Jacqui Olliver
Relationships often become stale without intentional effort. Though communication, romantic gestures, date nights and great sex add a definitive boost to your love life, sometimes what you really need to improve your relationship is to improve your relationship with yourself. You need to frequently focus your energy in the realms of rest, play and independent activities to reconnect with your sense of self.
Why so? If we aren’t rested and feeling balanced we tend to become irritable. If we haven’t had any sense of unstructured play in our lives, then we lean toward being grumpy, irritable or predictable. And if we feel like we have too much partner time in our lives without balancing our own independence, then we begin to resent our relationship as it seems to take up much of our mental and emotional bandwidth.
Here are three ways to rekindle your relationship from the inside out:
1. Rest to Rekindle Your Relationship
Many of us have consciously demanding job descriptions and then don’t make time to unwind completely. Because we get too busy, we don’t share relaxed communication with our partner to nurture our relationship. This leads to relationship stress which can take a toll on our emotional and mental wellbeing in the long run.
Take time to rest, refresh, and enjoy the process of unwinding from productivity.
It’s important to rest and rejuvenate yourself – you can read fiction, exercise, go into float tanks or sensory deprivation tanks or meditate. Reading fiction is a healthy way to stimulate your brain by momentarily escaping into another reality. Exercise is one of the best ways to get out of your head and into your body. Indulge yourself in forms of movement you enjoy such as walking or dancing.
2. Play to Rekindle Your Relationship
Stop acting your age and re-engage in creating fun experiences for yourself and your partner. Play is available in every moment, if you are bold enough to look for ways to enjoy yourself. Playing includes purposeless and unstructured fun. You can play catch in the park, go bowling with your friends, be adventurous and kite-surf, bounce on a trampoline, play musical instruments even if you aren’t technically good at them, rent bikes and ride around the town by yourself or with friends with no definite aim.
Play need not be a thing that you go out and do intentionally. Instead it can be a way that you interact with others throughout your life.
3. Develop Your Sense of Independence to Rekindle Your Relationship
The need for intimacy and independence are constantly colliding in our relationship. Our intimate relationship requires face time to thrive but our relationship with ourselves also needs nurturing so that we feel healthy and complete. Giving time to ourselves ensures more quality time spent with our partner when we are together.
To develop a sense of independence, start working on your passion projects. Do the things that you know you want to do but have been consistently neglecting them due to being “too busy”. Stop denying yourself your bliss and it will richly reward your relationship.
Make sure you have friend-only time without your partner being present. This is one of the most refreshing ways to help you reconnect with yourself, your sense of independence and to enhance your point of attraction.
Book a weekly hangout such as a movie night, poker night, book club, etc. with your friends or have a monthly hangout or an annual weekend or a week-long get-away out of town with your friends. When you’re back you will have fresh new stories to share as well as experiencing a renewed sense of energy in your relationship with yourself as well as your partner. It also gives you time to miss each other.
If you are more introverted and value your alone time, take yourself out on solo dates – a movie or spa or do some form of exercise or something that has always appealed to you. Alone time is probably the fastest way to recharge your batteries and will have a positive impact on your relationship as well.
Wrap Up
While good sex as you age together will ensure quality intimacy time, it doesn’t guarantee you will maintain attraction for each other. Sometimes the best way to rejuvenate your relationship is to not just take steps to improve your sexual stamina but to temporarily turn your attention to fulfill your own needs. Remember to consciously invest in rest and play and your sense of independence, to rekindle your relationship from the inside out.