Everyone desires a deep and meaningful relationship. But how do you deepen love or enhance connection? All your doubts will be addressed with three best practices to show you how to nurture your love on a deeper level.
the main points
People often blame or judge their partner rather than explore their role in relationship struggles.
Reflecting on one’s own experience and developing healthy communication skills can help resolve relationship challenges.
The process of confronting and discussing one’s weaknesses requires strength and courage.
We partner with the best of intentions. But alas, relationships often fail to live up to their tender promise. How do we lay a proper foundation under our highest hopes and dreams?
Couples in my therapy office are often quick to point out each other’s shortcomings, convinced that if they can get their partner to see the light, the relationship will improve.
It is natural to want to understand why the relationship is not going well. Unfortunately, our attempts to understand what is wrong often focus on our partner rather than exploring how we might be contributing to the predicament.
Here are three things we can practice on how to deepen love and improve our relationships
Disclosure of our concrete experience
Our internal dialogue about our partner’s flaws keeps us stuck in our preconceived notions, opinions, and interpretations. Relationships don’t flourish when we cling to our most cherished ideas of each other. We need to get out of our heads and get to the feelings that live in our bodies and our hearts.
Relationships are more likely to thrive when two people can take the elevator down on their own felt experience, rather than clinging to thoughts about their partner. Opening up about our feelings creates a climate where two people can look into each other’s inner world of feelings and wishes – and move tenderly toward each other.
In the short term, it may give us a satisfying sense of certainty or control to analyze our partner rather than open up to potentially uncomfortable feelings. It takes a willingness to expand our tolerance for being vulnerable to draw the attention inward and curiously ask ourselves, “What am I feeling right now? What feelings arise in me when my partner says or does that?” Through such self-reflective inquiries, we take responsibility for our experience. rather than perpetuating a destructive cycle of blame and judgment – and predictably defensive.
Our partner or friend may be quick to discuss our interpretations and opinions of us. It’s hard to argue with our palpable experience. What we feel is what we feel. We don’t need to rationalize feelings of sadness, hurt, fear, or shame. They are what they are. Noticing and communicating our feelings is the starting point for a potentially productive conversation.
Our partner or friend is more likely to hear us without getting defensive if we communicate our feelings rather than our unwanted, critical, and self-serving beliefs and perceptions.
It is easier to identify someone else’s shortcomings than to recognize our own. Bringing mindfulness to our feelings and inner process requires that we take advantage of another quality: courage.
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Courage to look inward
It may comfort us to think that struggles and difficulties are the fault of others. It’s easier to think about what’s wrong with them than to turn the mirror toward ourselves and ask, “How am I contributing to our difficulty?” It takes inner strength and courage to reveal vulnerable feelings that we may judge to be a weakness.
It takes awareness and courage (derived from the word “heart)” to hit the pause button when we feel triggered by someone else’s hurtful words or behavior. We engage in a fight-or-flight or freeze response designed to protect us when there is a real or imagined danger to our safety and well-being. This is what we face in our important relationships! Tensions can escalate quickly, particularly when one has grown up in an environment where they did not have a healthy attachment to their caregivers, which is essential to developing an inner sense of security.
It takes awareness and courage to recognize what’s going on inside us without immediately succumbing to the survival-orientated reptilian brain and its predictable responses and unsettling consequences. Techniques such as Concentration, Hakomi, and Physical Experience help spread awareness of what is happening in our bodies. Dealing with what we’re going through can calm our emotions and suspend our reactions. This pause and alertness prepares us to reveal what we are already seeing on the inside.
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Connect with our inner world
We may think we are good communicators, but what we need to ask ourselves is, “Am I conveying my critical thoughts and perceptions or conveying the more vulnerable fabric of my inner life? Am I communicating from a tender place inside my heart or expressing what I think is wrong with my partner?”
As we bring kindness toward our deeper experience, then, instead of saying, “You only think of yourself! You’re so selfish,” we may find the awareness and courage to say, “I’ve been feeling lonely and sad. I want to feel more connected with you. I love spending time together.” And I need more of that.”
Marshall Rosenberg offers Nonviolent Communication (NVC) a helpful method for hearing each other’s inner lives. As we communicate our inner world of feelings and needs, we are more likely to touch our partner’s heart.
Pausing to notice what we feel and want and patiently connecting with our felt experience can help cultivate the deeper connections we desire.
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