If you are celebrating your love for each other today, good on you. While Valentine’s Day has become very commercialized, it is useful for you to take every opportunity to celebrate your love.
Its common practice to encourage date night in relationships which is the opportunity to allocate couple time. Given the busyness of life, this allocated time allows for dedicated time to your relationship. While this can be useful I would like to encourage you to think about dating your partner consistently instead of or together with date night. Couples often speak about the honeymoon phase of their relationships being the easiest time. It’s often felt that it was easy because they were so many hormones and excitement at play which is a true and valid point. However, another reason this time seemed easier may also be because you were consistently making an effort to boost the relationship. I would like to encourage you to continue doing this. Make the time and effort in your relationship in order to reap the benefits. It is a misconception that relationships dont need time and effort. Do you not spend time and effort in all your other realtionships?: relationship with your parents, children, colleagues, etc. Then why not spend time and effort on the most important relationship with your life partner too.
The common reasons for not working on your relationship is that there’s no time or a lack of finances. Read below for a few relationship boosting ideas that are doable even without a whole lot of time or money.
- The daily 6 second kiss – instead of the quick peck kiss before you leave for work and get home try the 6 second kiss. Research shows that this improves connection, gets you into a more relaxed mode and makes you feel safe.
- Think creatively about date night – if finances doesnt allow for you to go out, dont despair. Coffee or wine together once a week after you put the kids to bed can make a world of difference to your relationship.
- Give each other a massage.
- Surprise your partner by doing a household chore you know they would appreciate.
- Every now and then make your partner a cup of tea or coffee.
- Send cute messages to each other as regularly as possible.
- A proper hello and goodbye ritual can be great. Similar to the 6 second kiss, developing a ritual for leaving and reuniting with each other can be very beneficial.
- Try to go to bed together as often as possible.
You will notice from my examples that they are small doable gestures. Relationships are built from the small regular gestures we do to let our partners know that we are choosing them. Relationships are not built from elaborate gestures once in a while. These elaborate gestures are always welcomed but not enough to sustain a relationship.
