I’ve been happily married to my beautiful wife, Shelley, for over 30 years, my 5 daughters are best friends, and my team has always felt valued and cherished and therefore has helped me to build great businesses.
I understand the key elements of building and maintaining intimate relationships, which is why I’m able to achieve great things personally and professionally.
As the African proverb states;
“If You Want To Go Fast, Go Alone. If You Want To Go Far, Go Together.”
Your success is in direct relation to your relationships, which is why I strongly encourage you to watch this week’s video below and see if you’ve been loving and appreciating your spouse/kids/team the wrong way.
In our last blog we stated that the most important relationship in your life is with yourself. Every other relationship in our life is just a mirror of that one.
Today we’re going to focus on the second most important relationship we have:
Our relationship with our significant other/intimate partner.
Categorically we typically get into relationships with our disowned parts. With people who are polar opposites than us with different characteristics, experiences, and ways of viewing the world. That’s why they can drive us crazy!
Here are the key things you can do to enhance your intimate relationship to expand your life.
The reason we typically get into relationships with our disowned parts is because our purpose on earth is to experience life, express ourselves, and learn to appreciate all aspects of the world… not just our own views.
This allows us to grow as people. The bigger the person we are and the more whole we are will translate to improve the quality of our life.
1. Public Display of Affection
When I first went to my wife’s house when we were first dating, I saw more displays of affection than I had ever seen in my entire life! Mom and dad used to snuggle on the couch with kids piled on top. Meanwhile at my house, if my brother sat even three feet from me there’d be a fist fight!
Not right, not wrong, just different experiences. We both grew and learned from each other – now there is hybrid of the two worlds that we use in our relationship and have passed onto our kids.
2. Internal & External Processors
I’m much more of an external processor: I talk, I move, I like to process information as I speak and get into dialogue because the more I speak the more I process.
My wife is more of an internal processor: stay quiet, process information, think a lot, and then respond.
You can imagine the dynamic in the beginning of our relationship as I would want to engage and create dialogue while she would like to stop and think before she ever answered. So her quietness would drive me crazy! I wanted her to talk more, engage more and increase the volume!
How did that work?
It didn’t work at all. She would clam up and quiet down which would drive me crazier. Now we can laugh about it but back then it would create a lot of frustration.
Understand your partner and how they process information is one simple thing to help deepen your relationship.
3. Love Languages
This is Gary Chapman’s great writing! We tend to get into relationships with our opposites meaning the way we give and receive love can differ.
My primary love language is Words of Affirmation. I want her to tell me that I am talented, special and loved.
My wife’s primary love language is Physical Touch. She wants lots of hugs, kisses, and hand holding because that lets her know that she is loved.
Early in our relationship, she was all over me like a wet blanket! She’s hugging me and fondling me (I mean I’m a guy I like physical touch and all). This was kind of smothering so I told her to step back which obviously hurt her feelings as she was just expressing her love language. On the other hand, I was always telling her how talented and gorgeous she was. That wasn’t necessarily the thing that filled her love tank – she would rather get a hug or her butt squeezed!
We had to teach each other how to give love to each other the way we wanted to receive it. I taught her to give me words of affirmation and she taught me how to show love through physical touch.
These are simple things but are underneath the auspices of different or polar opposites so you need to watch for these in your relationship!
The quality of your life is directly proportional to the quality of your relationship. Enhance the relationship with yourself and your significant other. It will definitely make a huge difference in your life like it did in ours.
We’ve been married for 33 years and we won’t say it’s all been easy – it’s had it’s growth moments! I certainly feel that we are more in love now than we were when we first met. Harmonizing and optimizing relationships will make a huge difference in your life.
Take the time to learn about your team’s love language as well. A team that feels valued and appreciated is a team that will give you 100% to support your growth goals. If you keep telling your CA they’re doing a wonderful job but their love language is physical touch, they might FEEL more valued by a spa gift card.
You can’t put a price on loyalty!
If you’re someone that would like to dig into this and invest the time then we recommend doing a Couple’s Retreat. We take a few days off the grid away from responsibilities so we can find out who we really are and what we really want. From this space we can learn about each other and how to REALLY love each other.
If you’d like to learn about Full Circle’s Couple Retreat click here! We’d love to chat with you.