Loving someone and knowing how to love them well are not always the same thing. A person may deeply love their partner, but if they regularly criticize them, become defensive when concerns are raised, withdraw during difficult conversations or fail to listen, their partner may not experience that love in the relationship.
We aren’t simply born knowing how to do relationships well. As powerful as love can be, it does not automatically teach us how to create and sustain a healthy relationship. It doesn’t give us all the understanding, skills and emotional capacities we need to love another person well. The good news is that much of this can be learned, practiced and strengthened over time.
I have met many couples who tell me they have “fallen out of love” and believe they are no longer “compatible.” Often, they are considering whether to end their relationship. Before making such an important decision, I encourage them to look more deeply at what has happened between them over time. How did two people who once felt loving and connected arrive at a place where those feelings have become so difficult to find? Sometimes, the love isn’t gone. It has become buried beneath accumulated hurt, disconnection, unresolved conflict and patterns that have eroded the closeness they once shared.
So, what helps us love well?
A healthy, thriving relationship requires behaviors and skills that enable partners to experience feeling loved. But what are the capacities we most need to develop and strengthen? I believe five are particularly important: self-awareness, listening, emotional safety, differentiation and repair.
Self-awareness: Embracing an ongoing curiosity about ourselves
The powerful influence of one’s family of origin cannot be overstated. We may have learned to withdraw during conflict, become defensive, criticize avoid difficult conversations, suppress feelings or keep the peace at all costs. We carry those patterns into adulthood while genuinely loving our partner. We need to ask ourselves: What did I learn about relationships growing up? What happens inside me when I’m hurt, and how do I tend to respond? What triggers me? What are my protective strategies? What am I feeling? What do I need? What is mine to take responsibility for?
Listening: So that each partner feels fully heard
Truly listening to one’s partner begins with the intention of understanding what the other is communicating, rather than focusing on preparing our own response. Can I temporarily set aside my own perspective enough to enter yours? Can I reflect back what I am hearing you communicate? Can I be curious rather than defensive?
Understanding does not have to mean agreeing. It means giving our partner the space and respect to have their own inner experience, even if it baffles us, doesn’t seem to make sense to us or is very different from how we would respond in the same situation.
Emotional safety: Sharing our inner lives freely
Creating a climate of emotional safety means being able to reveal ourselves without fear of being met with criticism, judgment, rejection, dismissal or attack. This could mean revealing when we feel hurt, when we need reassurance, or when we are struggling with something we feel ashamed about. Emotional safety also creates room to freely express affection, appreciation and loving words, all of which help sustain the loving connection between us.
Vulnerability is key here. Instead of withdrawing, getting defensive or striking out in anger, we can reach beneath those protective reactions and reveal our more tender feelings and needs.
Differentiation: Staying connected through our differences
Differentiation is the ability to remain connected to our partner while also maintaining our own sense of self. It’s relatively easy to be loving when we’re getting along. The greater challenge is staying connected and respectful when we disagree, when our partner’s feelings or needs are different from ours, or when one of us is hurt, angry, disappointed or feeling rejected.
Differentiation allows us to care about our partner’s experience without having to agree with it, fix it or make it our own. We can tolerate differences in opinions, feelings, desires and needs without trying to change the other person or seeing those differences as a threat to the relationship.
Can I stay curious about your experience while also honoring my own? If you tell me you are unhappy about something I have said or done, can I care about your experience even if I don’t believe I did anything wrong? Can we disagree and still remain loving and connected?
Repair
Hurt and misunderstanding are inevitable in even the healthiest relationships. Healthy couples learn how to come back together after hurt and disconnection. Repair means recognizing the hurt we’ve caused, caring about its impact, taking responsibility, apologizing sincerely when appropriate, making amends and changing our behavior when change is needed. Repair also means being willing to return to difficult conversations rather than leaving hurts unresolved. It communicates something important: what happened between us matters to me, and so does finding our way back to each other.
Love is a feeling. Loving well is a practice.
We tend to assume that if two people love each other, they’ll know how to create a healthy relationship. Yet most of us were never taught how to listen instead of becoming defensive, express hurt without blaming, tolerate another person’s different perspective, repair after conflict, communicate feelings and needs or remain emotionally present when we’re distressed. We can enter relationships with an enormous capacity for love and, at the same time, very little relationship education.
Perhaps loving well asks us to keep returning to these important questions:
Self-awareness: Can I understand myself?
Listening: Can I understand you?
Emotional safety: Can we safely reveal ourselves to each other?
Differentiation: Can we remain connected while being different?
Repair: Can we find our way back after we’ve hurt or misunderstood each other?
And perhaps there is one more question worth asking. Instead of only asking, “Do I love my partner?” we might also ask: “How does my partner experience my love?”
Our capacity for healthy relationships can continue to grow throughout our lives. I’m cheering you on!
Amy Newshore is a couples therapist/coach who earned her Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Antioch New England University and went on to train in the Developmental Model for Couples Therapy along with Non-violent Communication which serve as the foundation of her work as a Relationship Coach. For more information, visit her website at www.coachingbyamy.com.