My 2-Step Method for Deepening Your Emotional Connection

From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg

When it comes to deepening your emotional connection, you need to learn how to talk and listen to one another so you each know that a connection was made. You need to develop some specific communication skills that will allow you to emotionally touch each other in intimate ways while talking.

That’s where My 2-Step Method for Deepening Your Emotional Connection comes in.

Step 1: Talking Intimately and Listening Actively

There you are on the beach holding hands, and you feel the opportunity for intimacy. The way to start an emotionally deepening conversation is simple: You share one meaningful piece of information with your partner.

This could be anything. It might be a new thought you’ve had. It might be an old item that’s important to you. It might be something about your relationship. It might be a reflection on the world. As long as you are sharing something you genuinely care about, something that is meaningful and important to you, the topic is probably okay. You can share anything with your partner and make it into an emotionally deepening moment.

This is true because deepening your emotional connection is about developing a new understanding of one another. When you share something meaningful with your partner you offer him the opportunity to deepen his understanding of you. When you share something that is important, tender, or sensitive, you open up the possibility for this new understanding to be intimate and close. Understanding each other in new ways keeps your relationship fresh no matter how long you’ve been together and the understanding helps renew that “in love” feeling.

Your job as the speaker is to help your partner understand what you are trying to share. That means not giving information in an angry or accusing way. It means being patient as he tries to get a grip on what you are saying. And, perhaps most importantly, it means sharing one thing at a time.

Step 2: Bringing Your Understanding to a Deeper Level

Step two is more pertinent when the sharing is either specific to your partner, or might involve some criticism of you. This will not be as helpful in a situation like the one described above at the beach, where the communication is about just feeling good, loving feelings inside.

So in these other situations, which will probably be most of your communications, once you come to a place where the sharing person feels that the listener has really understood what the speaker said and meant, it’s time for the listener to bring this understanding to a deeper, more personal level.

To start this process the listener should take a few moments and imagine seeing the world through the speaker’s eyes. Considering what was just shared with you, try and “get inside your spouse’s perspective.” See what she sees, feel what she feels, hear what she hears, and think what she thinks in this moment. Imagine becoming your partner for a moment.

This may sound a little weird to some of you, but trust me. I have found many people gain a much deeper understanding of their partner after doing this.

The point here is to try and deepen your own understanding of your spouse by uniting the experience she is describing with something you could imagine feeling as well. This allows you to understand where she is coming from on a much deeper level.

Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years.