Last month, my couples therapist gave my husband and me the hardest “simple” task we’ve ever had: Look into each other’s eyes.
Seriously. She wanted us to sit facing each other and just stare into each other’s eyes. For. Three. Minutes. No talking, no touching, just looking. Yikes!
I’ll be honest, Mama: it freaked me out so much that we put it off for a few days. When we finally did try it, we had to stop at the two-minute mark it was so awkward. We kept laughing and averting our eyes. But after practicing a handful of times and — full disclosure — adding a little Usher in the background (wink, wink), we began to get more comfortable.
you have to make the consistent effort to check in with each other.
So why was this necessary in the first place? Making a partnership into a lasting source of joy for both people is hard enough on its own. And, as you know, Mama, adding kids into the mix is like adding fireworks to a party. They are beautiful and awe-inspiring, but they make it hard to focus on anything else.
And yet, as I explore more deeply in my co-parenting class, Parenting in Partnership, there are real advantages to mindfully making time for each other. Having a solid relationship makes you happier as individuals and as a couple. It makes you better parents. But to achieve this, you have to make the consistent effort to check in with each other. (And don’t worry — you can do this in ways besides staring into each other’s eyes. The Usher, though? Yeah, let’s keep that on repeat.)
My husband and I are really good at “going big” in our relationship.
We’ve taken big trips to Italy and Spain. We’ve even run with the bulls (well, not me, but my husband). We’ve gone to New Orleans for Jazz Fest and danced into the night with 500 of our closest friends. “Treat yourself!” we joke when we’re splurging on a really good time and feel like we’re on top of the world in our relationship.
These over-the-top experiences are, in many ways, the highlights of a lifetime. But between parenthood, a mortgage, and Covid-19, opportunities for “going big” are few and far between. And that’s okay. Not only is it harder to connect over big experiences, but creating a life together — that background to those standout moments — is where both the work and the real joy live.
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU AND YOUR PARTNER LAUGHED SO HARD TOGETHER THAT YOU CRIED?
When was the last time you knew what the other was thinking without saying a word?
When was the last time you did something for your partner, not because s/he asked but because you intuitively understood it was what was needed?
As co-parents and partners, my husband and I have had to learn to connect in smaller, more consistent ways. Cue the eye-staring. But even that got easier over time. And we saw the benefit of taking small opportunities to connect.
There are lots of ways to do this. Here are just a few to get you started:
- Sit down together for five minutes after you put the kids to bed, and talk about your day. Talk about what made you laugh or what is on your mind or what you saw on YouTube. The topic doesn’t matter! But the talking (and listening!) does.
- Pick up together. One thing’s for sure: Having kids in the house means there’s always something that needs tidying. Just accomplishing something together — folding laundry, stashing toys, wiping counters, whatever — lets you spend time together and, cheesy as it sounds, create a productive, peaceful energy.
- Crash on the sofa and watch a favorite TV show together. Hold hands while you do it. Or cuddle up.
No matter what you do, the idea is to spend one-on-one time together while finding ways to really see the person behind the partner.
For my husband and me, staring into each other’s eyes ended up being a pretty cool way to connect — a simpler, undistracted, totally embarrassing way, but a cool way nonetheless.
I know first-hand that working mom life is hard, but I also know it doesn’t have to be impossible.
Trust me. The best way to get unstuck isn’t to work harder. It’s to use a framework that gets real results, no matter what area you need to tackle first.