Anyone who’s married or dating can attest: Romantic relationships are not always smooth sailing. If you’ve been feeling disconnected rom your partner lately, you might be wondering how to get back on track.
HuffPost spoke to licensed marriage and family therapists Yara Mawad and David Ibrahim about their recommendations for practices and products that can facilitate connection in your relationship. Ibrahim runs Glendale Counseling Services, a trauma and addiction clinic in Los Angeles, and Mawad is an associate at the Jenna Laski and Associates therapy practice in Los Angeles.
Mawad and Ibrahim both emphasized the importance of intentionally carving out time to cultivate closeness with one’s partner. “The number one thing I recommend is being intentional with setting time aside to reconnect,” Mawad wrote via email. “Even if it is 30 minutes in the evening, or 15 minutes in the morning.”
In addition to cultivating closeness in your relationship, both therapists recommended investing time in building a support network outside of your partner as well as working on your self-growth.
“I like to say: ‘Know when to “co” and when to “go”’ — when to coregulate [or emotionally support one another], and to know when to go regulate [or soothe] yourself,” Ibrahim explained. “Too often in relationships one partner wants the other to constantly co-regulate them... so know when each other can be there to co-regulate and work through issues, and know when you need to regulate yourself. Usually asking your partner, ‘Do you have the bandwidth to discuss an issue I’m having?’”
In service of setting aside time to connect and working on your own growth, Mawad and Ibrahim recommended items that can help increase closeness and rekindle your spark. Read on for their recommendations below.
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"One way to feel like you're on the same team is [to] take a few minutes to massage each other's stress out of the body," Ibrahim explained. "My favorite device my wife and I regularly use is [the] Hypervolt [massage gun], it comes with easy videos to learn how to use it and it's amazing how it releases stress from the body. Taking a few minutes to massage one another is a wonderful act of service and puts some of those bonus love dollars in the attraction account for each other. It's the little details that make a loving partnership so special."
This massage gun features three speeds and five interchangeable heads to treat small and large muscles. It's also designed to be impressively quiet.
You can also toggle between three intensity settings and three massage head attachments.
"Before dinner, leverage something like Couple Reconnect, a fun card game for couples that have been together for years but are fizzling out," Ibrahim wrote. It uses techniques from couples therapy and other modalities to spark deep conversation, romance and connection.
"Some questions might be things you never asked each other or [your] answers may change," said licensed marriage and family therapist Yara Mawad. It has three different "levels" of questions so you can work up to different layers of connection.
Example questions include "What do we have in this relationship that you never thought was possible?" and "What assumption did you make about me that turned out to be false?"
The one rule you should keep in mind on your dates, according to Mawad? "Keep the kid talk at home if you have children," she advised. "Use this time to reconnect with each other and remind yourselves who you married/who you are dating and show gratitude and appreciation for one another as humans, not just the roles you play in life."
The jar offers 50 date ideas in fun, sleek capsules to help keep things fresh. Examples of date ideas include going out only for dessert, going to a local sports game, hiking and watching the sunset.
(You may have heard of Bumble as a dating app; it also has a friends-only setting, known as Bumble BFF, as well as a setting for business networking.)