Yes, maybe you’re exhausted but you’re open to the wisdom your “lived life as a couple” will energize you, your family. You make the extra effort, here and now, for your partner, for yourself, for your family. You realize you’re honoring the vows of your marriage, to honor one another.

One person talks for five minutes about his or her experience of his/her life right now. He or she talks about himself, owning his life, her experience, his feelings, without any blame toward the other, only presence of self. (And this is a practice that takes practice.) The other person listens deeply, no cross talking. He or she knows that in moments he or she will have to reflect back to his or her partner. He or she will have to say, “I heard you when you said…” or “I really saw you when you spoke about…” (And yes, maybe you feel like you’re in a SNL Stuart Smiley skit, but you don’t care, because you know you need connection with your partner.)

And then you pause. And switch. The listener becomes the speaker, the speaker the listener. And the connection is deeper now in just 25 minutes than on a date where you spent $200-300 on a babysitter and dinner (or maybe you never got the date because you’re broke) to stare at each other, bored or unconsciously drinking too much, to deal with the reality of your disconnection. For some, the alcohol is medicine; for most not. TOr maybe you do the date also. And this 25 minutes of connection makes the date even that much better.

And here it is, simple meaningful connection, held by a structure of communication of just witnessing and seeing each other. That’s all you have to do. See, hear, and witness one other. That’s it. Put aside the complaints and misses of one another and be present to see one another. And now you’re connected. A lived life as a couple emerges. You are bigger as a couple, bigger as a family.

Do it once, twice, three times, and keep doing it. It’s not an end at all solution to everything but a massive gateway into each other, into a lived life, into a space for sharing dreams, fears, passions. And over time, as you get good at it, it will be the ability to be in “normalized differentiation”, meaning you get to see your differences, accept them and not be alienated by them. And this takes time. It doesn’t happen just once. You have to bench press the 75 pounds first, the first few times, before in time, you can lift 250. You have to build the muscle together. And the initial commitment and discipline to connect like this eventually becomes an energizing act and commitment to love.

Connection alone increases the joy, the love, and downplays the “problems” while also enabling a fluid and more trustworthy space for problems to be resolved. This is what therapy often misses, when it’s all processing and no action to practice outside session.

And to be clear you don’t do this because you have problems. Everyone has problems. You don’t NOT do it because it feels like therapy. It’s not therapy. It’s relationship exercising. You do it for each other, for yourself, and for the health of your family.

And this is a start. Just a start. From here you go to vows of Awakeness and Passion or to architecting a Relational Home. But more on that, another time.

And yet most couples can’t do this. It’s too contrived or it’s too awkward. They’re not willing to risk their misery. But the truth is you can’t do it alone. A few can and that’s amazing. But most need a team, a court of support. They need accountability. They need an initial debrief. They need a community to hold them. Because let’s face it, a couple alone cannot take on the world. But as a couple, with a lived life, you have a chance.

So how do you get the support you need? Find an elder, a family member, who will support you in this. And yet few of us have that. So then, find a relationship coach, a good one. Invest in a couple’s workshop that delivers on actual tools you can take home. Join a group where other couples are trying to do the have a lived life as a couple and want to cheer you and your partner on.

Couples lose connection. All too easily. Don’t let it happen to you.

Check out the January 28 Powerful Man, Impassioned Woman Workshop