It’s kinda easy to take people for granted, and get complacent and comfortable with things, isn’t it? Once certain patterns and routines have been established in certain types of relationships, it’s easy to just put things in cruise control, and only contribute the things that are necessary to do the bare minimum required to keep things going.
How many people are doing romantic things, pushing the boundaries of their connections, and doing constant emotional inner work to make sure their partner is happier? Sorry, but I wish I saw that kind of Apu and Manjula love happening in relationships all over the place, but I don’t.
I would like to meet someone who would want to receive that much passion too, but I personally haven’t found someone in a long while that is on the highest parallel passion appetite as I am on. A close friend said recently to me, “I know you’re still waiting to meet someone on your level!” And I agreed with her a million percent.
It’s always possible to expand what we bring to love!
Read: 3 Ways to Build Intimacy in Your Poly Relationships
I want to start with the relationship we have with ourselves, because that is more important than ever in the state of the world we live in. We all have personal issues and struggles that require higher-than-usual applications of self-love than we have ever known we had to give ourselves. Once that happens, we truly can bring the best of us to the best of others we are in relationships with.
How to Deepen a Relationship
1. Clear the Air
There’s nothing like catching up emotionally. We can think we know what’s going on with our partners, as if saying “How was your day?” every time we see them is enough to know what’s REALLY happening inside their heart and soul. Some things take days, weeks, maybe months to process and understand clearly and gain development on, and you never know when it’s time to clear the air with your partner about something, ESPECIALLY IN POLYAMORY.
There’s usually an elephant in the closet, and a skeleton dancing around the room. Ask what it’s name is, and if your partner wants to fuck them or not. Go there! Then go there again next month! Three months from now, make sure you go there again. Some relationships need to clear the air more often than others, but they all need to do it at some point.
Read: 4 Signs of Communication Breakdown
2. Share Sexual Fantasies
Another thing to talk about, that’s distinctly different than clearing the air and discussing personal issues and problems, is confessing and communicating the development of new sexual fantasies and feelings that you never knew you felt until yesterday.
Tell your partner about this development during dinner tonight! Don’t hide it for weeks, not sure what it will make them think. Someone who loves you will support you and encourage you to share new sexual fantasies you have, and they will share theirs with you! It’s only natural to worry, but more worry should be spent solving the problem that will happen if you keep your deepest fantasies from your partner for months at a time.
3. Share Passions
Few things will connect lovers like spending an hour and a half together thinking and feeling each other’s presence while watching a great movie. I look forward to the day I watch Everything Everywhere All At Once with Michelle Yeoh and my closest lover. I will bond with them on a spiritual-molecular-mental-heart level beyond description if they love it as much as I do, and see and feel the same eternal life wisdom that I see and feel and sparkle from.
I cherish Stevie Wonder, and going to Boston with my former lover in a rented car and spending $700 to see Stevie was an experience like few others in my entire existence. LIFE became a movie that time. Generally, a movie itself will suffice… but creating cinematic memories together will bond you two like 007 dream glue.
Read: Easy Ways to Bond with Your Partners
4. Create Together
I created a piece of art with a lover and I still have it, as the memory it holds is eternal. We made a colorful masterpiece of abstraction and ripped it in half. She has one half, and I have the other, and I will keep it forever. It is a unique memento of our time together, and it’s a one of one. The other half of it gives me mystical feelings and curious thoughts: I wonder if she still cherishes it like I do? But I have faith. I still have mine, and me keeping my half means it still is important to me, like my memories of her.
Get creative… then destructive. Make a token of your love, and share it somehow.
5. Capture the Moment
I take pictures with ALL the lovers I possibly can. Even short-term romances. Taking pictures or video isn’t for everybody, sure, but when your memories start to fail, or color things differently than you fully remember, what are you going to do? The point of the pictures isn’t to capture some perfect life we’re bragging about to other couples or strangers on social media—it’s about capturing snapshots in time and cementing evidence of the dreams we float through in life together.
Smiles together, a shared hug, a stolen kiss—one moment we shared together that was real might speak for all our moments. I love every beautiful person who I’ve taken a timeless memory of a picture with. I cherish you all, and the trust of sharing that moment made us infinitely deeper… with one flash.
Never stop going deeper and reaching for higher highs with your partners.
Want more ideas on how to deepen your relationship? Read Ways to Deepen Your Poly Connections.
Sincerely yours,
Adhimu “Malcolm Lovejoy” Stewart
Tell us what you think