How to reconnect with your partner in the empty nest.
When your kids leave home, all the attention returns to your relationship. Transparent communication is key in understanding each others needs and fully accepting one another so that going forward, you can be clear on the shared purpose of your relationship.
Now that the kids have left home, is there a difficulty communicating with your partner? Have you got used to a more functional way of speaking and you want to go a little deeper?
It may feel a bit strange to go back to romance after raising a family. So, how can it make an elegant reentrance onto the stage of your shared lives without tripping over the cables of complication and confusion?
The spotlight is back on the two of you, will you enter confidently knowing your lines, or are you shielding your eyes against that bright light and getting stage fright?
Let’s open the curtains and start exploring the language of love:
In this blog I talk about:
How to communicate more lovingly: When there is a difficulty in communicating with your partner, STOP for a moment and resist the urge to go into effort. Contemplate first what love is and what it certainly is not when communicating. Discerning what helps you to evolve as a couple and what holds you back from a deeper connection may be challenging, but if you’re consistent with a more honest approach in your communication, it will help your relationship to flourish.
It’s not about what you say, but how you express yourself and the actions you take to ‘make love’ a living standard in your relationship. This begins with the smallest of daily communication and culminates in a flow of expression that feels easy.
How your voice can be the perfect tool to reconnect to a deeper connection with yourself so that shared intimacy becomes natural.
How to communicate more lovingly - What love is and what it isn’t
As a young adult, I perceived love as excitement and selectivity. I know I ‘fell in love’ a plenty and felt the pain of rejection too. however, I’ve learned, during my 33 year marriage, that what I called love, was not true.
People can wrongly mix up love with need. Love becomes a drug that satiates a deficit of connection within ourselves. It can become an addiction to stimulation, drama, excitement, rejection and ‘take your pick’ of other emotions. From unhealthy food to affairs with abusive partners, this definition of love leaves you with a ‘cold turkey’ that drives you to your next fix.
You may feel in need of love during this big change in your life, but trying to fix that puts a lot of pressure on your relationship. Relationships based on need can become competitive, manipulative, possesive, obsessive, or downright abusive - heck, we are capable of the most heinous crimes - all in the name of LOVE.
Before focusing on the communication between you and your partner, first explore what love means to you and what kind of communication you want to share with them.
But What is True Love?
True love needs no stimulation - it can be as still as a pristine lake in the Alps reflecting all the beauty and truth to those who stop to contemplate it.
The love you feel for a newborn baby as you hold him or her for the first time, is the nearest thing to the real deal. The love the infant feels is also all encompassing as they are part of that love and do not feel themselves as individual beings until later on in their development. Maybe herein lies a clue.
Could it be that love resides within every one of us and we cannot but be love? Could love be a matrix that connects us all?
Individual behaviour doesn’t always communicate lovingly, but when we connect to others and we let the walls come down and there is a feeling of togetherness, not separation.
But here’s the thing….most things in life separate people.
Competition, comparison and judgement are all ingrained in us as we grow up. Our education system, our culture and the society we are raised in - there is not a corner of the earth that seems to be free of this. We ‘expect’ certain things from others that cause a distance between us.
Take the case of the newborn that we love so unconditionally.
You may get an invasion of doubt about your ability to parent as you compare yourself to the super mum next door. If it’s not their development rate, it’s their level of intelligence, their appearance or the competition echoed in schools that reward the ‘good’ child and create chasms between children based on ability rather than a focus on what they are.
It’s no wonder that by the time that child is 18, they have a condition based idea of love too.
True love has no conditions on what you are holding in your arms - because it is the universe and you are an equal part of that - no separation.
And just as it is your responsibility to nurture, care for and love that beautiful vulnerable being - something you do effortlessly, it is also wise to nurture and care for yourself so that there is less and less distance between you and your partner.
The Language of Love in your relationship
When you reconnect to the love within you it feels:
Expansive like you’re connected to an innate joy, harmony, wisdom and intelligence.
Easy to accept and understand yourself and others as you become more of an observer than a imposer.
Simple to embrace the wealth of love within and renounce the poverty that has made you search for love outside of yourself.
It makes sense, then, to reconnect to a body of love before you communicate as there will be a completely different energetic alignment to what your head might conjure up.
Here are some thoughts:
Give no energy to expectations and ideals that are not true: To compare and judge yourself or your partner based on something that is an ideal rather than the truth is not going to help your connection. Expectation can be imposing and judgemental, however, DO be absolute about what you accept as love and all that is abusive will stand out like a sore thumb. Talk to each other about this and make space to appreciate the flow that happens when you drop the false expectations on each other.
Be discerning of what impersonates love. You have been raising children for the last 20 years or so and the rooms of your house still echo with their voices in all their different expressions. The need to fill that perceived emptiness of the empty nest with something stimulating you may call love places unnecessary pressure on your relationship. Instead, reconnect to your body and express yourself from the infinite source of love and abundance within you. The more you focus on it, the more of it there is to share.
Speak transparently and let go of the protection - don’t be afraid of vulnerability. Protection is hiding what you don’t want another to see. The pressure to be a good wife or mother is one of the most devastating ideals. We spend energy on bettering ourselves in reaction to feeling guilty for not matching an ideal based on a picture that certainly isn’t unanimous and therefore not true. Not accepting ourselves fully leads to judgement and doubt. It can be painful when a partner pulls us up on something, but if we can embrace vulnerability and accept ourselves fully, we evolve and transparency becomes the default love language.
Don’t make love the next Netflix sensation - Love is a consistent commitment to life and how you live it. Making love is only as beautiful as the hug before you go to work or the way you share the house chores. It requires both of you to let go of false pictures and start working together in purpose. So, don’t get hooked on the dramas of love and instead feel the solid commitment of your togetherness.
You are fluent in love but don’t hold back from support to help the process.
Connecting with each other more deeply and embracing intimacy may feel natural but there are times when it all feels a bit ‘lost in translation’. If you feel that it’s hard to begin this journey together, seek help from a coach such as myself, or a counsellor. Gorgeous Hearts provides coaching to empty nest women who are looking for new purpose after the kids have grown and flown and I always love to hear from readers with their questions.
It only takes one to make a change so don’t let anything hold you back if you need support. There may be days you won’t feel like love at all - that’s OK - the important thing is to keep supporting each other to dust yourselves down and get back up without reacting to the fall.
Instead of focusing on the difficulty in communicating with your partner, focus your awareness on the presence that your voice and your body feel and express when you reconnect to yourself. This is how you can speak the language of love.
Your voice can be a powerful tool to reconnect to yourself and your partner
Your voice utters words that carry a vibration that heals OR harms depending on what you are carrying in your body at the time you speak. When you are able to align to your inner essence, breathe your own breath sound a note in the vibration of that alignment, your body becomes attuned. If you build consistency with this, it becomes a great reconnection tool to reestablish settlement when you feel stressed or reactive.
What does this mean when communicating with your partner?
Your authentic voice sounding from a body instrument that is finely tuned, communicates harmony. Your voice will vibrate in the frequency that brings truth and enrichment to your partner rather than mere regurgitated words that sound loving and leave you feeling devoid of true connection. This is how relationships evolve, and it’s really the whole purpose - they allow us all to evolve into deeper realms of love.
How do you reconnect to that voice?
If you’ve ever meditated to reconnect with yourself, you’ve no doubt experienced a wonderful feeling of warmth, confidence, joy and harmony that permeates the whole body. Reconnecting like this leads to more positive thoughts and feelings. You can observe, accept and understand others more easily because you feel whole and complete. This is the space from where you bring your voice.
To reconnect to your voice, first be very present in your body first and focus on your breath. When you sound your voice from a present gentle breath (you can get a free example of this on my website - see link below), you can feel the vibration in your body and the power of your voice to settle and heal.
Building fitness with consistency leads to more awareness when you speak which helps you to be more present when communicating. The more present you are, the more truthful your communication is - authentic communication is key to connecting with another.
A you use your voice many times during a single day, it’s a great tool of presence.
When you speak with somebody, stay aware of your voice as you speak.
Try the following tips
Begin by focusing on your breath - it brings you back to the body - align to the energetic quality of the breath by connecting to a gentleness that precedes the breath and observe that quality as you breathe.
Connect to your voice from this breath. Give this feeling a colour - What is the colour of the energetic quality of your voice right now? When you speak to your partner does it stay the same colour?
Be consistent with body connection rituals that you may already know and practice. You can’t cut paper with paper so don’t rely on the mind to solve problems of the mind - move the body, and the mind will follow, but move the mind and your body’s needs might well get bypassed.
Conclusion:
If it feels difficult to communicate with your partner after the kids have left home, go deeper within and connect to the intimacy of your own body by using your voice as a tool and build fitness with presence so that you communicate authentically. This will lead to better understanding and clarity.
Being present with your body supports a gentler expression (not to be confused with soft or weak) which enriches your relationships.
Be discerning of what is and what isn’t love so that communication is always a response to love and not a reaction to it.
Be authentic. No authenticity - no intimacy = no common language of love.
Honesty and transparency support you both to communicate and evolve.
It is not possible to force your voice to speak lovingly - you have to make love a daily movement and expression from a body that is nurtured and not ignored. Abuse on your own body ALWAYS ends up being expressed and this can make it very difficult to connect with others.
Even though the kids have left home, there is a whole new exciting purpose to embrace. Your relationship is only one part of that, but togetherness will give you so much confidence and support as you enter this new chapter of life.
If you're feeling the emptiness of the empty nest and you're wondering what's next, I'd love to offer you my free pdf guide (with a voice connection exercise included) "How to Feel Damned Good 50+ and Connect Deeply With Your Partner."
You will learn:
->How to tap into your innate confidence.
->Some effective health, harmony and happiness tips
->The secrets to deeper intimacy with your partner.
->How to connect to and use your authentic voice for more successful relationships
Get your free guide by clicking below and enjoy your magnetic midlife miracle life Mmm!
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