Three ways to increase connection with someone you love

I often work with high performing individuals who struggle to feel connected to their partner or someone important to them in their life. They often spend a lot of time on the road, away from their family, and struggle to find those warm fuzzy feelings they had for their partner that seemed so effortless early on in the relationship. I have distilled some of my recommendations into three simple steps to increase connection.

1). Thoughts

Our relationship with any other human is a constellation of all of our thoughts about them. The first step in increasing connection then is to examine what thoughts you have about the person you want to feel closer to. Write their name on the top of a piece of paper and write down all the thoughts you have about them. Do you have positive things to say about them? If not, consider how you could increase positive thoughts about them throughout the day. For all the negative aspects that you may write about, challenge your brain to find evidence to support how amazing they really are. I promise you there is a lot of evidence there if you spend time looking for it.

2). Vulnerability

If you want to feel more connected to someone, then I encourage you to be open to being vulnerable with them. The challenge is here is that our default setting is to be more skeptical. Our brain believes that danger is lurking, so it behaves accordingly. Remind yourself that loving someone is never a bad idea because YOU are the recipient of those loving feelings. You feel them in your body when you intentionally decide to think and feel fondly of someone. 

Feeling safe in your relationship is a main ingredient to vulnerability, so I encourage anyone to address this first especially if this area is not solid in your relationship. 

If you are feeling safe in your relationship, then I challenge you to take what your partner says or does at face value and stay connected to them regardless. Disconnection is a response from our default brain which makes us feel like we are protecting ourselves from harm; but what it actually does is get us more of what we don’t want. Shutting down and isolating from your partner doesn’t feel good. Disconnection robs us of feeling close and working towards repair. We end up feeling badly ahead of time - instead of feeling close and working through disagreements.

3). Choose to believe that your partner loves and adores you 

Consider what might happen if you chose to believe that your partner loves and adores you. I see that many of my clients who have children are able to do this but instead struggle with their spouse. When their spouse comes home late, doesn’t help as much as expected around the house, or says something negative, it can be easy to assume that our partner doesn’t care or, worse yet, doesn’t love them. Just like a teenager who tells their parent they hate them or doesn’t come home on time, there can always be a knowing that, despite their behavior, there is love and care there but it’s expressed poorly. Be mindful of what you make actions mean and see if you can have that deep knowing that your partner always loves you no matter what. Love always feels better.

If you haven’t already ,please feel free to download my complimentary “Create a Relationship You Can’t Wait to Get Home To” guide under the relationships tab of my new redesigned website: melanieshmois.com

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