5 Conversations That Will Enrich Your Relationship
Are you wanting to deepen your connection with your partner and not sure how?
Or maybe you’re ready to have conversations with your partner that move below the surface and don’t know where to start.
I’ve found that there are 8 conversations you can have that will deepen your connection and enrich your relationship.
To read all eight, order my upcoming book, Fierce Love: Creating a Love That Lasts – One Conversation at a Time, where I give you a roadmap having these fierce conversations and how to navigate them so you can have the relationship you desire.
In this article, I’ll share with you five of the eight conversations to a better romantic relationship:
- Conversation 1: Do I want this relationship?
- Conversation 2: Clarifying Conditions — Yours, Mine, Ours
- Conversation 3: How are We Really?
- Conversation 4: Getting Past how are you? I’m fine.
- Conversation 5: Let me Count the Ways
Many couples struggle to communicate with each other and don’t know how to deepen their connection. Conversations are the best (and in my opinion, only) way to fix a lack of communication in your relationship. When you have the conversations that matter, you’re able to understand each other more and connect deeper than ever before.
If you choose to be courageous in your romantic relationships and have the fierce conversations, you’ll create more of the love you desire in your life.
Here are five (of the eight) conversations you can have with your spouse or partner to enrich your relationship.
1. Do I want this relationship?
As you’ll hear me say often, all conversations you have are with yourself first. That is especially true for this conversation. Eventually, you’ll engage your partner, but first, you must be honest and real with who you are and what you desire in a relationship.
This conversation helps you define your own idea of a successful relationship and life, starting with you.
Alignment with others comes when we are living in the way we want to live. Bettering your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship to work on. If you don’t enjoy the relationship you have with you, you aren’t going to create an enjoyable relationship with others.
Ask yourself: “Am I who I am meant to be?” Being who you are meant to be means living with integrity.
This conversation helps you to find your integrity, take action on it, and live it. It helps you get clear on where you are going, why you are going there, who is going with you and how you will get there.
When you’re ready to consider your partner in this conversation, ask yourself: “Is this the person I want to go through challenging times with?”
When you bring your partner into the conversation. you can discuss each other’s values, gain knowledge on how best to support each other, and discover conversations worth diving into deeper.
2. Clarify conditions — yours, mine, ours
There are conditions to love and it’s important to define them.
The question you’re asking yourself (and then eventually with your partner) is “what conditions are necessary for us to both stay committed and happy in this relationship?”
Define these conditions for yourself, then define them with your partner. Is monogamy a must? What are your deal breakers? What do you want for yourself and your relationship? What areas will you need to compromise?
Clarifying your conditions is how you can create a relationship that actually lasts and this conversation can even be energizing. When you align your goals and values, you start to believe in what you can achieve together and are able to have deeper conversations like this more often.
This conversation tends to bring couples closer together because it allows a depth of understanding that didn’t once exist. When your understanding is deepened, you pave the way for a long-term, healthy relationship that enriches over time.
3. How are we really?
Relationships that fail or flatline do so because they didn’t take a temperature check throughout the relationship. They didn’t check in with each other.
They let too many “gradually’s” become one big “suddenly.”
When you aren’t consistently checking in with each other, couples can break up because they’ve lost their ability to tolerate each other.
In this conversation, you face the facts. In what ways are you different from your partner and how much does that impact your relationship?
A study done in Australia concluded that “communication problems” were the number one reason couples divorced. Communication is critical. What topic are you avoiding with your partner? Whether it’s your finances, sex life, or even addiction, you must talk about it if you want your relationship to survive!
This conversation is a great start.
In my upcoming book, Fierce Love: Creating a Love That Lasts – One Conversation at a Time, I’ll give you step by step instructions on how you and your partner can get to know each other’s similarities, differences, quirks, negotiables, non-negotiables, fears, dreams, and behaviors.
Avoiding this conversation in your relationship is not going to do you any favors.
4. Getting past how are you? I’m fine.
This conversation is meant to take you and your partner deeper.
We are often stuck at a surface level of communication with our partner. This can be frustrating and leave us wanting more.
If the “How are you?”, “I’m fine” line is tired and old and you are ready to re-spark the fire with your partner, this conversation is a great go-to because this conversation is about your partner. It’s not about you and it’s not about your relationship.
This conversation can help you achieve intimacy and connection faster than any of the other eight conversations I give you.
Whether it’s a situation at work or a general dissatisfaction your partner is having, this conversation gives him or her the floor to identify an issue and decide how to take action moving forward.
In the Fierce Love Journal that accompanies the Fierce Love book, I lay out example conversations and questions you can ask your partner to keep the flow going. The key is to listen and allow silence to take the conversation deeper. You’ll come out on the other side with a better understanding of your partner and be able to give the attention and space he or she needs to come to the conclusion of an issue they are having.
This conversation is meant to go slow so it can go where it needs to go. In doing it this way, your partner will feel seen, heard, and understood and the love between you will grow.
5. Let me count the ways
This conversation is all about appreciation and staying current with your partner.
In Ken Blanchard’s One Minute Manager, he says that the best way to give feedback is in real time. I wholeheartedly agree and believe that in order to have a fierce relationship, giving feedback three hundred and sixty-five days a year and face to face (if possible) is required.
When your partner is doing something you love, tell them! Let giving them one minute or less of gratitude be your default setting instead of regularly resorting to negativity.
What are some things you appreciate about your partner? When was the last time you told them that?
Giving moments of gratitude in the moment can take your relationship deeper than a thoughtless “I love you” because the specific and unique reasons we love our partner are often the most meaningful.
This holiday season, in what ways can you offer positive feedback to your partner? Are they allstars at packing for the whole family? Do they thrive being around your relatives? Let them know and watch your love grow!
Chart a new course
These five conversations have the power to change the course of your relationship and allow you to find love with your partner. By practicing fierce love, you’re choosing to go to the hard places to have the hard conversations so that you can see the truth of your relationship.
In my new book, Fierce Love: Creating a Love That Lasts – One Conversation at a Time, I give you EIGHT conversations that you can have to enrich your relationship. The final three conversations teach you how to have hard conversations with your spouse or partner. Conversation 6 (It’s not you, it’s me), Conversation 7 (It’s not me, it’s you), and Conversation 8 (I love you, but I don’t love our life together) are some of the hardest ones to have and best ones to grow (or let go of) your relationship and create the love you truly desire.
You don’t want to miss out on them! Order my book on Amazon today!
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