Episode 138: 15 Simple Ways to Feel Closer in Your Marriage

Welcome to the Loving Truth Podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence, and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host relationship expert and certified master life coach, Sharon Pope. Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope and this is the Loving Truth. Every single one of the clients that find their way to my work are feeling disconnected from their partner.

And so what I wanna talk about today is what is it that makes us feel close to someone? We'll first talk about like how we get to that place of disconnection, but I also want to share with you some very real tangible practices that you can put into place so that you can feel closer in your marriage.

Now, the disconnection that we feel inside of our relationships, that doesn't just happen overnight. It's not like one big thing, like we had this big argument and now we're forever disconnected. It happens like a very slow, progressive sort of death of a relationship. It starts with when we begin to divide and conquer in our lives, like there's so much to do that you know, you're gonna do these things and I'm gonna do these things.

Which means that we have different priorities as we move through our day, and we don't often come back together and share what was going on for each of us. So this is where the living separately, but under the same roof really begins. We think we're being efficient. And maybe we are in terms of getting things done, but we're not being efficient or productive as it relates to the health and wellbeing of our relationship.

Then we stop communicating about the little things, the little day-to-day mundane things that you communicate to the person who's your person. And we start avoiding having the difficult conversations because we're not trying to create an argument. We just wanna keep the peace. The difficult conversations feel difficult, and so we stay in this safe zone of only talking about the kids, our family, maybe the home.

You know, maybe work. Maybe work, and the weather. Stay in those safe places. You know, we don't really, we forget to, to talk about what's going on for you as an individual. This person that's my partner, we lose the, the real genuine curiosity about them as an individual. And then also we avoid the conversations about our relationship and the health of our relationship.

We spend more time on our phones and watching tv. That is just, that's happening. Technology and its ability to overtake our lives is not getting easier. It's only we're becoming more and more dependent upon that. And if you're just sitting there watching TV every night for two or three hours with your partner, that is not gonna do anything to help the two of you feel closer.

And if you're sitting in the same room together, but you're both on your phone, scrolling, social media, paying attention to everybody else's lives, that's not gonna do anything to bring the two of you closer. So technology is another one of those things that makes our lives efficient in many ways, but it doesn't help our relationship and it's part of what creates that disconnection.

We also will stop being affectionate with one another. Over time and the sex will start to become less and less frequent with one another. And if you have ever been, you know, laying in bed, sleeping 12 inches from your partner, but feeling completely alone, you know that proximity itself does not equate to closeness in a marriage.

You're living under the same roof. You're essentially living, you know, within three feet of each other. Anytime you're both at home, three to five feet from each other kind of thing. Maybe like one's in one room and you're in the other room, right? You're not that far apart. Proximity is there. You might be sleeping in the same bed together where you're a foot apart, but you don't feel close.

So proximity alone does not create closeness and. Is true, particularly when the kids were young because everything gets so busy when the kids are young is we didn't slow down and spend time together, invest in our relationship as a couple. Like we might have done a lot as a family together, but I think sometimes very well-intentioned parents, they wanna be there for every moment of their.

Child's experience. They don't wanna miss a thing because they love them so much and they feel such a sense of responsibility as they should. But well-intentioned parents sometimes will think that if I, if I spend time investing just in my marriage, that that's somehow taking something away from my kids.

And what no one really told us was that. When you invest in your marriage, you're investing in your kids because your marriage is essentially the foundation upon which the family is built. And so you are their stability. And so when you two get unstable, it makes the kids' lives unstable. But when you two are rock solid, the kids are much more likely to be rock solid.

And no one really told us that. So these are all the little subtle ways that we, over time, become really disconnected from our partners. And so now I wanna give you some very real pragmatic tools that you can begin applying in your life so that you can feel closer to your partner. There's 15 of them, all right?

So get ready or get a pen and paper. You don't have to do all 15. Pick one or two, maybe just pick one and do that consistently for a week, and then you can come back and pick another one. But I'm gonna give you 15 different options. Okay. The first one, we have to begin with communication. We just do.

There's no way around it. You can not have connection with another human being if the two of you don't communicate. And so communication is the basis. For your relationship. And so it's a really, really important piece. And we were never really taught how to do this well either. And so it becomes easier to not communicate because if we don't feel like we're successful at it or we don't feel like putting in the effort, then it's easier to just shut down.

But don't do that. Instead, you've gotta open up. The lines of communication. You've got to be able to talk to your partner. We need to be able to, if we're gonna, I'm gonna extend this. So number two is about making ourselves vulnerable to our partner. And what I mean by that, and this extends the idea of communicating with your partner, is communicating about things that really matter and things that might feel vulnerable to share.

So that might be a difficult experience. Or sharing your feelings about something, those can feel a little risky. You can feel a little exposed because you don't know what your partner's reaction is going to be, and so that's why we withhold those things. But when you create a space for vulnerability, when you share something that you wouldn't just share with your next door neighbor, then it creates a space between the two of you.

That feels special, maybe even sacred because you're sharing things with your partner that nobody else knows. And so that private space becomes a special space between the two of you. So that's why there is no path to intimacy in a marriage that doesn't walk through vulnerability. Is, you've gotta be able to create that safe, special space between the two of you.

And that starts with sharing things that are gonna feel vulnerable. So please try to not shy away from vulnerability. Number three is don't judge your partner. There's nothing that shuts down vulnerability quicker than when you feel judged. If, if your partner shares something with you and you make fun of them, or you judge them in some way.

I know you wouldn't do this on purpose, but you might get uncomfortable, and so you might say something that's like, well, who would do that? Or, you shouldn't feel that way. Only insecure people feel that way. That's a judgment as opposed to just diving in and going. Tell me more about why you think you felt that way.

Right? Like hold space and not judgment Number four. Listen, listen to your partner. This is so simple, and yet we don't do it very often. So many of us, you know, we have things we want to say. We have thoughts and opinions we want to share, but we don't often genuinely listen to our partner or we pretend like we're listening, but we're not really.

We're scrolling on our phones, or we're thinking about our to-do list, or we're just sort of half listening and not really engaged. We're not leaning in, paying attention, asking questions, being interested. Like my husband, he has a YouTube channel that's all around phishing. Okay. I have never fished.

Phishing is not my jam. But it is definitely his thing. Like he loves fishing and he'll tell me about the fishing spot he found or what he caught that day, or did he lose his lure or who he met when he was out fishing. Like he'll tell me all those little things and it's not because I'm passionate about fishing and I won't sit there and listen to it because I'm passionate about fishing.

No, I'm passionate about my marriage. My husband feeling good in the marriage and me feeling good in the marriage. So even though it's not my thing that I'm passionate about, when he talks about it, I genuinely try to lean in because it's important to him. So if it's important to him, why wouldn't it be important to me?

Our partners want to be seen. Heard and understood the same way that we do, and if we are not willing to give it, then we can't ask for it in return. So friends, listen more, engage more with your partner when they're sharing something with you, it's important to them, so make it important to you. Number five is ask for forgiveness.

Forgiveness is something that we have to do over and over and over again inside of marriage. It's just the nature of it that we are going to screw things up. We're gonna hurt one another. Occasionally we're gonna betray one another and we didn't mean to. But when we do, we need to be able to ask for forgiveness.

We need to be able to say, I'm sorry, or I could have done that better. Please forgive me. Any of those things when you are in an adult relationship, this is part of adulting is owning our shit, right? And so we've gotta be able to adult, which means we've gotta be able to own our choices, our actions, and our behaviors.

And when we screw it up, which inevitably we will, because we're human beings, we need to be able to ask for forgiveness. Number six is celebrate one another. This is such a big deal. You should be cheering on your partner. You should be their biggest fan. You want them to win. I promise you do. Because when they win, they bring their best to the relationship.

So cheer them on. Number seven, share experiences together. Create memories together. And this can be like going to a new city for a weekend and exploring, that's creating memories. It can be, and by the way, this new city can be in your backyard. It can be a new part of town that you've never been to that you're just gonna spend an afternoon exploring.

It doesn't even have to be a weekend away. Um, you might. I don't know. You might cook together, cook a new meal, like come up with a new recipe and cook it together. You might volunteer together. I. This was something that, so years ago, Derek and I, it was Thanksgiving day and we spent, I don't know, two or three hours we'd gotten connected with Meals on Wheels and we spent two or three hours taking meals to people that were home bound.

And we still talk about that to this day. Almost every Thanksgiving we bring it up because we have the intention of doing it again. But that was creating a memory together. So doing some volunteer work together, and if these. New. If these experiences that you're doing together are new or adventurous in any way, you get a double hit here because that's what's going to keep desire alive in your relationship.

If we just do the same thing over and over again, if we go to the same restaurant, we eat the same thing, we just, we always go see a movie and then we get a pizza. We always like, and you do that for 10 years. Of course there's not desire, you know how. Fire needs air, desire needs newness. It needs new experiences, and ideally something a little bit outside of your comfort zone.

Okay, number eight, learn something new together when you are learning. Something new. You're using your prefrontal cortex. You are, you're automatically growing because you're learning something new and you're doing it together. So this can be. Taking a class, like take a dance class, take a cooking class, take a painting class.

You can take a wine tasting, like an educational wine tasting or whiskey tasting or something like that. You can learn a new language together where you end up quizzing each other every night, where you each learn a new, one word a day, and then you quiz each other and you each, then you get two words a day that you each learn.

You can speak. To, uh, to one another in this new language, right? Like, look for ways that you can learn something new together. That's a way to feel closer to your partner. Number nine, oh, this is such a big one. Insert more fun into your marriage. I think we get so busy we forget to have fun. We don't give ourselves permission to have fun.

It's like, oh, who has time for that? I have so much to do. I'm so important. I'm so busy. So go to a comedy club, laugh a little dance in the kitchen together, like turn on some music while you're cooking and go over to your partner and start dancing with them. My husband does this all the time. I'm gonna tell you something, there's something, there's something really special about having a partner that makes you laugh, that gets you, you know, just breaks up the monotony of the day and can just start dancing with you out of nowhere.

Play a game together, right? Pick a game, whatever it is. Our thing is backgammon. Like, so you know, a couple nights a week we're like, Hey, wanna play backgammon? Yep. That's the thing we do together. It's just something that's fun. It could be a card game, it could be checkers. I don't care. The point is just anything that feels fun and you can also tell jokes.

So this is kind of a new thing that, that we've gotten into and we've really gotten into it because of our nieces. They love to tell us jokes. They. I, I think they're budding comedians personally. Um, but then they ask us like, do you have any jokes for us? And we ask them, do you have any jokes? So we're always looking like he's looking for dad jokes to be able to tell them clean jokes.

And so then, you know, we're telling each other these silly kid jokes and it's just a bit of levity. That's all that's happening, but inserting some fun and laughing together and not taking yourself so seriously, I promise you, is a way to feel closer to your partner. And like I said, there's something really special about being in a relationship where you can laugh together.

Number 10, take on a project together. It doesn't matter what the project is, it can be redecorating a room, it can be planting a garden, it can be cleaning out your garage. It can be anything like that. It can be, Hey, we wanna take an amazing trip to Italy. Let's find ways to save up our money so that we can afford to take this amazing trip that we wanna take.

That's a project planning a trip, saving for a trip. So look for opportunities to take on a project together that's gonna help the two of you to feel more like a team. Because you're both working towards the same thing. Number 11, embrace nonsexual physical touch. What I mean by that is hold hands, rest your hand on their shoulder, on their back, on their leg, on their arm.

When they're near you, touch them in some nonsexual way. Right, because here's what happens, and this is important to consider. If the only time the two of you ever touch is when it has to lead to sex, like we only touch whenever we're gonna have sex, then what's going to happen is that you're gonna reach for your partner in some way and you're gonna find them recoiling.

And the reason is because at that particular exact moment, they're not ready to have sex and they've associated, every time you touch them with, that's leading to sex. And so if they're not magically feeling in the mood for sex at that particular moment when you just are brushing by them in the kitchen and touch the small of their back as you do, and they recoil from you, and then they start to question the marriage, you start to think, oh my gosh.

They don't want me to touch them anymore. And now that feels like a risk for you to reach for them. And now we don't touch each other at all anymore. Like it becomes a whole thing. So we've gotta normalize non-sexual touch and make that an active part of our relationship. That affection, I know. We were taught as kids.

PDA is a bad thing. Public display of affection is a bad thing. You don't do that. You only do that in private, or maybe that's what you saw your parents do. Like I didn't really see a lot of affection between my parents, even though I know that they were affectionate. They just did it in private. And so that's what I learned.

I had to unlearn that that's what, even though that's what was normalized in my life, I wanted something different. So I had to unlearn. One thing and relearn how to be affectionate in my relationship, and I love the times when d and I are affectionate with each other. It really feeds me and it certainly helps both of us feel closer to one another.

So non-sexual touch number 12, express gratitude. For one another. I don't think we do this enough in our relationships of just saying thank you. A simple thank you, and not just on like birthdays or anniversaries. Like that's when we say, thanks for all you do for us. That's really general. I want you to be specific on the day-to-day mundane things and just say thank you.

Even if you think, well, they're supposed to do that. Say thank you anyway. Right. Thanks for making my coffee exactly the way I like it. Thanks for offering to boil some water so that I can have tea before I go to bed. Thanks for taking out the dogs so that I can relax, right? Those are the little thank yous that just go a long way.

Show some appreciation for one another. Express gratitude when you have that opportunity. The other thing, by the way, that will happen, not just will the two of you feel closer, but also whatever you express gratitude for, you'll get more of. They'll do it more often. Number 13, ask for help and support from your partner.

I think sometimes we, we like applaud ourselves for being able to do everything ourselves as a rugged individual and like that's some medal of honor. Your partner wants to help and support you. I promise you they do. So ask for that help and support. It helps them to feel good about you and about the relationship when they can help you.

We're human beings. We're in this life together. I. Let's help each other and let's ask for that. Help in our marriages. It'll help us to feel closer now. Number 14, be the one to plan the thing. Whether it's a date night out or a class that we're gonna take together, or a vacation that we wanna take a weekend away, be the one to plan the thing.

So often these things that we know we need to do to invest in our relationship so that we can feel closer as a couple, they never happen because we keep waiting for our partner to plan it. And we have justifiable reasons. We're like, but I do so much, he should do this. I get it. Someone's gotta do it, so be the one who's willing to do it.

It doesn't take that much effort. It probably takes more mental energy tormenting yourself about, well, why can't he do it? I already do so much. It takes more mental energy keeping score than it does to just make a hotel reservation or a dinner reservation, or go online, search for a class and sign the two of you up for it one Tuesday night.

Right? That doesn't take that much effort. The last one that I wanna share, and if this is gonna be an unexpected one, is number 15, is take exquisite care of yourself. Yes. If you want to feel closer in your marriage, I want you taking such great care of yourself because when you feel healthy and vibrant, and alive, all these things that I just listed feel so much easier.

And they feel more natural, they're gonna come to you very naturally. So you taking care of yourself is investing in the relationship and is helping the two of you to feel closer. It's when you don't feel good in your body, when you don't feel healthy, when you're exhausted and you've got nothing left for the relationship, that's when of course you're not going to take any of these actions.

And so of course you're not gonna feel very close to your partner. Alright. I know I've given you tons to think about. I want you to go back and re-listen to this and pick one thing that you're going to do this week and the next week come back and choose the second thing that you're going to do The third week, pick a third thing.

The fourth week, pick a fourth thing and one month from today just by focusing on one thing a week. That's all you have to do. One thing a week. One month from today, you could feel closer to your partner. Creates possibility that didn't exist this morning before you listened to this podcast. I hope that's helpful.

Until next time, please take really good care. If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a Truth and Clarity session with a member of my team on the call. We'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage.

Go to Clarity for my marriage.com to fill out an application. Now that's clarity for my marriage.com.