How to Build a Lasting Emotional Connection
By: Lisa Ryan
Tags: Emotions, Couples Therapy, Dating, Connection, Love

Having a strong emotional connection with your partner is perhaps the most essential component of a relationship that is deep and lasting. It is also what many find lacking. Though men and women experience and create that special emotional bond somewhat differently, you can’t go wrong if you follow the suggestions below.

Have each other’s backs

Come to his or her defense. This is especially important if they said something you know is dead wrong, or if they are struggling or making a fool out of themselves. Come to their aid. Don’t challenge them in public. Save them from themselves. That’s what love looks like.

Keep each other’s secrets

You can’t be close if you don’t share tender things like fears, vulnerabilities, insecurities or huge challenges. We all have moments when our confidence tanks. Your spouse won’t tell you if you send the message that you are not on their side.

Never tell another living soul, ever, about the secrets he or she shares with you. It’s privileged information and I never want you to be on the outside.

Listen to establish an emotional connection

Most people suck at listening. It’s just the truth. Sorry, but it’s because many of us feel that responding is the same thing as listening. It’s not. True listening is when you do the following:

1. Put down your devices.

2. Summarize what you think you heard.

3. Ask great questions about what they just said.

4. Don’t offer fixes or solutions.

5. Be empathetic.

6. Don’t interrupt them.

Make love often

Men feel that special bond by making love, much more than women do. Men and women are different. And I think that’s a good thing! Just understand that women are more likely to think that foreplay starts in the kitchen — and some men are at a loss to understand why.

Be each other’s best friend

Just ask yourself why your best friend is your best friend. I’m thinking lack of judgment, enormous compassion, availability, and that feeling you have in your bones that they truly care. That is exactly what your significant other needs. So be each other’s best friends.

Initiate love making

For some reason, men are far more likely to initiate lovemaking that women are. Maybe it’s a libido differentia, a differing level of energy left over a long day, or simply not feeling that emotional connection.

Whatever the reason, I just know that because men initiate far more than women, they also get rejected a lot more. So it’s really important to often send the message to each other that they are desirable.

Know each other’s challenges and fears

I hope for you that you’re the first person he or she calls or texts about anything important. If you’re not, then you have somehow sent the message that you’re emotionally unavailable. If this feels like a fit for you, acknowledge and apologize to him or her what you just figured out, that you’re going to work on it immediately, and change.

Know and respond to each other’s signals

Try to be so tuned into each other that you notice when your partner is tired or is ready to leave. If he or she is ready to leave a great party, then respect your best friend and lover is in a different place, and go. They’ll be so thankful that you saved them from their own guilt trip.

Ask questions

Good question-asking is how you will get to know each other more deeply. Questions let a person know you care about them. Learn the details of their lives, what they love, what they loathe, what their favorite color is, or who irritates them most at work and why.

Learn their hopes and dreams — and share yours with them. Details matter like coffee-light-no-sugar, or medium rare. And of course important and remembered dates like anniversaries and birthdays.

Support each other’s right to see things differently

Lack of judgment or a need to persuade your special person to see things your way are the hallmark of respect and a 50/50 partnership. What he or she feels and thinks should be every bit as important as what you feel or think.

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If you work toward understanding the person you love most in life, rather than always focusing on being understood all the time, then you will enjoy and will have earned a lasting emotional connection that will last a lifetime.

Counseling for Busy People is a membership site for individuals looking to help save their relationships. For more information on emotionally connecting with one another, check out our blog or some of our recent videos.