Heal and re-ignite your relationship with your partner- Part 1

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Full Transcript

 

We're assuming that if you're here, reading this, watching this, listening to this, you are a mother who really values connection with your children - who puts a lot of time and energy into fostering that connection and having really connected and conscious relationships.

We’re assuming you are a mother who is really devoted to being aware of what's going on for you, what's going on for them, what's the big picture in your relationships.

And in this episode we’re diving into is the process of spreading that connection out a little further to include your partner.

 

A lot of the time in families where there's a lot of emphasis on conscious, connected parenting, you can have that really strong bubble of connection with your children while your partner kind of sits on the outside. He may be feeling disconnected and unsure of his place in the whole family dynamic. So we're wanting to expand that bubble of connection to include him, to create whole family connection.

Addressing your connection with your partner is a really important piece in the whole family dynamic, and it's a piece that a lot of mothers we work with struggle with on and off.

 

“How do I include him in this container that's here and it's kind of strong around me and my children?" 

- every time we want to try and bring our partner into that dynamic, there's a reshuffle and a re-calibration and everything gets a bit crazy

And our partners often feel like a third wheel, especially if they work outside of the home and they're gone most of the day

“What's my role? What's my place? How am I really of value in this family?”

So, while there are a lot of relationship dynamics at play in your whole family, we’re focusing here on the relationship between you and your partner.

As we said before- You’re a conscious, connected mother...

But are you conscious connected partner?

And you might have been. You might have been at one stage, but are you as connected now with your partner, as you are with your children?

Do you place as much awareness, as much consciousness, as much attention to being patient, having empathy, to having compassion?

Those things that you're doing daily, minute to minute with your children - where's your partner fitting in that equation?

 

Quite often they kind of get left to the bottom of the pile and that can be a hangover from when you were first having children, having babies (and you might also still be in that boat)...

When children come into the picture there's a lot going on! And we tend to focus less on connecting with our partners...

“Once I've got a bit more space, I'll come back to them, and connect, they'll understand, they're adults."

And that can go on for quite a while, and you can get into a cycle where you lose connection with your partner.

 

 

You lose that connection, and when you've lost your connection, your communication falls over.

You stop communicating with each other, you're not feeling so connected, you don't share so much with them. So you're communication isn't as on, and you don't communicate as clearly and as consciously as you could. You make a lot of assumptions and expectations, and there's a lot of story happening under that isn't actually being communicated.

 

And then once you communication falls over, the third piece comes in, and that's your understanding.

Your understanding of your partner and what's going on for them decreases, as does their understanding of you, how understood you feel by your partner. And then that again feeds back into not feeling connected.

 

And round and round this cycle goes between the connection, the communication and the understanding. Once you get into that groove, it can be really painful and really difficult to shift out of.

When you're lacking that understanding of each other, it can be really easy to fall into a place of not actually feeling inspired or motivated to reconnect. Because, as time goes on, that drift gets further and further apart, to the point where it's hard to actually make the time to reconnect, and it's hard to find the reasons why and the fuel within you to actually work on your relationship.

 

You can get to the point where you’re just getting by together, co-parenting next to each other...

And sometimes even that can be a bit strained.

 

 

So what we want to give you today is something right now, right here that you can put into place straight away to start to create understanding again, to communicate more consciously and reconnect.

In this technique we’ll work with the cycle starting from understanding, moving through communication, and back into connection.

It's about creating reconnection with your partner, coming from a place of understanding first.

 

This is a fantastic place to start if you don't feel understood by your partner, if you don't understand them, if there's something going on and you don't understand where they're coming from or if you've got resentment within you - there's something that you need to say that hasn't yet been said, that you feel is in the way of you wanting to connect with your partner.

This is also a great technique to try out with your partner even if you’re not fully aware of what’s going on but you can tell you are kind of short with each other, you're avoiding each other or there's simply an energy of discomfort or disease between you and it's more comfortable to be well away from each other.

 

The Technique

 

You can do this just once, you can try it out and see if you like it.

You can also make it a regular habit and do it once a week, which is something we would recommend if that's what you can do.

It will serve your relationship to create a structured space with a specific practice planned so you can really dedicate the space to understanding each other.

 

“When Mike -my husband - and I first started doing this, it was really structured, really really structured. But over time as our connection grew stronger again, and our familiarity with the processes grew, we now can kind of slip in and out of it much more spontaneously. But if you're new to it, and you feel that you need it, then the structure is really an important key to getting it all happening”

-Lisa

 

Another way you can use this technique is by creating what we call a safe phrase.

If you want to use it spontaneously, and you want to use it on an ongoing basis - have a phrase that you both agree reminds you to stop and practice the technique.

It doesn't matter what the phrase is, it could be a private joke the two of you understand, the wording is not really important. The important thing is that you two understand that it’s a cue for, that one of you needs this process. That one of you wants to reconnect and needs to come back to understanding first.

 

1. Create timed space together, where each of you has a set time to speak - get a timer out.

You could start as little as one minute or two minutes each. Set up the timer, and when it's on, it’s one person’s turn to speak. We recommend you let your partner go first the first time at least. Because you're the one introducing this whole process. You have timed space for one of you to speak, and then when the timer is up, you will have space to be understood, to hear the other person understand you.

 

2. When you’re the one speaking, your job is to share what's going on with you. Share the resentment or share whatever is up. Just speak it.

When you are speaking, we won’t go far into teaching conscious communication but if there's one thing we’d suggest it would be “speak from the I”.

Try not to launch straight into blame and, "I hate it when you do this, and you do that,"...

Instead, speak from the I, "I want, I feel, I need, this matters to me because,".

 

3. When you’re the one listening, there is a really clear boundary here, an agreement that you don't speak, you just listen.

When you are listening, whether they are speaking from the ‘I’ or not, whether they forget to do that or not, the role of the listener is to listen in a very particular way.

It's not this kind of listening-

"Alright, I'll be quiet because I have to, but I'm kind of listening to see if I agree with what they're saying,"

Or the type of listening where you are formulating your reply, your rebuttal, your defence while you’re “listening”

Listen with these four questions in mind

What's important to them now?

What are they feeling?

What are they needing?

What do they value?

What is this telling me about this person? Try and have really fresh eyes, just try to UNDERSTAND THEM.

4. When the timer goes off, before it becomes the next person’s turn to speak, the listener shares what you've noticed.

"I get that, right now you're feeling... Is this maybe what you're needing...? Is this what's important to you...? Is this what you're valuing...?"

Until they go, "Yeah, that's it, you've got it, I feel heard."

Until there's a sense of understanding, until there's a bridge of understanding being built between you.

 

5. And then it's time to swap, set the timer and it's your turn to express, and their turn to listen. And then, share what they've heard.

 

So, that was a practice in understanding each other, done through conscious communication. And that actually leads you back into feeling more connection with your partner. If you really feel heard, you will feel connected back to them.

"I can vouch for this, this happens to me a lot. Often when things are not going well for me in my relationship, it's because I'm not expressing something that I should be, and I don't feel understood, and I don't feel heard. And when that shifts, I'm able to really connect again" - Lisa
Practice this!!

And please let us know how it went, we'd really love to hear your story of coming back into understanding.

 

And, if this was something that interested you and you’re going to give it a try then you might want to come and check out the program we’re opening up at the moment.

It's a new program that we're putting together, and here is the link to read all about it

http://mothersawakening.com/partners-program
Until next time, goodbye :-)