Ritualize Your Relationship!

Have you consciously thought of your partner today? Or is your day just a whirling blur until you collapse at night?

It’s time to take your relationship off the back burner and be more intentional about the ways you show your better half how you feel. Relationship rituals are ways of expressing love through symbolic gestures that will make your significant other feel loved.

According to a book based on research of happily married couples called “What Happy Couples Do,” it’s the small, daily gestures of love that most strengthen relationships.

Don’t just assume you’ll have time for your relationship someday…invest in your coupledom now by building in time for each other and identifying those small gestures that show you are on one another’s mind.

It’s not as tough as it sounds to be more intentional with your relationship. It’s the small things that will mean the most to your partner.

Following are some couple rituals you can institue together to stay connected and demonstrate your love:

• Sit and have coffee together each morning before leaving for work
• Leave love notes in his or her briefcase or trade romantic texts/emails throughout the day
• Step away from work to meet for lunch once a week
• Identify pet names or endearing phrases to use with each other
• Go for a walk together in the evenings (before or after dinner)
• Talk together as you wash and dry the dishes
• Find things you both enjoy and do them together (cooking, playing cards, jogging, wine tasting, etc.)
• Secret gestures with special meaning (a hand squeeze, a wink, a hand on the small of the back)
• Block some evenings to spend time together with the TV off after the kids go to sleep
• Pray together before bed
• Pick a weekend morning  and go out for breakfast/brunch or sleep in and have breakfast together in bed.

Remember….this is it. Your relationship is happening now. Don’t let it pass you by without showing your loved one that they matter to you. And, if you already do this in small ways, you may be able to do them better, or even more thoughtfully.

Tell me your ideas for relationship rituals….

Photo credit: Jamie Buscemi’s pics’ Flickr photostream