You and your partner are connected by a deep emotional, physical and spiritual bond. Maintaining this connection requires ongoing effort and intentional communication. Finding balance in your relationship opens the door for grace, gratitude and acceptance.
Whether you’re looking to strengthen your bond, heal your relationship, work through difficult conflicts, or take steps to grow your shared spirituality, prioritizing finding your balance as a couple is integral. These key focus areas provide a foundation for a thriving and healthy relationship.
Communication
Any successful relationship requires open and honest communication. The way you interact with your spouse helps set the foundation for the entirety of your relationship.
It can be difficult to identify, understand and deal with your own emotions, let alone that of a significant other, but allowing yourself to step into that vulnerable place will strengthen your bond and provide space for your relationship to grow and flourish.
Learning how to talk with your spouse about difficult topics, setting rules and expectations for your communication, and providing time and space for these interactions are all integral to connecting on a deeper level. Both partners must feel heard, understood and cherished in order to form a healthy, long-lasting union.
Sex & Intimacy
Connecting with your spouse on a deeper level is what sets a romantic relationship apart from a platonic one. Maintaining a healthy sex life is integral to a balanced relationship, but make no mistake, sex and intimacy are not interchangable terms.
Men tend to believe that sex is utimately what builds intimacy and drives connection, but women often believe that safety and vulnerability are what builds true intimacy. There seems to be quite a disconnect there, and it is important to acknowledge and understand this.
Intimacy is more than sex, it is what allows you to share the “real you” with your partner. Of course, sex is a key component of a healthy bond between partners. Encouraging passion and romance will help you to reach your full potential as a couple.
Sharing vulnerability, and communicating openly and honestly about your needs will ultimately set the foundation for a healthy sex life.
Dealing with Conflict
All healthy relationships will experience conflict from time to time. If you and your partner agree on everything all of the time, then it’s possible your communication is not as open and honest as you may think. Disagreements are natural, and how you choose to address conflict can make all the difference for your relationship.
Such disagreements may vary in complexity and intensity, and sometimes certain conflicts may seem too big to handle. However, working together as a team to take on the issue at hand, rather than viewing each other as opponents, can shift the way you handle conflict. By focusing on open, honest communication, and addressing the conflict from a place of love and commitment, you’ll be able to uncover the heart of the issue and work toward solutions.
Shying away from the issue or burying it inside can seem like the easiest solution, but small conflicts tend to build up over time and chip away at an otherwise healthy relationship. We all know the saying “pick your battles.” This phrase tends to be conflated with the idea of swallowing your feelings or needs in the interest of your partner, which isn’t the goal at all. Speaking up about what you need from your partner is extremely important, and will allow you maintain a sense of trust, and respect for one another.
Ultimately, you and your partner are bound together by a strong emotional and spiritual connection, and working through conflict together is a necessary part of maintaining that connection.
Healthy Boundaries
Boundaries are limits that we put in place to protect and honor our relationships. They can help to prioritize needs, protect emotions, prevent codependency or allow us to create necessary space for one another. Discussing boundaries and limits with your spouse, especially around areas that make you feel vulnerable, will help create a better sense of understanding, and safety for you both.
Everyone brings a set of lived experiences into their relationships, and when you bond deeply with a partner, you might forget that their past experiences are different from your own. Perhaps your childhood home was very busy, with lots of siblings, and knocking on doors was very important for your privacy. Maybe your partner was an only child, and in their household it was normal to enter rooms without knocking. Expecting your partner to know what your needs around privacy are without communicating those boundaries isn’t fair to them. If your past experiences have created certain needs or ways of doing things that differ from your partner, no matter how small they may seem, it’s important to communicate them.
Spirituality
You and your partner are connected by a deep connection which is emotional and physical, but more than anything else, it is spiritual. Shared faith and spirituality makes a strong positive contribution to a relationship. This process may look different for different couples, but maintaining some type of shared spiritual practice can help transform your connection on a deeper level.
It’s not always easy to bring your partner into your spiritual world, which is something deeply personal. It can be even more challenging if you and your partner vary in beliefs and styles of practice. However, creating a shared spirituality can allow you to see one another in a different light, and will lead to more grace and gratitude in your relationship.
Creating shared spirituality does not require either of you to sacrifice your own beliefs and practices, but rather asks you to share your heart so that you may grow together.
