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Our days are filled with activities that we have decided are our priorities. Like it or not, this is the truth. Whatever you choose to fill your day with are the activities you said yes to, and the things left behind are the activities you decided to say no to. Today we will talk about one twenty-minute meeting that I suggest you prioritize and schedule on both your calendar and your partner’s; that activity is the relationship huddle.

When I ask people what stops them from improving their relationship, the most common thing I hear is the most common thing I hear about ANY goal they have that isn’t really a priority: time. Time management is a topic for a future day, and I highly recommend you go back to a previous post I have written to help you get started in your time management success.

A couple of things that are true about our relationships:

• As we get comfortable in our romantic relationships, we start unintentionally reprioritizing our activities; we start incorporating “more important” activities and letting go of activities that keep us connected in our relationship.
• We start becoming less familiar with our partner, and when we attempt to connect, it seems difficult, so we put it off until some later, seemingly better, future moment.
• We start feeling awkward and uncomfortable when we have time together, not knowing what to talk about, so we add more things to our calendar, again unintentionally squeezing our relationship out even more.
• We keep avoiding our relationship until it eventually breaks, and trust that if you keep going down this path, it will break. When it breaks, you can then choose to make room on the calendar to work on mending it, or you can keep on avoiding it.

My suggestion this week is that you start scheduling this twenty-minute relationship tool in now, before you reach the breaking point.

Already reached the relationship breaking point?

That’s ok, you can still implement this twenty-minute tool I call the relationship huddle so let’s get to the implementation!

The Weekly Twenty-Minute Relationship Huddle

This twenty-minute meeting is meant to be deliberate, thorough, and brief. If you haven’t been having conversations with your romantic partner, you will want to resist the desire to unload and turn a twenty-minute plan into a 2-hour download.

KEEP A STRICT TIME SCHEDULE!

As you continue making this weekly meeting intentional and turning it into a habit, you’ll begin to notice communication channels opening up, allowing for longer conversations.

Relationship Huddle Five Step Process:

1. Catch up: this is where you catch up from your last session. Discuss any conversations you haven’t wrapped up, what discussions need to be had between now and your next huddle.
2. Build trust: talk about things you might have done wrong or how you could have done better, forgive or ask for forgiveness from anything left hanging, tell the other how you appreciate them.
3. How are we relying on each other: here is where you can share how the other is doing in meeting your needs, what might we need in the time between now and our next session. You all know that I am all about figuring out how to meet your own needs, so you’re not relying on someone else to do that, but there are needs that we appreciate; this is the time where you can share that. 
4. Calendar: check-in with each other about upcoming events and how you might like support through them.
5. Affection: here, you get to catch up on how you can intimately show up and support each other. 

Change and growth come one step at a time.

If you like the idea of the relationship huddle but are struggling with the implementation I want to invite you to schedule a free coaching session where I will guide you through to getting started or you can register to join Ask Christine Anything my monthly public free coaching call on the first Wednesday of every month, 12 pm CST.

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

💓💓💓💓💓💓💓

I am a life coach who works with individuals looking to change their current or future romantic relationship – my program helps them discover that they are enough. This self-love empowers and equips them to take continual, forward steps in achieving the healthy, romantic relationship they desire. Are you ready to explore this journey in your life? Schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s decide together if this is your next step to creating the life you’ve been dreaming of.

🎧 Prefer to listen to the audio version? Click here!

Vulnerable is an emotion that scares us; we avoid it like the plague because it creates an uncomfortable vibration in our body, creating a desire to protect ourselves from what is causing the feeling. I talked about how vulnerability feels to me in an earlier post about practicing vulnerability; I highly recommend reading it after digging into this post. Vulnerability is a productive emotion when we need to protect ourselves. Still, most often, it isn’t protecting us in a way that helps us build deeper connections with our romantic partner. Learning how to become vulnerable in our relationships is the one tool that will move us closer to our relationship goals the fastest. I have found that when I become aware of this emotion, the more curious I get about why I am feeling it, which invites me to challenge myself to stretch and grow in my relationship with Jeff.

Staying the same doesn’t require vulnerability, and it feels awful in a whole different way than the discomfort we feel when we put ourselves out on display to be judged, critiqued and ridiculed.

Anything we want to improve in our life requires us to step out of our comfort zone and be critiqued by others, but getting critiqued by the people that mean the most to us feels extra uncomfortable, it feels more real and closer to the possibility of us feeling rejected. First, I want to remind you that other people can’t reject you, only you can do that with your thinking. With that said, we do find it easier to discount many people’s opinions about putting ourselves out there and more difficult to let go of our partner’s reactions, or lack of reaction, to steps we take to improve our relationship.

How to become more vulnerable in your relationship

Start practicing small, intentional steps

We do this by noticing when we are feeling emotions like defensiveness, judgment, superiority, critical, and then learning how to process these emotions. Start paying attention to how these emotions feel in your body and then see if you can discover what thoughts you are thinking that produces the emotion you feel.

After you have done the above work, start thinking about how you want to act intentionally; what might you want to say that describes what is happening for you? Here is where I recommend you think of “I” statements where you draw the attention back to you, how you are feeling and why. An example could be, “I feel neglected when you are on your phone while we are alone together.”

I recommend you do all of this work through journaling, doing thought downloads, where you start to recognize and learn. All of the above work is done during a short journaling session to walk yourself through possible scenarios. With the above example of the phone use, how might you guess they will respond? Might they turn your comment back on you? During your journaling session, you can play out how you might hear their response and work on understanding instead of reacting. Possible responses along the line of “I hear what you are saying, right now, I am expressing how I feel, could we talk about that?” This allows you to focus on yourself and find solutions; then, you might ask them if they could do the same for you.

Ask yourself every day “How can I be honest and vulnerable in my relationship today?”

Make it a fun game where you are challenging yourself with new ways of opening up, seeing how it feels and the results you get from what you do. This process opens you up to learning and improving; you will see what is working, what isn’t and figure out what you can do differently.

Many of us haven’t been taught healthy ways of opening up and having productive conversations. Instead, we have been taught how to defend ourselves, blaming others for how we feel, which closes down the conversation, connection, and growth.

The more we practice vulnerability in our romantic relationships or any relationship, the easier it gets to be vulnerable because we see the fruit of our labor. Consider times when someone has been vulnerable with you, how you appreciated their vulnerability and were willing to listen to what they offered you. Most people will respond productively when we turn towards what is happening for us and not blame or criticize the other person.

In AwakenYou, we look at what results from your current responses are creating. Then we look at what you want to create in your romantic relationship, open and honest communication. Then we start the practice of learning how to take small steps of courage as you create the reality of that romantic goal.

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

💓💓💓💓💓💓💓

I am a life coach who works with individuals looking to change their current or future romantic relationship – my program helps them discover that they are enough. This self-love empowers and equips them to take continual, forward steps in achieving the healthy, romantic relationship they desire. Are you ready to explore this journey in your life? Schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s decide together if this is your next step to creating the life you’ve been dreaming of.

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