Caring for Your Couple Relationship While Caring for Others
Posted on October 29, 2020 by Matthew Stevens, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Strategies for protecting your couple relationship while caring for people with special needs.
Caring for people with special needs can easily stretch the boundaries of a 24-hour day, pushing aside other responsibilities and relationships. Tragically, most self-help and relationship-cure best sellers are written for people and couples outside of this population. While they have valuable suggestions for protecting the couple relationship, couples caring for people with special needs have unique needs that are generally not addressed. As caregivers of an adult son with autism and other cognitive challenges, we can easily locate and engage many resources for our son, but we have struggled over the years to find resources for our marriage. That is why I became a coach!
Water Your Marriage Every Day! Whether you pass a quick passing wink in the hallway as you pass each other, or you keep a notebook and pen in your bathroom to write love notes, find something each day you can do to water your marriage. A small daily sprinkle of rain is more beneficial to plant life than an occasional deluge of rain! Rather than saving yourself for an epic moment at the expense of small daily experiences, commit to something today that you can do for your couple relationship.
Nurture the Long-term Perspective! Some days feel like they will never end! Some days feel as if time has stopped in the worst possible moments…and it is only 8:00am! Remember, you have made it to now, and even though this moment feels like forever, time really is moving forward, and the day will come to an end. Take a moment to breathe and flash forward in your mind to the future, even if it is only 10 minutes into the future. Claim the perspective of this challenging moment being in the past by bringing to your mind an image of reconciliation and peace with this moment having passed.
Establish a Rally Point! While we were dating, I would wash dishes and fix some coffee and dessert while my wife put our son to bed. After she returned from putting him to bed, we would sit at the table and talk over coffee and dessert. Ah, the conversations we had as we talked about life, hopes, and dreams. Now 13 years into our marriage, we still make time to connect over a small cookie and milk every night. Sometimes, we only take 15 minutes and other times we take 90+ minutes. The key is to make time to close out the day as a couple. Many are the days that the hope of our sacred coffeetime at the end of the day is what gets us through the day! There is real power in closing the day in couple roles compared to ending the day in caregiver roles!
These are three things you can do on the go without advance planning or thought. They are three things that will strengthen your couple relationship. Caregiving is asymmetrically taxing on caregivers. Protect your couple relationship today by incorporating these three practices. Connect with me today for more strategies for protecting your couple relationship!
