Conscious Couples Connect! Check Here for Weekly Tips

1. Hug each other!  Hugging, cuddling and other tender displays of affection help couples feel more emotionally connected to each other.  Add a loving hug to each day to brighten it!
2. Create space in your day to ask each other, “What touched you today”? Doing so will give you a chance to connect positively and see how your partner experiences his or her world.
3. Gift your partner with an appreciation every day. Remember how good it feels to be appreciated?  Hearing that we are valued helps us to feel safe, confident, and more connected to our partners.  Be the one to let your partner hear how much you appreciate something about him or her – such as her sense of humor, or something thoughtful that he did for you that day.
4. Let emotional wounds heal! Care for your partner by avoiding Sarcasm, Criticism, Attacking, Blaming or Shaming, letting SCABS heal and allowing your relationship to grow healthier.
5. Make and take time together! When you make time to be together you open up opportunity to be attuned to one another.  When you dedicate that time to fun, you lighten life, laugh, play, and feel closer to one another.  In the process you release the neurochemicals responsible for feeling good, increasing positive energy for yourself and for your relationship.
6. Remember that our mutuality comes out of autonomy. Two people in a marriage or couple relationship are different beings – who have chosen to be together. Respect your individual differences so that your autonomy can lead to mutuality and true partnership.
7. Look at each other! Maintaining eye contact deepens connection! Discover the depths of the adage, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.”
8. When needing to have difficult conversations, mirror each other to assure that you understand what you each are saying and give each other the chance to clarify. Use your partner’s words as closely as possible.  As you pause to listen, take in your partner’s perspective, then reflect back what they said and ask, “Did I get that?” Show interest and curiosity by asking “Is there more”?
9. Plan date nights. Having and investing in fun builds equity in your relationship to help tide over the harder times.  The equity of levity strengthens the container of your couplehood.
10. Appreciate your assets. In the portfolios of our lives, gratitude is an asset that appreciates.  Gratitude does not come from a place of criticism or judgment of either ourselves or others.  It stems from compassion.  It generates a sense of goodwill toward another being. Take an inventory of your assets – the strengths you manifest as a couple; the things you like; your special interests, abilities, and experiences; and the people who uplift, encourage, and inspire you.
11. Look for the bright spots in your relationship. The things we focus on are the things we strengthen. It is said that our brains are like Velcro for the bad and like Teflon for the good.  When we intentionally and repeatedly focus on the good, we reinforce the positive neural pathways in our brain and reverse the damage from brains being “locked” into negativity!
12. View conflict as another chance to get closer. Conflict is friction between two or more forces that create opportunities for growth and transformation through the positive flow of information and energy.  Your mirroring dialogues allow for the honest flow of information and positive energy to happen, and for growth to occur – all the while providing a safe structure to resolve or manage conflict!
13. Get physical! Physical intimacy is often the quickest route to reconnect and sustain closeness.
14. Have compassion for yourself when old wounds are triggered. Have compassion for your partner when he or she is triggered, remembering that it is the most vulnerable parts of ourselves that are susceptible to strong reactions.  Ask, “What is the story I am telling myself?” “What is this reminding me of from my past?”  “What assumptions am I making about the story my partner is telling him/herself?”  Reflecting on your reactions can give you insight to respond to triggers more clearly, compassionately, and honestly.
15. Breathe in possibilities!  Muhammad Ali said, “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small [people] who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it.”  Let yourself imagine how you want to be in your relationship and let your creativity and commitment combine to bring that vision to reality.
16. Use “I Statements” when upset about something.  For example, “I am worried when you are late coming home and would be grateful if you would call me to let me know you are running late”; or “I feel invisible when you watch TV and would like to make space in our day for face-to-face conversation with no electronic distractions.”
17. Remember that the traits you dislike in your spouse are often the ones you dislike in yourself and may even deny are within you.  No one is perfect but we can strive to be both self-accepting and accepting of each other even while committing to improving our way of being in relationship.
18. Show your partner that he/she is valued, valuable, competent, lovable and loved.  Demonstrate this through words of affirmation, notes, appreciations, acts of service, physical touch, gifts, spending quality time together.  Discover what Gary Chapman refers to as your partner’s “love language” and learn to speak it!
19. Imagine what it is like living with you!  What do you do that drives your partner nuts?  Think of something you can do each day to soften the triggers for your partner – for the sake of your relationship.  Follow through and bask in the good feeling of effecting change in yourself, even if it takes a while to register with your partner.
20. Be a “safe place” for your partner to turn.  Listen with the respect that shows your partner that he/she is important to you – that he/she and his/her opinions matter to you.
21. Be patient with your own fallbacks or mistakes and with your partner’s too.  This shows both understanding and compassion.
22. Ask for what you need.  This may feel risky -after all, your request may be met with resistance.  It takes courage to tell your partner that you need something and, it is a way to be be honest.  An honest and direct realtionship has a greater chance of being a happy one and a sustained one.
23. When you and your partner disagree, assess if the issue is important enough to argue about. If it warrants confronting, begin with why it is important to you and say, “I am having a hard time with____ and am feeling (feeling word) and want to talk about it.  Is now a good time?” Stay respectful in tone and body language.
24. Consider your partner’s needs as important as your own.
25. Marriage is an intimate relationship between two people who often know each other very well.  Be conscious of whether your words and actions show love or will wound your partner.  Choose love.
26. When it is difficult to choose love, see what is under your own frustration.  The conflict is “growth trying to happen” according to Imago Relationship Theory.  This indicates a need for one person to stretch and grow to meet their partner’s needs.  When we stretch in this way, we help our partner to heal and ourselves to grow as well.
27. Be kind.  Share that value with each other and with the larger community.  If you are lucky enough to have love, sharing it through kindness to others will strengthen your connection to each other and the world.
28. Express gratitude for each other every day.  It helps you to focus on the positive and reduce negativity, and increases the sense of closeness while strengthening your relationship.
29. Love is kind. Kindness helps couples to connect, to feel valued and valuable to one’s partner. Are you extending the kindness to your partner that you do to your (other) friends or even to strangers? Extend an extra kindness to your partner each day.  Consciously stay aware that your partner desires to feel valued and precious as much as you do.
30. Love is forgiving. We are human and we all make mistakes. We don’t want to be judged or defined by our fallibility and neither do our partners! Be forgiving. Your forgiveness does not mean that you condone or forget an action. It means that you let go of your anger, hurt and resentment; that you let go of it taking over your relationship and your potential for happiness.  Think of what you can let go of and what kindness you can put in its place.
31. What you do for your self care and health nourishes your relationship. Do something kind for yourself to help bring positive energy into the space connecting you and your partner.
32. Speak kindly about your partner to others. In his/her presence, it will show that your partner matters. When he/she is not there as you speak about your partner, you build a favorable regard for your partner and reinforce positive neurocircuitry in your brain associated with him or her.
33. Acknowledge together how hard it is to work through challenges as you work to strengthen your relationship. Give yourselves – and each other – credit for all the effort you are putting into building connection.
34. Award yourselves for your commitment to staying strongly connected with a hearty “Kudos!”, by making love, going on a date or just having fun.
35. Give a gift of thoughtfulness to your partner each day. It might take form as a surprise, a phone call to simply say, “I am thinking of you”, leaving a note or taking care of something that shows your partner you have considered his/her comfort, needs or cares.  The extra “gift” is not expecting anything in return.
36. Physically touch your partner. Physical touch and sexual intimacy are not the same thing, though the latter typically requires the former. Take your partner’s hand, rub his shoulders, stroke her hair, hug, sit close to ensure body contact.  Touch arouses positive feelings of love, safety, and attachment from the release of oxytocin.  It is an intimacy that is essential to feelings of connection.
37. Kiss in a way that conveys desire and appreciation, rather than a perfunctory obligation! Allow yourself to move into a kiss and to fully enjoy it!
38. Let your partner know what he/she did during the day that touched you.  This will heighten your own skills of observation of the positive, and deepen your partner’s sense of being appreciated.