It’s no surprise that couples come into therapy when they are at the height of their distress. They don’t get there overnight. Frequently, people have been having relationship difficulties for a long time, months, sometimes years. Relationship struggle is typically marked not only by the presence of conflict, but by the absence of small, daily practices that are important to the stability of a relationship. These are attitudes and behaviors that serve as a kind of relational glue, strengthening the couple’s bond. When they go missing, conflict grows louder, more painful, and harder to resolve.
Below I describe three such practices. If you’re in a romantic relationship, I invite you to reflect on whether they’re part of your shared life. If not, perhaps it’s time to bring them back. Don’t wait for your partner to go first. Remember, the only thing you can truly control in any relationship is your own behavior. Change can start with you.
1. Expressing Appreciation
There are countless ways your partner may be making your life better. Maybe they remember to grab your prescription, or make you coffee in the morning, or clean up the dishes from last night’s dinner. It’s such ordinary stuff of a shared life that once you’ve been together a while, it’s easy to just stop noticing it.
Try to remember to express appreciation to your partner for these small gestures. Not only is it good for your partner to hear that you see them, but the effect on you, the one doing the noticing, is just as important. When you put appreciation into words, you’re also training your own attention. You start to look for the good, and looking for it means you find more of it. This creates a kind of momentum: appreciation begets more appreciation, and you see your partner in a more generous light overall. This isn’t about denying their flaws, but about having a fuller picture, one that includes their contributions alongside any shortcomings.
Also, the reality is that people respond better to being appreciated than to being criticized. Criticism tends to produce defensiveness; appreciation tends to produce more of the behavior you’re appreciating. If you want more of something from your partner, naming what you already value is often more effective than pointing out what’s missing.
2. Love Maps
Psychologist John Gottman uses the term “love maps” to describe the internal knowledge each partner holds of the other’s inner world: their worries, their hopes, their history, the names of their childhood friends, what’s stressing them at work this week. Early in a relationship, building this map is almost effortless; curiosity does the work for you. But over years, especially years filled with logistics, children, and deadlines, the map gets neglected. You may be intimately familiar with your partner’s calendar, but largely out of touch with their inner life.
The Gottman Institute has developed useful exercises for updating your love maps, built around open-ended questions designed to deepen closeness. You may also have come across a related idea known as the 36 questions that lead to love, which are based in psychologist Arthur Aron’s research on building closeness through structured, gradually deepening self-disclosure. The two aren’t identical, but the underlying principle is the same: asking real questions, and genuinely listening to the answers, rebuilds intimacy in a way surface-level conversation cannot. You don’t need a formal list to do this. You need curiosity pointed at the person you already know, or think you know.
3. Touch
Physical touch matters more than people tend to assume, and not only in the context of sex.
Psychologist Barry McCarthy writes about different types of touch within a relationship: affectionate, sensual, playful, and erotic, and is careful to note that these are distinct categories, not stages that inevitably lead toward intercourse. This distinction matters enormously. When touch is only ever treated as a prelude to sex, it starts to feel like a demand. Partners on the receiving end of that implied demand may begin to pull back from physical affection altogether, wary that a hand on the shoulder will be read as an invitation they now have to accept or explicitly decline.
Touch that exists simply for its own sake: a hand held during a movie, an arm around a shoulder while waiting in line, a hug that lasts a little longer, communicates a powerful message: I am here, I like being near you, I care. This doesn’t have to lead anywhere. Reclaiming this kind of touch, separate from any expectation, is one of the more direct ways couples can rebuild a sense of safety and warmth with each other.
An Invitation to Practice
None of these three practices are complicated. They don’t require a therapist’s office or a couples retreat. What they require is attention, the same attention that, when it drifts elsewhere, is often what allows a relationship to erode in the first place. An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure. Affirming your partner out loud, staying curious about who they’re becoming, and sharing touch (when it’s welcome) without an agenda, are small, ordinary acts. They are exactly what relationships are made of.
At Wildflower, we offer both traditional couples therapy & couples intensives for partners who want focused, concentrated time to work through challenges. Reach out today to learn more.
