What Traveling Tells Us About Each Other
After traveling almost 3 weeks abroad with my significant other, I am reflecting on our experience and how traveling can teach us so many things about how we interact with one another. It’s like a pressure cooker for a relationship! I’ll be sharing my thoughts and lessons learned (and re-learned) through a mini-series of blogs that are applicable to all couples, whether traveling or at home.
Week 1 - Combating Relationship Imbalance with Intention
We hear about balance a lot, mostly in regard to individual work-life balance. We’re encouraged to find this supposedly magical place where everything feels blissful and less stressful and things are at peace. As much as I wish I could provide the perfect equation for balance, I don’t know that it exists. So instead, I want to shift the focus on how we can be intentional with our time to combat imbalance, specifically within a relationship.
Balancing the “Me” and the “We”
There were many times on our trip that what I wanted to do completely differed from my significant other’s desire. While I was happy to compromise, there is value in noting the impact of doing things that aren’t your first choice. Activities that energize my significant other, may drain me and vice versa. For example, my significant other loves to entertain and capture a crowd, while I prefer more relaxed and introspective opportunities. After a couple of nights of him entertaining, I felt irritable, tired, and as though we were on different teams.
My “me” and my “we” were way out of balance.
I hadn’t asked for time alone to recharge my batteries and take care of myself. I was pouring from an empty cup.
Balancing the “We” and the “World”
During the first part of our trip overseas, my significant other and I stayed with family friends and spent all of our time with them. They were absolutely fantastic hosts, and we had the greatest time. After leaving them and traveling to our next destination, we found ourselves feeling distant, exhausted, and disconnected. We were irritable with one another and less patient than normal.
Our “we” and our “world” were way out of balance.
We had spent so much great quality time with other people we hadn’t realized that we didn’t have any alone time with just the two of us. We didn’t prioritize time to reconnect as a couple and realign ourselves without the noise of the world interfering.
Fighting Imbalance
Rather than focusing on creating the perfect balance, let’s shift our attention on how to fight imbalance when it happens (because it will!). In both of the above scenarios, guilt and shame got in my way of asking for what I needed. I told myself that asking for alone time from my significant other was selfish and that asking for alone time from our hosts was rude and inappropriate. In reality, these thoughts were untrue and unhelpful! So what do we do when we’re in that state?
Check in with yourself. What do you need? How are you feeling? Are you energized or drained?
Ask for what you need by stating your feelings and using a gentle start-up. Use this formula: “I’m feeling _______ and I’d like _______.” For example, I could have said, “I’m feeling disconnected from you and drained from all of our time with other people. I’d like to grab lunch alone tomorrow before we rejoin the group.”
Repeat. Continue this process of checking in with yourself and communicating your needs. Check in with your partner to see how they’re doing too!
Elise Grigg, LPC
Elise@kcresolve.com
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