Joy might save your relationship.
What is joy?
Joy is an emotional mix of delight and happiness. Joy uplifts us at our deepest level of self, and often inspires love, excitement, hope, fulfillment, and a feeling of richness to life. Joy is simple, yet also deeply impactful.
Joy is an emotion we often do not give enough credit to, and as adults, we tend to forget about prioritizing it, altogether.
Cultivating joy is not only important in your own life, but also in your partnerships. In fact, joy within your partnership is not only pleasant, but also an absolute necessity to creating a healthy, stable relationship, or saving a flailing one.
Below I share 3 effective ways to begin to cultivate joy together, as a couple.
Discuss with your partner what foods bring you both joy- like complete and utter joy. Think, “What food as a child got me jumping up and down?” Then make dates on the calendar for experiences in sharing these foods with each other. *For extra credit, designate one date for one food type, and switch who gets to share, for every other date.
Find a notable, trashy, or plain-bad tv show to watch together, that brings you joy. Then watch it together, once a week. OR Have a conversation about comedians or comedy you both have appreciated currently, or in the past. Then go about exploring the content and styles of this comedy together. When you discover what you both find joy with, make time once a week to watch/listen/read the comedy together, for at least 30 minutes.
Spend time separately, reflecting on past experiences of joy the two of you or the family you have created together. Make thirty minutes in your week to sit down and share about these memories of joy. Share these memories in detail, as though you are narrating them as happening in the present moment. Take turns together, narrating.
Many have reported that these practices of joy help them tremendously. If you commit to one, two, or all three of these practices, you will begin to inject some levity and workability into a marriage or partnership that has previously felt burdened and painful.
And what if your relationship is too far gone for these exercises to fully revive it?
The foundation of couples therapy and couples coaching, is actually based not only on
helping you work through pain and dysfunction together, but to also teach you how to
experience the reparative nature of joy together. Incorporating these above practices,
along with couples therapy or couples coaching, will help you greatly, to repair your
relationship.
Reach out to one of our couples therapists or coaches today!
I wish you the best in your journey to find joy, together!
