You know, people talk a lot about keeping the spark alive in a relationship, but sometimes you just feel like you and your partner are two ships passing in the night. Or worse, two ships stuck in the mud, right next to each other, but going nowhere. That’s kind of where my partner, Alex, and I found ourselves a while back. It wasn’t like we were throwing plates, just… a whole lot of nothing. The conversations were all about logistics – who’s picking up groceries, did you pay that bill, the usual. The real stuff? Buried deep.
We were both pretty unhappy, honestly. It felt like we were roommates more than anything else. I remember thinking, is this it? Is this what long-term just becomes? We stumbled along like that for months. Finally, after a particularly quiet and tense weekend, Alex said, “Maybe we should, I don’t know, talk to someone?” I’d always been a bit iffy about therapy, felt like it was admitting defeat or something. But man, we were already defeated, so what did we have to lose?
Finding Our Way to the “Exercise”
So, we started seeing this therapist. Dr. Lee. Pretty straightforward, didn’t make us do any weird trust falls or anything on the first day, which was a relief. We spent a few sessions just sort of… airing out the dirty laundry, I guess. Explaining how we’d gotten so disconnected. It was hard, and a bit embarrassing, to say all that stuff out loud.
Then, one session, Dr. Lee said she wanted us to try an exercise. An “emotional intimacy exercise.” My internal alarm bells went off. Sounded a bit too… touchy-feely for my liking. I think Alex felt the same, judging by the look on their face. But, we were there, we were paying for it, so we figured we’d give it a shot. What’s the worst that could happen, right? More awkward silence?
She had us turn our chairs to face each other. Knees almost touching. Already uncomfortable. Then she laid out the ground rules. They were simple, but tough.
- One person speaks at a time. The other person just listens. No interrupting, no defending, no “but what about when you…”. Just zip it and listen.
- Make eye contact. This was surprisingly hard. I found myself wanting to look at the carpet, the ceiling, anywhere but Alex’s eyes at first.
- Speak from your own feelings. Using “I feel…” statements. Not “You always make me feel…”
Then she gave us some prompts. Simple questions, really. The first one was something like, “Share a recent time you felt genuinely appreciated by your partner.” I went first. My mind went blank for a second. Appreciated? It had been a while. I mumbled something about Alex making coffee a few days earlier. It sounded lame even to me.
But then it was Alex’s turn. And they talked about something I’d done, something small I’d barely even registered, but it had meant something to them. Hearing that… it was a tiny crack of light in a dark room. Then came tougher prompts. “Share something you’re afraid to tell your partner.” Or “Describe a time you felt lonely in this relationship.” Those were heavy. There were some long pauses. Some tears, not gonna lie, from both of us.
We didn’t “solve” anything in that one session. There was no magic wand. But it was the first time in ages we’d actually heard each other without jumping down each other’s throats or shutting down. It was raw. It was uncomfortable as hell sometimes. But it was real.
We started trying to bring a bit of that into our life at home. Not the full-on therapy setup, but just… making a point to ask different questions. To actually listen to the answer. It’s a work in progress, always. But that exercise, as much as I cringed at the name initially, kind of nudged us off the mudbank. It showed us there was still something there, underneath all the everyday static. We just had to learn how to tune into it again. It’s not always easy, but it’s a heck of a lot better than the silence.
