The Secret – Special Edition

“The art of [Relationship Zen]… is largely the art of persistence.” -Albert Ellis

We’re not saying that we’ve been together for a super-long time, but today marks our 2 years of partnership. What a beautiful journey it has been! To celebrate, we decided to do a special edition blog to talk about our secret!

We’ve known each other for more than 2 years and it’s surprising when we have conversations that allow us to learn even more about each other. A few nights ago was a perfect example of this: we were hanging out and randomly began asking questions that we have never thought to ask before. Things became a little emotional, but primarily very uplifting. It was a powerful and beautiful experience for our relationship. And it all started with one of us asking “How was your day?”, but in very present manner.

The Secret

The trick we want to talk about is building a habit of regularly “turning to each other” whenever you are together, rather than saving these conversations for special occasions like dates. Specifically, have those “how was your day?” conversations every day. Note that we aren’t talking about those mini “hey, how’s going?” conversations that you have when you pass an acquaintance in the hallway – we’re talking about having a 10-20 minute “how was your day?” conversation when you’re with your partner.

Why? Because we change at every moment and therefore, there is always an opportunity to learn about each other if we care to be present. This simple technique of having “how was your day?” conversations, if taken seriously, lead to not only deeper conversations but to a deeper bond and friendship between you and your partner!

It’s a lot like meditation. If person A meditates for 30 minutes once a month, it does not necessarily translate into feeling more focused and mindful. Person B, however, who meditates 1 minute every day will see gains in their sense of wellbeing at a more consistent rate. Why? Because excellence is habit! In other words, if we didn’t regularly have meaningful conversations, then even our dates would lack depth and connection.

Being in a healthy relationship takes consistent and hard work. We’ve found that building a habit of turning towards each other makes it so much harder to get into damaging arguments or a bad break-up/divorce. We still have disputes in our relationship but this secret helps us to resolve them with a lot less collateral damage. So have those “how was your day?” conversations with your partner often, and use the “being present” techniques that we talked about in our previous blog post. As usual, keep the conversations going on our Facebook group, and thanks for reading. In the meantime, we’re off to Nuit Blanche in Toronto! =)

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” -Aristotle