Patrick and I just returned from 3 full days of camping at a secluded spot on the river.
Our time felt like a good dose of nurturing medicine to my body and also for our relationship.
We allowed ourselves to fully relax, sleep in, read for hours, have deep conversations, and enjoyed some serious play in the cool rapids and adventures up the river.
I think as couples, we can forget the incredible value of sharing extended unstructured, undistracted time together. When there’s no screens to watch, pets or people to distract us, chores to accomplish, we can fully focus on our connection.
And we all crave our partners’ undivided loving attention. In fact, I think it’s essential for a healthy relationship.
But sadly, many people don’t receive enough of this undivided attention from their partner. They may share evenings or weekends doing projects, watching movies, visiting with friends or family. Or they may share tasks like cooking and cleaning, taking care of the kids, etc. But often even these times can be riddled with phone calls, screens to watch, emails to complete, business to tend to, kids to care for, etc. It’s just not the same as spending time together WITHOUT stuff to do or other people in the space.
When we have extended time together, especially in nature, there is an unwinding and a deepening that can happen, if we let it.
With nowhere to be, no one else to see, and nothing to accomplish besides cooking, cleaning and eating, we drop in to the rhythm of “nature time” but also “connection time,” where the focus is on spending quality time together more than it is on what we’re going to Do.
And I think all couples can benefit from this.
So this is a call to encourage you to carve out some cherished Relationship Time, where it’s just the two of you, doing something you both like to do, and ideally, a lot more Being and relaxing than Doing.
And then the trick is to bring this back into your daily work life. How can you create special evenings where you turn off all screens and obligations and give your partner your undivided attention? What kind of games could you play? What kind of connection could you make when you had just 1 – 2 hours of solid attention?
To your healthy relationship life,
Robyn
