ONE OF THE best things you can do for your relationship with your life partner, whether you are married or not,
is to create rituals that allow you to spend quality time together and check in with each other on a daily basis.
This is something we do in our marriage more than once a day. In the morning when we wake up, we ask
each other, “What’s on your mind today?” A lot of those mornings our son, Mac, is there and we include him in
the conversation. At the end of the day we ask each other, “What was your favorite part of the day?” And during
the day, at least four or five days a week, we go to the gym or take a jog together, and that time is not always
spent talking about the big things, but it creates moments when we can have a small conversation, an
opportunity to tune in with each other.
Communicating the things that make us happy is just as essential as communicating things that make us
upset. We let each other know things like, “I loved it when we did this together. This made me feel good,” or, “I
really liked that you did this for me. It’s so simple, but it made my day, so thank you” (like when Marc does the
dishes at night before we go to bed!). Giving a compliment and communicating the positive aspects of our
relationship is a way to let each other know when we appreciate something, and it inspires us to do that
positive thing again.
We know that maintaining healthy communication in a relationship isn’t easy, so start small: What’s one
small thing you can consistently do together, just you and your partner? You should be able to find ten minutes
in your whole day for the person you love, and if you can have ten quiet minutes with them, then the space is
there for everything that needs to happen, for the right conversations to take place, for the compliments to
occur, for the questions to come up.
Say to your partner: Let’s start with something as simple as a walk around the block or reading one or two
pages of a book together every day and then discussing them. Angel reads short excerpts from books to us all
the time, and a conversation always comes up as a result. We’re talking about just a couple of pages. It takes
ten minutes to read the pages and ask a question, and yet it’s a wonderful ritual in our lives that brings us
closer together.
