3 Mini Agreements to Make with Your Partner
Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash
In all of my experience as a relationship coach, I believe we can either use relationships as a tool for wake-up, or as a vehicle to ‘fall asleep’ into conditioning.
Relationships show us who we really are. They reveal to us our patterns, where we hold back, and where we need to heal.
But we can also fall asleep in our relationships — get comfortable, complacent, simply co-habitate, and fall into society’s ideas of how relationships should look but never actually live out our highest potential.
Like everything, you always have a choice.
When working with clients I can always tell when they’ve gotten themselves into a ‘wake-up’ relationship. There’s a part of them that has remained dormant and is finally asking to be given space and get ‘woken up’. They end up magnetizing the perfect partner in to facilitate this journey who may provoke them into more awareness.
If that’s an experience in relationship you’re interested in experimenting with, here are some mini-agreements you can try out in an effort to draw out more intimacy and depth from your partner.
Express Instead of Withhold
In relationships, I trend towards avoidance and withholding. I’ve gotten better at expressing the truth and what’s on my mind in real time but I used to bottle everything up and then create a fight in order to finally express myself.
I had a partner who was a very intuitive, sensitive man and could notice when something was going on internally with me.
He’d ask “What just happened there?” or “Is there something you need to say?”
His exquisite attention helped draw out what I usually kept inside because he created containment with his attention.
Eventually, we developed a nightly ritual. When we got into bed, I would lay my head on his chest and he’d say “Ok, what withholds do you have for me?”
Withholds, the things we don’t say — the truth, love, desires, points of frustration, can cause an energetic block in our connections and eventually become resentments.
He held the pole of ensuring our relationship and connection always had the most electricity flowing through it. Sex was always better when we were completely honest with one another.
And so I’d answer him. “Ok well, it hurt my feelings when you said xyz.” We’d talk and process it and he was able to feel if there was more and if so, he’d keep asking, “What else?”
What I loved most about this practice was that we were always discussing things in real time and handling places of disconnection quickly.
I often assign a similar homework assignment to my clients. They come back saying “Wow, I had no idea how many things I withheld every day from my partner.”
Give it a try, for one week, agree to say one thing every day to your partner you may normally skip over or keep inside. Connection brings electricity back. Truth is potent.
Call Each Other Out When ‘You’ve Checked Out’
For a relationship to be its best, both people need to show up fully and give each other quality, present, focused attention when together. Nothing kills a mood more than a phone check or zone out and ‘half listen’.
We can feel it, we’re feeling beings.
For me, sex was a place I could easily zone or ‘check out’ and let my mind wander. It was always the perfect time to start making my to-do lists or plan out my week.
The truth, sex, was a vulnerable place for me to stay present in. Being in my body and being present with my partner meant I had to allow someone to fully see and feel me.
I’d often pop out and let my mind drift off into thought. My partner was great at catching this and we made an agreement to always let the other ‘call each other out’ when we weren’t 100% present.
It required my partner to be fully present in his body and feel for when the sensation dropped. If he felt this he’d lovingly or playfully say “Molly, where’d you go? Come back!” and I’d laugh and say something like “Oh shoot I was checked out,” and call myself out with no shame and then re-presence myself to the sex we were having.
We always had fun with it. It was another spot of play and intimacy for us and as a result, our sex was a much deeper, connected, and intimate experience.
It can be a very expansive practice to add this into sex.
Give it a try, play around with an agreement you keep that helps bring you both back to the spot of most connection together, in sex or otherwise. When you’re fully dropped in with each other, electricity can freely flow and exchange again.
Agree to Stay Connected No Matter What
The last agreement we made together was in service to our commitment and the relationship.
I don’t think we get the full experience we’re meant to have in life or in a relationship unless we give ourselves over to something all the way. Fully. Not one foot in, one foot out. Not sort-of. But fully. When we’re 100% committed.
When we surrender and allow ourselves to be used for a higher purpose, for a job, or offer ourselves completely to a connection and relationship — parts of us get accessed and used that otherwise may not have.
The most dangerous behavior or pattern that can happen in a relationship is ‘the silent withdrawal’ — slowly distancing yourself and becoming apathetic.
In previous relationships, something would bother me and I would retreat until my partner resentfully ‘came and got me’ and confronted the issue. Or I would just resign that the spark had faded, let it die out completely, and move onto the next instead of handling the root problems.
An agreement we made in this relationship was that we would ‘stay connected no matter what’. If something bothered us or we were angry at the other, we agreed that we wouldn’t check out and instead we’d lean in to engage and actively process what was going on. To not disappear into isolation when something felt vulnerable or ‘too much’ and to navigate the spot of intimacy together in our connection.
At one point in our relationship we were faced with a big investment opportunity. A lot was at stake and it would have been a life changing decision, one we needed to consider at our own paces. We both had opinions, it was stressful, there was a deadline, and other people involved. It was really difficult to navigate but we kept our promise to stay connected no matter what even in the heat of the debating, in the need for extra support and guidance, and through the entire wave of emotions that truly tested us both. There were times it felt as though the stress was derailing us, but by remaining grounded in our connection and the commitment to the relationship and each other, we made the choice that was best for both of us.
We gave ourselves space and grace to be with each other even when the words weren’t perfect, when things got messy, and when we otherwise were dying to flee.
Our communications sounded like “I’m upset at you but I love you and let’s talk about this when we get home,” or “I”m really hurt right now but I’m going to call some friends and talk to my coach and I’ll come back with my part of what’s going on for me.”
We were always able to communicate what was going on for us and to let the other into what our experience was so that we didn’t end up disconnecting, dropping our attention from the relationship, or choosing avoidance instead.
These micro commitments signified the level of our larger commitment to each other and soothed the fear that the other might leave and that we’d be abandoned.
It gave us both a baseline level of safety, that we could always express the truth and say the real thing and that the other wouldn’t leave.
It showed us that discomfort was ok and that intimacy was built in the trenches by getting through difficult spots together. That sometimes electricity is generated even in the downs because coming back out, together, leaves you both more connected.
When we make these small but powerful agreements with our partners a lot can open up. There’s more spark and free flowing desire as well as trust, depth, and honesty.
We can use all of these tools for ‘wake-up’ to fully let all parts of us come alive.
Start by agreeing to always say the thing you’re holding inside instead of keeping it in, no matter what it ends up looking like, messy or not. Agree to stay checked-in and present the best you can, and to love each other even when you aren’t perfect. Agree to stay connected and leaned into the relationship no matter what. Be willing to choose each other on your worst and best days, the good bad, and ugly.
There is the open inviation to use your relationships to become your most self-expressed self. Will you take it? I hope you do.
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