September to me often feels like January. It’s the start of real change as summer holidays fade into the background, darker evenings are creeping in and its back to work and our old routines.
As we start to make these adjustments, perhaps this is also the time to reflect on our relationship with our partners in a positive way and ask each other how we make sure we preserve the energy we had during the holiday break. It’s not very helpful to just go back to how things were and keep repeating the same behaviours that leave us feeling dissatisfied and unloved.
Here are some useful suggestions that can help you work through this transitional time more positively:
1. Prioritisng the relationship.
The quality of our partnership is crucial to our wellbeing and security. Often at the start of a relationship we are so fired up with excitement, it can feel quite effortless. Successful long -term relationships involve effort and compromise. This is the time to take time out to think together what we want from our relationship, whether we need to change things about ourselves and to make sure we give our relationship the time and effort we often give to so many other parts of our lives. Sadly, I hear from so many couples that their relationship is way down the ladder of priorities, so its hardly surprising when things start to unravel.
Of course, we all have stressful times at work where time for our relationships is severely limited when there aren’t enough hours in the day, and we are burning the midnight oil. But if we allow this to become our norm, the quality of our relationship will suffer badly.
2. Feeling I am the person I want to be in my relationship
Staying connected to who you are is critical. I see many partners who feel they must change themselves into someone they don’t want to be to make their relationships work. Continual disconnecting from what’s important to you will lead to a build-up of resentments and disappointments in the relationship. Ellen Bader from the Couples Institute encourages differentiation in her couples. She defines differentiation as the active, ongoing process of understanding, identifying and expressing your own thoughts, feelings and desires and be steady with these feelings whilst your partner does the same. Helping couples recognise differentiation as a sign of growth and an increasing loving relationship.
3. Working together as a team
Successful couples want to help each other live the best life, which means understanding their values and their needs and how we show up for each other. Over time the early hopes and dreams of being in a loving relationship can be replaced over the years with complacency and laziness. How do you keep in touch with why you are together and your shared vision for the future that changes through the different stages of your relationship?
We need to know our partners are there for us in the way we need it. I often work with couples who hold on to feelings of being let down at crucial times, and just let feelings fester away and avoid talking about them, until they just burst out as conflict. Recognising that both parties can work to move out of these destructive patterns learn from these patterns to create a relationship that feels so much more connected and one that can move forward and grow.
4. Focus on each other’s strengths rather than their weaknesses
5. Showing up with vulnerability. Opening- up to a partner you care deeply about and feel safe and secure with is the best way of living a fulfilling relationship. The more we allow ourselves to be seen the stronger our connections become.
6. Effective communication - There are times when couples often feel they are talking a different language when we don’t feel listened to or understood. Men and women communicate differently. Successful couples manage to navigate these differences, so their connections create closeness and promote vulnerability
The happiest couples I see in my practice are those who want good results and are prepared to work consistently to remember and share what is important to each of them, and to ask each other what will be required of ME to make that happen.