You may strive to follow this sage relationship advice, but it can be difficult to communicate with your partner when you haven’t taken the time to understand one another better. After all, how can you know where your spouse is coming from or what they value if you don’t ask? Learning how to relate to your spouse may be as simple as coming up with new romantic ideas for date nights or as complicated as strengthening emotional intimacy in relationships.
No matter what the answer is to understand your partner better, you’ll be glad you did. Understanding one another better will help you resolve conflicts and will strengthen your bond. Here are six tips for strengthening your relationship and learning how to relate to your partner.
Create couples traditions. Creating a couples tradition is a great way to relate to one another and strengthen your bond. Starting a tradition doesn’t have to be as expensive as throwing a holiday dinner yearly or planning an elaborate winter vacation. Instead, you and your spouse should focus on small traditions that make you feel more connected to each other such as sharing a morning coffee together, talking every day for 30 minutes after getting home from work, eating at the table or scheduling a regular date night each week.
Make you relationship a priority. You make decisions every single day, from what you’re going to wear to what you’re going to have for dinner. One way you can deepen emotional intimacy in relationships and improve how you relate to one another is by considering how your daily decisions will affect your relationship. Of course, not every decision you make throughout the day will affect your partner, but some of them will.
Think of situations from your spouse’s point of view. You can build emotional intimacy in relationships and improve the way you relate to each other by taking this simple step: putting yourself in your partner’s shoes. When you don’t know where your spouse is coming from, it can be easy to misunderstand them. This can lead to unnecessary arguments and general relationship unhappiness.
If you were on the receiving end of your own critiques, ‘in your spouse’s shoes’, how would you feel? Asking yourself this simple questions will help you understand why your partner reacts the way they do to the things you say. It can also help you decipher whether or not your complaints or concerns are legitimate or whether you could phrase things differently in order to get a better reaction from your spouse.
Avoid ‘You’ sentences. When you are bringing up an issue with your spouse, starting it off with ‘You’ is usually a bad start since it often denotes an attack on your partner. Take for example the subject of help, attention, and finances. All three topics are legitimate concerns in any relationship, but the way in which you broach the subject can put your partner into defense-mode.
Instead of focusing on what your partner does wrong, narrow in on the actual problem by using ‘I’ sentences.
Say: “I feel exhausted by all this yard work. Could you please help me this weekend?” instead of: “YOU never help around the yard.”
Say: “I would love it if we could start having a regular date night/spending more time together” instead of: “YOU don’t care about our marriage!”
Say: “I’d really like to start saving some money for us. How about we discuss a reasonable budget together?” instead of: “YOU are spending way too much money!”
Make sex a priority. One way you can throw some romance into your life while building emotional intimacy in relationships is by making sex an important part of your relationship. Of all the romantic ideas to help you and your spouse get closer, sex is often the most effective. Being intimate together promotes the release of love-hormones that help you feel closer to your partner and more trusting of them. It also helps couples to cooperate and show compassion and respect during the act. Helping your partner achieve orgasm is a great way to relate to them and strengthen your relationship.
In order to reap the benefits of this intimate act, you need to make time for it. Don’t give your partner what’s left over of your energy and attention at the end of the week. Have sex regularly.
Ask open-ended questions. Asking open-ended questions allows your spouse the opportunity to explain their feelings, understanding, and attitude on a certain subject. You can spend your date nights getting to know one another and make a fun game out of it, going back and forth asking one another questions.
If you really want to learn more about your partner and relate to them on a deeper level, it’s important to listen. Even if you know the answer to the question, wait patiently and let your partner talk. You may be surprised how much additional information you will learn when you give your spouse the opportunity to speak uninterrupted.
You can’t create a deep connection to your spouse if you don’t really know who they are and what their wants, needs, and desires are. Romance, emotional intimacy in relationships, and relating to your spouse are all essential for a happy, long-lasting relationship. Strive to strengthen your bond by watching how you communicate, making sex a priority, and accepting your spouse’s imperfections.