3 Reflective Questions to Ask Your Partner (or Potential Partner) Today To Get the Love You Want
I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately! What is it? How do you find it? How would you recognize love even if it were knocking down your door? Love goes way past someone’s looks and whether or not you find them attractive. Lately (judge gently), I’ve been watching a lot of reality TV shows on this exact topic to see if I could come up with some formula in what I’m observing that actually makes these relationships work. I’m not naive — I do know some of this is staged, but it’s also to say that some couples stay together such as on the shows Love is Blind, Love on the Spectrum and Indian Matchmaker. From these shows, personal experiences and experiences with clients, I came up with 3 questions to ask your current or potential partner to move towards getting the love you want.
We learn how to love from our original love objects: our parents! So you can start by observing how both you and your partner were originally loved by these people and also the model that these two people (maybe there was one, single parents unite!) presented around love. This is the original model or blueprint that is hardwired. This blueprint is completely workable, but then you must be mindful of creating new loving experiences for yourself and with your partner to start to do the reparative work.
3 Reflective Questions for your Current Partner:
How do (or would) you know that you are loved by me?
How would you like to be loved by me?
How could I help you feel safer and more understood?
Some people feel loved by getting flowers every week. Some people feel loved by getting regular hugs. Some people feel loved by hearing they are accomplished people and great moms and dads. Some people feel loved by being listened to at the end of a hard day. Some people feel loved when you do the laundry for them … just because. Though you can’t know these ways of loving unless you ask.
When I’ve reflected on my past relationships that didn’t work or invite others to do so, I often do a relationship review. How did I love? Did I show this enough in the way this particular person was asking for it? How did they love me? Did they give me the love that I was asking for and deserving of? This doesn’t mean that partners can offer to meet every need of the other person, but there is a consistent effort to try to understand each other in a deep, continual way and a consistent bid for connection that happens weekly, if not daily.
It may seem quite simple (and require deeper work in therapy or couple’s counseling to uncover base needs and childhood wounding being recreated in a dynamic), but a good way to begin would be to create a small Needs List for each other —this method is described extensively in Dr. Harville Hendrix & Dr. Helen Kelly Hunt’s book Getting the Love You Want. To simplify, create a Needs List that each person can go over—perhaps they can regularly commit to meeting 2 to 3 of these needs out of 10 per week. Your partner is allowed to go through the list and cross out any needs they know they can’t (or don’t want to) meet, however they must commit to meeting the 2-3/week. By meeting some of these needs and bids for connection each week, feelings of love, care and intimacy can be created and produced. Why should I have to do this you might ask? Well, your brain and your partner’s brain needs to experience feelings of love and connection on a regular basis or else…ding ding ding….we become resentful, miserable, distant and disconnected. So, even if you feel like throwing in the towel today, give this a shot and see what happens! The experiment is worth a go.
