Skip the Beat – Parasocial Relationships – Love Vitamins for Relationships
Situation
You and your partner are great at doing the chores of the day, taking care of all the errands, the laundry, the dishes, the cooking; you’re an amazing team, when it comes to kids, you are happy. It’s a healthy and happy household. Recently, you listen to the last episode of LoVita. Since then, you’ve been wanting a more intimate and more personal emotional connection with your partner. So you set up a date night, you book a reservation at your fancy nearby restaurant, you make it clear to your partner that you want this to be special and special in a way that there’s no distractions, no cell phones, no talk about kids, no talk about the things and tasks that might be coming up on your to do list. You want this to be a conversation between you and your partner. Like it might have been your first day where you’re talking about your dreams and stuff. But five minutes into the dinner, you realize that it’s not going the way you wanted it to. There’s a lot of distractions from the restaurant, your partner is not giving you the same response that you expected
Dissection by Raashi
So I feel like two separate thoughts come to mind.
The first I would say is that the origin of this problem started a while ago. And this lack of engagement that you’re feeling at your date night is really just a symptom of a much larger problem.
The second thing is that, you know, if you’re if you’ve already tried in the moment fixes like asking your partner to maybe put away their phone or you know, bringing up a conversation topic, but you see that it kind of fizzles out or you’re asking questions, you’re trying to dive deeper, but you’re getting one word responses.
Like if you’ve already done the work of asking your partner to be present, and they just aren’t. At this point, I would personally suggest that the healthier choice for you as an individual is to find some way to make this evening enjoyable for you, regardless of how your partner is showing up. And no, I don’t mean by be by being mean to them, or ignoring them or just feeling deflated, that you’re never going to have another fun date night ever again. What I mean is find a way to preserve your peace, and enjoy this evening so that you can then have the energy to be intentional when you get home, or over the next few days to really be able to dissect and dive deep on why were you not able to create that emotional connection at your date night.
It takes two to tango, right. And so even though your partner isn’t showing up for you as you’d like, you’re in charge of how this evening ends for you. And how you’re able to process this moment when you get home later that evening, or maybe over the next few days.
Now that first point that I mentioned, when it comes to the we and enjoying date night as a couple, well the secret tends to lie in communicating individual values, and then cultivating shared values. That’s normally where we see this disconnection really starting from is not having taken the time to step away from that daily grind, and really talk about what is actually going on. What is this feeling of, of missed connection, this lack of emotional connect that we’re feeling with our partner? And how do we want to address it? Or maybe why why is so important for us to begin with.
So my recommendation is over the next few conscious coupling sessions that you have, it’s important for you to intentionally share and discuss what your expectations are for date night. And what does it mean to show up emotionally, to have this conversation to be distraction free. And when you create a safe space to have this kind of a conversation and really share and listen to the different desires that you and your partner have. You can start to create a set of shared values. And that’s what’s going to help you to both show up to date night and be on the same page of what it means to not talk about the kids or worry about the next thing that needs to be taken care of the power of doing this work and crafting shared values before your next date night is how you both can work towards building a healthier relationship and having more meaningful evenings together, rather than just going through experiences of missed connection.
LoVita 