both shared genuine emotional truths, and he agreed that they could make the relationship work. Sure, there are things they still need to work on, but, when you see them together, you can tell they love each other.
Connecting to Your Partner
Slowly we develop relationship ruts. Necessity and life takes over, efficacy and unconscious habits demands we get stuff done. Gradually we slip away. It’s no one’s fault.
We like excitement and change and we need predictability. We have modern, chaotic lives, and we attempt to have some control. This prompts us to focus on our tasks, our work. All that is needed. We forget that our emotional and relationship soul needs intimacy and connection.
You wake up one morning wondering, what happened. We were so passionate, now we are roommates?
Change YOUR life. Start by introducing something new in your life. It could be a hobby or sport. It could be going for that business you’ve wanted to pursue.
Find something that stimulates you. Find something that becomes the creative thing you think about during the day.
The more depth you have in your life, the more you can bring to your life with your partner. Your partner will pick up on your passion for your new adventure. That will inspire your partner. It will also have you want to change things at home. Just sitting around on the computer, phone or TV will no longer be your escape.
Deep down, we are still kids. We still want to play. When we are falling in love, we are playing. We can’t wait to be with our playmate. Then “the relationship” replaces romance. We get serious and secure in the having a partner.
Esther Perel speaks about how we are pulled by opposing desires: excitement and security. It doesn’t need to be an either or. Create excitement, play in your life and relationship. If your unconscious doesn’t have something to look forward to, it will create something to think about.
Create a weekly play activity. Each week the other one chooses what it will be.
Yes, these are simple. They should be.
They also work. We see men turn around a dying relationship or marriage by applying these actions. It’s not that these five are a panacea, they will get your collective energy moving in a direction that will revive your relationship.
Do one of these in the next three days. Tell us how it goes. Share your struggles and success.
Have fun!
