3 Couples Counseling Exercises for Deeper Connection

Wouldn’t marriage be so much easier if your spouse was just like you? Although at times it may not seem like it, it is actually a gift that your spouse is different from you. Your partner brings a whole different worldview, personality, and experience to the relationship, which, when embraced, is meant to help you know yourself better and learn to love more deeply.

However, it can be very challenging to maintain connection in your relationship when differences are so prevalent. Learning new tools and changing old patterns in order to grow together takes intentional commitment from both partners.

3 Couples Counseling Exercises for Deeper Connection

Intimacy blossoms in a safe environment, where trust and healing is cultivated by consistently being seen and known. The following are three couples counseling exercises that when practiced and committed to, even when it’s hard and you don’t want to, will leave you feeling more loved and with a deeper connection in your marriage.

1. Heart Checks

Heart Checks are consistent, focused, uninterrupted times of connection with the intention of seeking to know and discover what’s going on in your partner’s internal world.

Just as if you would check someone’s pulse to see how their heart is doing, Heart Checks in a relationship involve pausing to pay attention to your spouse’s internal world and gaging where the connection is within the relationship. This is a great tool to not only learn to take care of your spouse’s heart, but also to learn to pay attention and take care of your own heart.

During a Heart Check, one spouse will be the speaker, and the other will be the listener. Only once the speaker feels understood, validated, and heard may you switch roles, where the speaker now becomes the listener and vice versa.

When someone is the listener, they have two main jobs. The first is to create a safe place for the speaker to feel comfortable opening up, in hopes that they will not shut down or throw up walls. Interrupting, defending yourself, or making excuses are all examples that will communicate to the speaker that you are not being a safe place right now for their vulnerability. On the other hand, intently paying attention and asking clarifying questions will communicate that your presence is a safe place in which they can freely open their heart.

The second job of the listener is to seek to understand. One can listen with the purpose of giving a response, which usually comes in the form of advice, an opinion, or casting agreement or disagreement. On the contrary, one can listen with the sole purpose of seeking to understand your partner on a deeper level, in order to build trust and intimacy in your relationship.

As the speaker, your role is to share about your internal world. It is a time to open up and be vulnerable about how you are doing, what you’re feeling, or how certain things are affecting you. It is a time to open up about what is going on inside of you, and not a time to cast blame or judgment on your spouse.

Part of being seen and known by your spouse is letting them actually see you, all of you, no matter how scary or ugly it may seem. Vulnerability can be terrifying and even risky, but it is vital to an intimate connection, and is the only way that one can feel fully accepted and fully loved.

2. Time Outs

During Heart Checks, or just amidst the grind of everyday life, frustrations will arise. Calling Time Out is a tool to use when tensions begin to emerge. During a Time Out, both partners step away, knowing that there is an agreed upon commitment to return to the conversation once both partners are ready.

By taking a break and committing to return, this tool helps prevent big outbursts, but also helps prevent couples from sweeping things under the rug, in which they pretend like nothing happened even though they both keep tripping over it. When consistently practiced, this tool develops the value of committing to working through whatever issues may arise; and therefore, protecting the connection of the relationship.

During the time apart, it is the responsibility of both spouses to pay attention to what is happening in one’s own heart. Follow the emotion down to the deeper issue.

Some questions to ask oneself:

• What am I feeling, and why am I feeling this way?
• What is this instance communicating to me?
• Why is this affecting me so much?

Since anger is a secondary emotion, the primary is usually hurt or fear. Explore for yourself what is the reason behind the frustration.

This is where healing begins to happen, because you’re no longer addressing the symptoms, but actually bringing the root of your belief system into the light.

3. Intentionally Bringing God into Your Relationship

Creating a place for God to be a part of your relationship is the final piece to developing greater intimacy in your marriage. Through practicing the other two tools, coupled with praying together and intentionally bringing God into your marriage, what was once a place of disconnection can morph into a healthy, intimate relationship. This includes beginning to see your spouse the way God sees them, finding compassion for your spouse instead of criticism, genuinely respecting them, and believing in them.

Marriage is hard work, but intimacy is worth the fight. It strengthens connection, and ultimately leads to being seen, known, and loved. By practicing these couples counseling exercises with your partner, you can enjoy a deeper connection and lasting enjoyment with each other.