If you are reading this, somebody loves you. They love you enough to send this blog to you in hopes that you will see this as an invitation from them to help build something better. Take a moment to let that sink in.

I’m writing this because I was you.

I lived with a partner I loved, thought I was doing the right things, and yet, as I'm sure you can guess, something was off. I wanted more but didn’t have the vocabulary to ask for what I needed, so I allowed the relationship to drift along like a ship without a rudder. I was in constant action, constantly in "DO" mode, trying to find something that would reignite the spark and help me get my needs met. That one sentence—trying to get MY needs met—lacked the understanding that in order to get closer to having my needs met, I needed to figure out what my partner's needs were and work towards fulfilling those.

Things I was sure of:

• I love this woman.

• I choose her over all others.

• I wanted this to work out.

• I wanted to feel more connected and closer to her.

• And, I had no clue what to do to help foster any of that!

“I don’t need therapy; if you have a problem, you should go to therapy.”

This was not my worst moment, but it was far from my finest. One fateful night, in the midst of another argument, both of us fighting for our own needs and not listening to the other, I was invited to therapy and that was my response! “I don’t need therapy; if you have a problem, you should go…” It made sense, of course, because I knew I was right, I was always right, and yet somehow I also knew that behind my fragile ego was a voice saying, “You are arguing for something that hasn’t gotten you where you want to be… maybe there is a better way.” Looking back, I can hear those words coming out of my mouth and it makes me sad that I didn’t have the tools then, that I didn’t understand yet. There I was, wishing for something better, trying the same misguided attempts over and over, and my partner was asking for the same, and my response was, “That’s a you problem?!” Man, did I have a lot to learn!

So the good news is that you get the opportunity to respond differently than I did, to learn from my cautionary tale of misguided attempts and broken relationship blueprints. You have a partner who loves you and is trying something different, inviting you into the relationship, asking you to grow with them.

What does growing with them look like?

• Learning to heal old wounds and let go of resentments towards each other.

• Learning better ways to communicate your needs.

• Learning to hear your partner without allowing your own dialogue, fears, and story to prevent you from listening.

• Learning how to share your wants, needs, and desires in a way that invites your partner in.

• Learning how attachment styles play into your own unique relationship dynamics (and how those attachment styles are a result of your own story growing up).

• Learning that conflict doesn’t have to mean disconnect; learn how to use conflict to learn more about each other and build stronger bonds.

• Learning how to grow in your own life so that you can show up as the best version of yourself in and out of the relationship.

There has long been this school of thought that we need to be two completely whole people, healed of all our trauma, confident in ourselves, and living our best lives, to be able to be in a relationship with another. While that sounds like a great goal, the reality is that we are all flawed, we all have our own issues and baggage, we all have wounds we thought we healed that we then find out later were just covered up, and we all have room to grow.

We all have room to grow, every single day until the day we die.

So, where do you start? It really is a great question. I spent the last 5+ years reading through every book, blog, and listening to every podcast and expert on intimacy, connection, attachment styles, love languages, masculine/feminine dynamics, and more. What I found was that there are some pretty core concepts that should be at the baseline for any relationship, not just the ones that are struggling. I was listening to a podcast on building emotional intimacy one day and stumbled across yet another doctor talking about rebuilding relationships, but what was different was he had broken it down into simple bite-sized steps that, to me, took in all of the great parts of all of the experts and built a new type of relationship blueprint. Cue Dr. Wyatt Fisher, with 20+ years of marriage and family therapy, who helped me understand the key steps to share with others so that you can grow with your partner instead of apart.

Six Steps to Fix a Broken Relationship

1. Learn about attachment styles. There are some great resources, including the book “Attached” by Levine & Heller that teach us how as children we develop attachment styles, how our parents relate to us, what makes us feel safe and unsafe, and how later those attachment styles play into not only our romantic relationships but all adult relationships. Step one is to learn what your attachment style is, and see if you can identify what you think your partner's may be.

2. Learn how attachment styles are contributing to the relationship dynamics both good and bad. Once I understood not only that my partner was firmly in the avoidant category, I could also see how my own anxious tendencies were playing into the negative loops we have been in for so many years. For me, learning how to move my anxious attachment style closer to a secure attachment has helped me regain a sense of self and has helped me grow as a man, partner, and father. On the other side, when I acknowledge that my partner is who she is because of an attachment style she learned early on, I can have much more compassion and meet her with love instead of fear and misunderstanding.

3. Learn how to heal resentments. Once you understand your relationship dynamics a little better, the first step to repairing the relationship is looking at the way you and your partner hold on to resentments for each other. Big and small, take some time to journal out the resentments you both hold on to for each other. These can be as small as "he makes my tea in the white cup and he knows I like the black cup," to a partner having a full-blown affair. There is a LOT that happens between those two points and we have to be honest with ourselves about what resentments we are holding on to.

   As Malachy McCourt once said, “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

   The main goal behind sharing and clearing our resentments is that we boil them down to the main feelings, share the resentment around those feelings, and ask our partner to do something different. When you are ready to work through these, check out the framework here, or reach out and ask a coach or therapist to help.

4. Learning love languages. In my experience, this is critical and often misunderstood in couples who are struggling. There are two distinct sides to this, one is the way you or your partner feels loved, the other is the way that you feel unloved. To give an example, I feel very loved when my wife brings me coffee while I’m still in bed, I feel very unloved when she makes plans that don’t include me and doesn’t tell me about them until the last minute. The doctor I did my training with has come up with a great app called “Keep the Glow” that allows you and your partner to list both the things that fill you up with love, and the things that drain you, then allows and suggests you check in weekly to see how each of you are doing.

5. Look at the polarity in your relationship. Esther Perel does an amazing job in this video discussing how in our long-term romantic relationships the love in us wants to be close to our partner and the wish for desire that draws us closer requires space. The other concepts at play that create or reduce polarity are the masculine and feminine roles in the relationship. This is separate from male and female and is more about creating push and pull through polarity. Some great resources for men on this are “Way of the Superior Man” by David Deida, and for both partners: Esther Perel’s “Mating in Captivity” is a great overview of how polarity, sexuality, masculine and feminine play together to keep us connected emotionally and physically.

6. Learn how to relationship better. Ok, there is probably a nicer way to say this but learning the tools that will help you reduce conflict, have tough conversations, build emotional intimacy, reconnect on many different levels, and repair after conflicts faster will dramatically improve your connection to your partner. Show me a partner who is upset that their needs are not getting met and I will show you two partners who are not getting their needs met and have the amazing opportunity to build something amazing from the past that they have.

As always, if you need some help you can reach out to me here or check out my teacher and mentor Dr. Wyatt Fisher whose podcasts are an endless supply of relationship gold.