6 Strategies to Deepen Your Connection With Your Partner
Photo by Shingi Rice via Unsplash
When couples come into therapy together, I often find that what they are most in search of is a way to reconnect — they want to preserve the love and connection they once shared and overcome the obstacles that are impacting their ability to do so.
By the time they come to see me, many couples are desperate to save their partnership or marriage. Some arrive with reservations about the process, or even shame that they couldn’t figure out how to make things better on their own. Unfortunately, these aren’t skills that we just learn in school, like how to regulate ourselves when we’re in conflict, or what to do when a relationship begins to fizzle.
Unless you have role models of healthy relationships, it’s hard to know how to build long lasting happy partnerships. We rarely learn about how to develop emotional intimacy, understand what behaviors can lead to emotional distance in relationships, and how to repair that distance.
Assuming a couple is committed to each other and to working through conflicts, there’s a lot that they can do outside of therapy to improve their connection. Here is a snapshot of strategies and tools that I have used in my decades of experience as a couples therapist.
Slow Down and Turn Inward
While this is an individual exercise, it will benefit any relationship. In order to be known or understood, you must first understand yourself. If you do not spend time to reflect or to understand your own behavior, thoughts, and emotions, you will struggle to verbalize and help another person to do the same.
Self-reflection can be particularly important when engaged in conflict. The more you can understand about your actions, the more options you may have to make different choices and to articulate your needs and wants.
How to Turn Inward
Consider using journaling, mindfulness and meditation practices, stop all distractions to better listen to yourself and your needs.
Walk in nature instead of using electronics, engage in therapy, or even think deeply about your own behavior by taking a step back to try and consider how/what you are feeling, thinking and doing might relate to your history and values.
Ask yourself: What is my intention in responding the way I am responding? What do I value? What am I feeling? How might this be related to my emotional needs or unmet childhood needs?
Open Up and Share
It is truly incredible to watch the magic that sharing can do to heal wounds in a relationship. By sharing our stories, we can help our partners understand us at a deeper level, which can increase intimacy, solicit empathy, and provide an opportunity for understanding. These can be turning points for couples!
In order to do this, we must adopt a stance of curiosity rather than judgment. Ask each other open-ended questions: “Can you tell me more about that experience?” or “How does what you experienced influence you today?”
You can discover more about each person’s values, goals, needs, and areas for development in addition to learning about the importance behind some of the struggles and how that might influence what your partner needs from you. You can also start strategizing around areas that you can support each other, either through healing from past pains, or in becoming the human you want to become and achieving the goals that you have in life.
How to Open Up and Share
Consider using a date night and talk as if you’re developing a script for the movie of your partner’s life. What soundtrack would play? What themes would be explored? What are the key moments? Find time to regularly practice downloading about your experiences and how they impact you.
Deepen Your Levels of Validation
While each of us might assume that we are good at validating one another, everyone can benefit from being intentional about practicing validation. Validation shows the other person that they matter, that they have been seen, heard, and felt, and that who they are makes sense and is reasonable.
A key piece to understanding validation is that you are not “agreeing” with the person’s perspective or experience, but rather, genuinely placing yourself in their shoes, to demonstrate understanding and respect for their experience.
How to Deepen Levels of Validation
Here is a quick guide to the different levels of validation.
Level 1: Being With
Your presence is your first gift and a direct way of communicating that what the other person is saying is important to you. This means having your focus solely on the other person, listening with an open heart and tapping into any awareness of what is evoked in you when someone else is sharing.
Level 2: Mirroring
This skill is focused on practicing accurately reflecting back to the person sharing what you heard, not in a way that is mocking or mimicking, but rather with a focus on authentically sharing back what you heard and verifying that what you heard was accurate.
Level 3: Empathy Reading
This level is all about emotionally tuning into what the other person might be feeling and confirming. Statements like, “I imagine that you felt really powerless and frustrated when I didn’t answer the phone. You couldn’t reach me and didn’t know why.”
Level 4: Extrapolation
Once the feelings are verified, you can deepen your understanding and normalize it in the context of the other’s history and lens on the world. This is done by focusing on taking the information you just received and combining it with what you understand from the other’s experience and then offering back your non-judgmental understanding of the person’s feeling and experience.
You might not like your partner’s response or you might have your own preference for how your partner responded, but you can still be able to validate the feelings.
Consider using paper and pen to help you gather and listen to the information your partner is sharing. What phrases or words stand out to you? What are some repeating themes? What are some of the key emotions you want to know more about? How does what you are feeling now relate to your partner’s history?
Create Rituals of Connection
John and Julie Gottman are prominent couples’ therapy researchers and clinicians who have spent the last several decades identifying what predicts relationships ending and what predicts relationships lasting.
Their research has continuously shown the importance of intentional and committed time together. This includes developing rituals that as individuals are important to each of you and enhance connection. When we spend quality time together, we build on our positive memory bank, demonstrate a commitment to the enjoyment and pleasure of each other, and rekindle connection.
How to Create Rituals of Connection
These special rituals might include touch-based observances such as a long kiss goodnight and good morning, holding hands on a walk, or regular times that are special to each other, such as anniversary traditions, weekly space and time for intimacy (even if that doesn’t include sex), taking a class together, having a daily download, etc.
Develop a Practice of Gratitude and Recognition
So often we are focused on working on what we need to tweak, adjust or fix, we forget to reinforce things that are going well. To combat this, I recommend couples develop a practice of gratitude and recognition.
It requires that we intentionally look for times when we, as individuals, and when our partners are supportive, loving, hard working, conscientious, kind, listening, leaning in, and helping us. Then, sharing back what those efforts and actions mean to you and tell you about them.
This increases our chances of noticing small steps toward improvement and also tells the other that they are worth being noticed, not only when they err. Instead of feeling relief when things are going smoothly, we can celebrate.
How to Develop a Practice of Gratitude and Recognition
Consider using a gratitude journal or tracking certain behaviors you want to see more of in your partner and naming any action taken in the direction you want to see.
Dr. Howard Glasser, who developed the Nurtured Heart Approach, talks about learning to put on “supervision goggles.” Instead of supervising behavior, learning to look for what is going “super” and to have the “vision” to see it.
When you notice yourself focusing only on what is missing, try putting on your goggles. The huge payoff for you is that the one observing starts to feel more filled up with seeing things they appreciate rather than those things that induce judgment.
Process Conflict to Strengthen Understanding
As a couples therapist, I often find myself sitting in front of two individuals who are looking to pull each other into their worldview in order to “fix” their partner. Sometimes it feels as if I’m a sitting judge hearing arguments directed toward me to decide who is “right.”
As much as I might have a more neutral or impartial perspective, the premise that one person is right and the other needs to be schooled creates a mistrial. If we step back to look at what each partner is actually seeking, it is generally validation, a deeper understanding of what they are thinking, feeling, and why.
It is essential that couples become more aware of when they are engaging in any of the Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Stonewalling & Defensiveness (another Gottman piece of gold). When you can begin to notice these patterns, you have a greater chance of changing them, which can allow you to lean in, stay connected to emotions without feeling flooded, turn toward your partner with empathy and grace, and develop compassion.
How to Process Conflict to Deepen Understanding
Here is a set of instructions that I have found really helpful to give to couples to practice this independently.
Finally, take the time to enjoy each other, spend time laughing, remembering what drew you to your partner, and be honest with yourself about ways you each might have changed. If you are finding the above difficult, you might want to consider couples’ therapy for a deeper dive regarding the areas that are creating a divide in your relationship.
Looking for more resources to deepen your emotional connection? Octave has over 1,000 therapists who can support you in developing stronger relationships.