You’ve probably heard this before. Being in close relationships and being married, is like dancing.  Couples who have healthy relationships become partners, cooperating in rhythmic or sometimes awkward movements.  You figure out how to fulfill your needs and how to move across the landscape of your busy, intertwined lives.  You take turns, sometimes one is the leader, and sometimes the same one is the follower. In the words of Dr. Sue Johnson, author, and clinical psychologist “Love is a constant process of tuning in, connecting, missing and misreading cues, disconnecting, repairing, and finding deeper connection. It is a dance of meeting and parting and finding each other again. Minute to minute and day to day.”

Respectful communication is the key, so each one should take the signal from the other. Respecting each other’s space and respecting each other’s confidences are important. To have a healthy relationship means to appreciate that if something is important to your spouse, even though it may seem insignificant or small to you, you treat it as important.  When we listen carefully to the verbal and non-verbal cues of our spouse, we are able to balance.  Both leading and following then comes with a mood of how can I best serve my spouse?  How do we cooperate together? With this mood, even if we misread cues, we can get soon back in sync, in harmony again.

For instance, imagine that you’ve just found out something very important about your spouse’s health, or family (your in-laws) or financial situation. Before you both can really digest the information, you share it with others — without consulting with your spouse beforehand.  This is something that can cause miscues or stumbling in your marriage dance.  To repair such disconnection, a sincere apology goes a long way, accompanied by the intention to be careful of such breaches in the future.

By Krsnanandini Dasi & Tariq Saleem Ziyad