Five Ways to Freshen Up a Struggling Relationship

When they say it takes two to tango it really means it ultimately takes two but guess what?! Someone has to be the leader, you can be the leader that brings positive change to your relationship starting today.

I felt the love of my life slipping away and I didn’t know how to reach out, I tried what I knew, and since that didn’t work I tried it harder! It took too many painful disconnected years for me to learn the tools I teach today, but hopefully it will help you find your way back in to love sooner rather than later!

Relationships get stale, they get put on the back burner during big life events, and its easy to forget the basic building blocks of love, connection, and intimacy.

First I’d like to share a few of my core beliefs around long term relationships:

Lasting love requires a certain mindset, you have to adopt the mindset that allows you to acknowledge that the relationship will fluctuate thru highs and lows, that there will be seasons and that winter can only be thawed by a partner who has truly committed to the relationship and working things out.
Love is a choice, an action, and a verb. It is the choice you make to show your partner love in a language they speak, even when you don’t feel like it because when you do you invite your partner to do the same. If you want to be that cute couple pantsing each other in your walkers when you are 90, you gotta start by choosing to love your partner, even when its not easy.
You will fall in and out of love, more than once during any long term relationship, don’t be the the kind of weak fickle love that tucks its tail and runs, love hard, love open, allow yourself to fall back in love and hold that space for your partner when they are struggling to love you in this moment. This is a natural part of loving someone for the long haul.
The seasons of marriage don’t just happen like normal weather patterns, they happen because of our action or inaction and both partners have the power to start the change.
Fairy tales are just that! Fairytales have poisoned our minds when it comes to love, connection, and relationships! Where is the Disney movie that shows the couple 10 years down the road, baby crying thru the night, the couple too tired to even talk, struggling to make it out of whatever fire they find themselves in and then they choose to take the 37 seconds they have that could be “me time” and give that love to their partner and let that be the catalyst that grows their love.
Relationships take work, hard work! Commitment, love, respect, admiration, and a whole bucket of other ingredients, when you feel llike your relationship isn’t working CHECK THE INGREDIENTS!

After consulting for most of my adult life its easy to see other people’s problems from the outside, what isn’t easy is stepping back from the feelings you are swimming in to see what could be done. So I encourage you to not brush these off, do not defensively assume that your partner would never change or participate, and please do not assume that your relationship is just so different from everyone else!

So how do you breathe fresh life back into your relationships?

1) Get curious about your partner:

Not in a creepy reading their texts kind of way!!! Get curious about their current goals, their current struggles, and how they feel in this relationship. familiarity bias is when we think we know it all and we give up on being curious about what is going on for them. Imagine you are meeting them for the first time, what questions would you ask? How curious would you be to find out what they want to be when they grow up or what major accomplishments they are working towards?

2) Let that sh*t go!

Really, I don’t know what it is exactly for you but we all have those things we are holding on to, in the mens work we call it a “list”. I like to start by going thru lists of resentments the partners are holding on each other, what are you holding on to that is keeping space between you two? More importantly, lets work thru that list and forgive and let goooo!

3) Own your own brokenness:

We all come in to every relationship with the caked on mud of our past experiences. Some do better than others at washing it off, but inevitably we all have something sticking around. Mine was the trigger of not feeling like I was enough. My dad in his own misguided way of trying to challenge me to grow into a man definitely gave me more “not enough” feelings than I ever should have taken on but when my wife pokes that little hot spot I am not reacting to her jab as much as I am all the jabs for all my life. I own that I allowed myself to feel less than and not good enough and that it was nobody else’s fault. When I do this I can own that my wife is not making me feel bad, she is expressing frustration in an unhealthy way and it becomes my opportunity to get curious about what she is struggling with! (Right back to #1, see what I did there!)

4) Learn how to love your partner in their language:

So many of us (my self included) default to what we speak, I know when I’m missing my wife I reach out for a hug or pinch her tush, or reach for her hand. But guess what!? That’s not how she feels loved, that’s how I feel loved! She feels loved when we spend quality time. I feel like “The five love languages” by Gary Chapman should be mandatory reading for anyone looking to build a lasting relationship. The core idea is that loving someone means learning how they feel loved and then making the choice to do that! It really is that simple, don’t over complicate it or make up stories about what that means!

5) FILL THEM UP!

The concept of the love languages is great, it reminds us that love is not a mystical feeling you have no control over, it is the act of choosing to love someone in a language they understand. That part is great and we can all do better but what we often overlook is the things we do that take away that feeling of love from our partner. Lets look at an extreme example, say you buy your husband a new car every week, have sex as much as he wants, and laugh at all his stupid dad jokes… but you also criticize him in front of his friends, call him incompetent, and threaten to leave with every fight. While you are doing great things that speak to a love language of gifts and touch you are draining those feelings with your other actions. I like the analogy that love languages should be more like love buckets. You take action that makes your partner feel loved and work harder at not doing the actions that drain the bucket.

CONCLUSION:

There are lots of amazing tools and techniques out there for helping couples feel closer, pick one, or two, take action! One of my favorite analogies is that relationships are like peddling a tandem bike up hill, one partner can stop peddling for a while and the other can keep the bike moving but eventually if both partners aren’t both peddling, the bike will stop and fall over.

The relationship you desire starts with you! Show up! Do the work! Learn to relationship better! Learn to be the kind of partner you desire!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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