Maintaining connection between the two of you is essential ... regardless of what else is in your life. If partners can keep their linkage, they will keep their relationship.
What must you do on a day-to-day basis to maintain the connection to your partner?
First, you must make your relationship and this connection a priority.
Second, when you feel uncomfortable with your partner or the relationship, or when you sense your connection weakening, don’t ignore your feelings. This is a warning; it is like a fire alarm going off. You may be tempted to think that the alarm is faulty and you may wish to turn it off because you can’t bear the sound, you don’t see any smoke, and you’re too busy to go looking for trouble. But pay attention. There is a gift of disowned energy somewhere in this discomfort.
Third and perhaps the most important ingredient in the recipe for a healthy, intimate and loving relationship is time. The best way to meet all the challenges to relationship is to take time for one another and for your partnership. You cannot run a business without giving it proper time and attention, and you cannot expect to have a successful relationship without doing likewise.
Take time ...
- For meetings, for work, for play, and for passion.
- To be happy with each other and time to be irritated with each other.
- To look at what works and makes you feel just great and time to listen to the small knocking sounds in your relationship and your lives that will tell you what doesn’t work.
- To enjoy today and time to plan and to dream about tomorrow.
- To hang out, just to be and not to do anything at all.
Most of all, take time away from the daily distractions and challenges to establish and to keep the delicious energetic linkage between you and your partner. It’s a good idea to make regular plans to break your daily routine and get re-acquainted. These breaks can take any form, so be creative.
If partners can keep their linkage, they will keep their relationship. Anything that breaks this linkage can damage the relationship. No matter how sensible, worthwhile or absolutely necessary the distraction seems to be, it should be handled with great care and not allowed to break the essential connection between partners. It is very easy to ruin even a good relationship. It is also very easy, once we know about linkage, to preserve a good relationship and to make it even better. So go for the linkage!
Used with permission from Marriage Magazine Winter 2009. Article excerpted from PARTNERING A NEW KIND OF RELATIONSHIP: How to Love Each Other Without Losing Yourselves by Hal Stone, Ph.D. & Sidra L. Stone, Ph.D, New World Library Publications, Novato, CA.
