I want to share with you a tip I give in every couples workshop. In my opinion, it’s one of the single most important take-aways of the weekend and cannot, therefore, be stressed enough.
It’s probably fair to say that almost everyone in marriage or a committed love relationship tends to err in one of two directions: they either pay too little attention to their partner’s needs, or, in some cases, too much, to the detriment of both themselves and their relationship.
TIP
Pick whichever of these you normally do not do, and make it your (cheerful) top relationship goal for the next week and notice what happens!
a) Make your partner’s needs a priority, as important to you as are your own. OR . . .
b) Make your needs a priority, as important to you as are your partner’s.
If you choose option “b”, you must first become conscious of all the ways you tend to dismiss, minimize, and/or tune out your own needs and desires. In fact, you may have done this for so long, you have literally no idea what your needs and wants actually are. Plus, there’s likely a part of you that is convinced that if you should take the risk of meeting your own needs instead of someone else’s, disaster will soon follow. This is your primitive, “old” brain engaging in a well-meaning but misguided attempt to protect you from an utterly false belief, i.e., that loving yourself, putting your own needs on par with those of others, will result in you’re losing the love of others.
This has to change.
Allowing this idea to dominate you 24/7 results in you’re feeling that others take you for granted, (which, by now, they probably do), and that rarely do they seem to care about your needs, (again, probably true, since let’s face it, you have likely trained them to believe you HAVE no needs). And all this breeds one thing: resentment in you. And when you feel resentful, you don’t much feel like being intimate, do you? So now, everyone loses.
Do this for one week and then, be on the lookout for small, little changes in your partner / relationship. Repeat.
Note: by “small” changes, I mean tiny changes, because short of a life-or-death situation, human beings & relationships do not change rapidly. So, we all have to learn to be patient and understand that tiny movements in the direction we want, are fantastic.
After doing one of the above for a week or more, ask yourself: “Does my partner seem to engage a little more? Smile, move closer, touch or talk to me a little more than usual?” If the answer to any of these is “ye”, then no matter how brief/small these changes might be, you have just found a way to single handily improve your relationship! Congratulations – DON’T STOP!
For a weekend chocked full of time-tested, research based ideas and tools for keeping or restoring a relationship to a state of relaxed, passionate connection, I invite you to consider joining the next Imago Weekend Workshop for Couples. You will be glad you did – guaranteed!
~ Barbara