Losing our way with love

Posted by Karen Degen on 20th May 2018

Tags: Losing love, marriage, quality time

There are so many ways we can lose our way with love, especially when we are living with someone or married.  One way is when we can get so caught up with the daily ‘stuff’ that needs to be done that we don’t actually spend any quality time with our partner. We are spending time for sure, but its not quality (talk about our thoughts and feelings) time.  There’s a paragraph in the book I’m reading (The Dog by Joseph O’Neill) that I thought put this wonderfully into words:

Always we were in agreement that certain practical things needed to be done right away.  Always it was first things first.  Always we were in the hurry that postpones the second thing, the good stuff, whatever that was supposed to be.  I now see that our idea of the good stuff wasn’t having a good time together, but having a good situation, i.e., the circumstance, rather than the substance, was the good, and vital to the good was the displacement of time and its replacement by activity. This was a category error, but what did we know?  I was all new to us, every second if it.   

So often I see clients who are not happy in their relationship because, without realising it, life has taken over and time with their partner has slipped way down near the bottom of the list of priorities.  Without quality time a relationship will wilt and start to die, just like a plant not given enough water.  When I’m helping clients with this I have a number of new routines I get them to instigate, so they are ‘watering’ their relationship regularly and often and it can grow stronger again and blossom.  In your relationship are you putting ‘getting stuff done’ above quality time together?  If so change your priorities now, before its too late.