The Importance Of Time For Yourself And Independence In A Relationship
How much time do you dedicate to your individual sphere in your daily life? And when you have a partner, do you dedicate the same time to yourself?
Imagine that you have ten plants in your garden and you feel that, at any given time, one of them needs special care for some reason, would you stop caring for the other nine completely? Surely not, you would decide to dedicate part of your time to each of them.
This is what we need to do with each of our areas of life: as a couple, as a family… and also of course as personal development.
When we start a relationship, it is common for us to want to have shared time and cultivate it, learn about each other’s hobbies, teach them ours, enjoy their company and make the most of that moment together.
In fact, these moments increase our bond of intimacy and strengthen the connection between us, but what happens if we don’t also take care of our individual space? What would happen if we stopped watering one of those plants in our garden completely?
Dedicating time to oneself is very important to reconnect with our personal sphere, to develop self-confidence, as well as self-esteem and self-concept, that is, the ideas and characteristics that form the image we have of ourselves. In addition, it helps the couple’s relationship itself as it strengthens trust, balances the needs of both and enriches shared moments.
Cultivating enjoyment with oneself is something very valuable since it reconnects us with those moments that generate personal well-being, allows us to create a space for reflection and individual leisure, and increases self-knowledge, which is a vital aspect for decision-making. decisions since it helps us know what we want. Paying attention and self-care boosts our self-esteem and helps us not abandon the other areas of our life that are equally important to us.
1. Question the thoughts that rob us of independence
Many times we can fall into the mistaken belief that dedicating time to ourselves is selfish and also negative for our partner. It is very common for this chain of events, or very similar, to take place within the person:
This It can generate a vicious circle that makes us feel worse and worse without knowing exactly why When we draw this sequence, and question and address that thought, we can break it down and see what really happens when we give ourselves that space.
2. Dedicate time to our friends, family and pleasant activities
Spend time with friends It helps to develop a healthy feeling of belonging, social bond and increases self-confidence, as well as self-esteem
Furthermore, practicing pleasurable activities individually helps to reconnect with oneself, which increases self-knowledge and the possibility of generating new strengths; In addition, of course, it gives us new pleasant activities to do since practice leads to new personal discoveries.
3. Reserve a time of day or a space in the house to spend time with ourselves
This helps us release the accumulated tensions of the day allows us to disconnect from pressures, and in turn helps us reduce the level of demand and destructive criticism of others since we promote our own rest and relaxation.
When we find ourselves tense and saturated with the day, it is very common for us to take it out on the other, and for our demands regarding the tasks that remain to be done, the attention they give us or the affection they show us, magnify.
4. Work on our professional goals and personal concerns
Not attending to our own objectives and not dedicating time to them can make us forget the intrinsic motivations that move us in life; and can create a disconnection from ourselves and our passions.
On the contrary, if we observe and take into account our own goals and dreams, we are helping ourselves to strengthen that inner motivation and that bond with us
And how does it help the couple?
In addition to making us feel better, dedicating space and time to oneself also helps to connect with caring for others and therefore also for the couple.
If we change the order of priorities and understand that the only person who is going to be with us every day of our lives is ourselves, we will better understand how important it will be to take care of ourselves and pay attention to ourselves to feel good, and to be able to take care of our environment and people. people we love.
But Let’s see in a very graphic way the different types of relationships that can exist depending on the level of independence of the members Let’s imagine that one member of the relationship is represented by a blue circle and the other by a purple one.
When we start a relationship and dedicate all of our time to that shared sphere, we can fall into the mistaken idea that a healthy and positive relationship is one that precisely shares all the time in the world.
As we see, they are practically overlapping, making a single circle that would share everything, at all times. In this type of relationship it usually happens that we forget what is important to us: our friendships, the hobbies that we did not share with a partner, the personal and professional goals that we had (while we begin to believe the other’s goals as ours). Thus we generate a great disconnection with ourselves
The previous mode of relationship can easily lead us to fall into a dependence on the other person, since by spending all our time with them we reinforce the idea that without him or her we could not live. That dependency could be reflected like this:
Sometimes we have the irrational belief that dedicating time to ourselves, or not dedicating all our time to the relationship, would damage it and distance us from each other; or even It could mean that something is not working well in the couple and that for this reason we will stop sharing our life with the other person.
However, when we pay attention to how healthy it is to spend time with ourselves and be faithful to all our areas of life, we realize that this does indeed have a positive effect on our relationship with our partner. We observe that personal development, self-care, and the quality time we dedicate to ourselves increase well-being with others and couple connection to encourage more shared moments.
We must not forget at this point the importance of assertive communication and active and empathetic listening to share our needs as individuals with the other person, and to in turn listen to the needs of our partner. This enhances trust and love; increasing generosity and understanding, and decreasing control and possessiveness that lead us to distrust towards the other person. This type of healthy relationship would be represented like this:
In short, dedicating time to ourselves and our individual space is vitally important to increase our self-esteem, connect with our motivations and generate self-confidence. It is something very valuable that we should prioritize, since It reminds us how important we are to ourselves and how important it is to take care of ourselves to love and value ourselves
Spending time with friends and family creates security and strengthens us to be able to manage the emotions that arise in situations that may seem difficult to bear. Furthermore, dedicating time to activities that we find pleasurable and to our hobbies independently connects us with ourselves and reinforces our self-esteem and self-knowledge.
Likewise, working on the professional goals and personal objectives that we have enhances our intrinsic motivations and helps us maintain the link with ourselves and our desires.
Are you looking for psychology services?
In TherapyChat, we know that cultivating and enjoying your own space is not incompatible with spending quality time with your partner and doing activities together. However, sometimes it can be difficult to achieve that balance between time as a couple and individual time, which will help strengthen the mutual connection, increase common well-being and contribute to the trust we feel with the couple.
If you are looking for support in this aspect, at TherapyChat, we have a great team of experts who can guide you to achieve balance in your relationship. Because when we take care of ourselves and feel good about ourselves, we can better enjoy being with and taking care of the people who are most important to us, like our partner.
