"Working on Your Relationship" Does Not Mean Something is Wrong

“Why do we need to work on our relationship? Everything’s fine”.

As a Love, Sex & Relationship Coach I’ve noticed a common perspective that people only need to “work” on their relationship if there is something wrong with it.

It’s understandable that this is the common perspective. Up until now it hasn’t been a normal thing to intentionally work on your relationship.

Fun fact: dId you know that running or jogging for exercise didn’t really become a thing until the 70’s?. Before that, seeing someone running down the sidewalk was cause for concern.

For example, in 1968, Sen. Strom Thurmond was stopped by a police officer in Greenville, South Carolina for suspicious activity: jogging.

Today it seems like a natural thing for someone to take up running in order to improve their health and fitness. Everyone knows that exercise has positive impacts for your health.

Meditation also used to be a fringe thing to do, mostly practiced by dedicated spiritual practitioners. Today, most people know the benefits of meditation, and it’s practiced far and wide.

I give these examples to illustrate that when we talk about “working on our relationship” today, it is seen like working on your health or working on your mindfulness once were, before the benefits of these were recognized widely in society.

What most people don’t realize yet it that approaching love, sex and relationship as a practice has the capability to improve every aspect of your life, just like exercise and mindfulness.

Working on your relationship, deepening your self love, and expanding your capacity for pleasure are all practices that have benefits that spill over into the rest of your life.

Knowing yourself more deeply and opening up fully to another person are potent paths for personal growth and self-actualization.

Love is the key that opens up the doors to these powerful paths.

Having a strong awareness of your body and your emotions, and being able to access expanded and blissful states help you to touch the present moment - life itself - more directly. 

Pleasure practice opens up these possibilities.

When we work on our intimate relationship, we become better friends, better siblings, sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers.

We become aware of the inherited painful patterns that have been passed down for generations, and we have the opportunity to bring them to the surface and heal them, breaking the cycle for our own children.

When we expand our pleasure, we expand our creativity. We are able to flow with life, co-creating our reality with joy, rather than struggling or running uphill.

More and more people are experiencing the benefits of this approach to love, sex and relationships, and I believe that before too long it will become recognized as one of the foundational pillars to living a healthy life.

If you landed on this blog post, then you’re probably someone who understands the benefits available to you on the path of love, sex and relationship work.

So, next time someone looks at you funny when you talk about a sacred sexuality practice, or turning conflict into growth, or working on your great relationship, remind them that it used to be weird to jog.

Together, as we do this courageous internal and interpersonal work, we are creating ripples, making the world a more loving place.