Relationship Rhythms

Effective communication skills are crucial to successful long-term relationships. The tools they employ can significantly improve the transmission of thoughts and feelings between intimate partners. When they work as they should, they bring couples closer together and help them to find new ways to resolve their differences.

Intimate couples reach out to each other with individual styles of bids for connection. In doing so, they have their own unique way of how, when, where, and why they do so. Those styles manifest as personal rhythms that are each partner’s attempt to synchronize their needs. A good metaphor would be two potentially differently spaced gears attempting to enmesh when they are moving at different speeds.

There are many situations in which a couple’s individual rhythmic patterns can be disharmonious even when all else seems to be in order. Whether these clashing “gears” exist in physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual realms, they often upend well-intended bids for connection and resolution.

The good news is that communication immediately improves when couples identify and correct these out-of-sync connections. When they do, they can then alter their individual rhythms to more seamlessly intertwine.

The Five Relationship Realms of Synchronization

1. Physical.

Out-of-sync physical attempts fall into two main categories. The first is how much, and what kind of, physical contact one partner may want versus that of the other. The additional dimension is when one partner desires a certain kind of physical touch and the other prefers something different.

For example, some people crave continuous but short physical connections, especially when they have been away from their partners for some period. Others prefer more prolonged hugs but only at particular times.

A segment of the population, both male and female, are challenged by emotional or physical inertia. That just means that these people like to complete whatever they are doing without interruption. If, for instance, one partner is busy with a task and the other is seeking physical connection at the same time. The busy partner may respond with irritation or dismissal, not because he or she doesn’t like affection, but because the timing doesn’t work.

2. Emotional

Perhaps emotional lack of synchronicity between intimate partners is the most common topic in relationship-advice columns and regularly separates the genders. The expression, “I just want to connect with you,” is most often said by women. “Can we just get to the bottom line?” or “I don’t need the backstory first,” is more often expressed by men.

It’s not that men don’t understand what a woman means when she asks for heart-to-heart connection, especially before lovemaking. It’s just that most men are taught early in their lives to suppress or cover vulnerable emotions like fear, pain, sorrow, or insecurity.

They often tell me with deep frustration that their woman wants them to be “a mind reader,” and somehow intuit what she needs. If men are taught to hide their own more vulnerable feelings, they cannot easily identify with those of a woman’s need for those experiences. Most men relate more easily to battle, sports, business, and health when they are together, but rarely talk about the feelings underlying those subjects.

3. Intellectual

It comes from a mid-fifteenth century definition meaning simply “to and fro.” When two people are in sync intellectually, their conversations are a communal and reciprocal exchange of dreams, ideas, goals, feelings, attitudes, concerns, needs, and hungers. When they interact, they build on one another’s ideas, creating synergy and more curiosity.

The rhythm of how partners exchange these crucial expressions is particularly significant. The more vulnerable a thought or feeling is, the more supportive the other must be to ensure the emotionally open partner must be at the time those thoughts are being expressed. If the partner sharing feels dismissed, overruled, erased, interrupted, challenged, or invalidated, he or she is likely to stop sharing. Even if the listening partner is innocently under or over-reactive, that same result can occur.

In addition, the more biased or fixated partners may be in their opinions, the harder it may be for the other partners to listen if they don’t feel or see things the same way. Learning to synergistically build concepts and dreams together is the hallmark of good communicators. Unfortunately, many intellectual disparities may not be resolvable. Too often, people don’t know how to listen deeply, expand the other’s mindset, or understand a different line of thinking from their own.

4. Spiritual

Spiritual beliefs are crucial to one’s purpose as well as to his or her meaning in life. They are the foundation of why people do the things they do, how they relate to others, and what keeps them in the game when things are tough.

It is not absolutely necessary for both partners in an intimate relationship to derive inspiration from the same source, but crucial that they respect and support each other’s beliefs and conduct themselves accordingly.

Often spiritual beliefs are so deeply imbedded that many people do not understand the impact they have on their intimate relationships. Because these convictions are the basis for moral and ethical decisions and what both partners draw upon when they are troubled or over-stressed, they must be held sacred.

For any intimate relationship to have a chance at long-term survival, new partners must be willing to look at where their rhythms automatically intermesh and where they may need to alter them for their relationship communication to flourish.