3 Ways Mindfulness Transforms Our Love Life

We all hear about mindfulness and its many benefits, but we often are dismissive of how it can actually completely transform our love lives and our relationships.

As a love and relationship coach, I don’t have many clients dealing with challenges in their relationship who think to research how stillness will shift the dynamics in a relationship quickly. Instinctively, we want to do the complete opposite. We start trying to do something quick to fix it. We go into working way too hard for love instead of simply approaching intimacy and dating from a place of love within ourselves.

We’ve been dismissive of what stillness can do for us in moments of intensity and urgency and how it can help us solve the specific love and relationship problems happening right now. Love is an area that doesn’t work like anything else, as it’s counter-intuitive. The things we instinctively want to do, are so often the opposite of what will inspire intimacy, attraction, and spark. The ability to slow down, be still, and not take action out of fear or insecurity has the ability to completely transform a broken relationship and set a beautiful foundation for love and intimacy no matter what stage of love. One deep inhale and exhale, one 10 second pause to check in with ourselves before responding, one moment of grounding ourselves before we send the text, email, or call, has the ability to create an entirely different outcome.

Love and intimacy brings up some of our deepest triggers and most urgent emotions, yet the solution is most often found when doing the opposite. This goes against everything we’ve been taught in so many ways.

My own ability to pause and recognize when I was asking questions out of insecurity, or taking action out of fear, healed my own relationship, as I like so many, wanted to “do” something to create quick change. I found that the “quickest” path to creating a loving, connected, and intimate relationship is in our ability to stop taking instinctive and impulsive action. We also want to stop working so hard for love and recognize that it’s us that determines our value. As we start to see this and really feel it within ourselves, our partner will too.

Here are three reasons why pausing transforms your love life.

SEE ALSO: If You Want Abundance, You Must Learn To Attract It With Your Mind

Creates a new normal

When we begin the practice of taking accountability for ourselves and how we show up, we are living with a new sense of intention and presence. With this practice, we build consistency and it becomes our natural way of showing up to life. We are retraining our nervous system. Instead of reacting to life and feeling helpless to circumstances, we learn to surrender and flow with it. We are no longer swimming furiously upstream! We learn to approach challenges from a new space of empowerment and confidence. If there is an immediate situation where we become flooded with emotions, we learn to recognize this and share what’s coming up for us. When we learn to share our emotional experience instead of placing blame, we are building a new foundation with our partner.

Builds emotional safety

As we continue to practice and create a new normal, we are building emotional safety with our partner. They start to feel safe to express themselves because they see that we are a person in control of our emotions. We’ve been building strength on the inside, so we are now showing up softer, more compassionate, and more loving on the outside. There is nothing more attractive than feeling emotionally safe to be ourselves and having the presence to handle life as it comes. Our partner will feel safe to share more of who they are — their thoughts and desires — without fear. As we learn how to use mindfulness to work through our triggers, we create a safe space for our partner. This builds an unshakable intimate connection rooted in love and compassion.

Creates emotional consistency and trust

As we create a safe and loving environment through steps one and two, we build consistency and trust. Consistency is key in establishing long term trust! This doesn’t mean we need to show up perfectly and never make a mistake, but that we have the ability to recognize it, pick it up, and get back on track. A beautiful way to catch this is to create awareness around any time we’re feeling defensive and protective. We want to practice recognizing this, and instead move towards vulnerability and self-disclosure.

As we share more from our own emotional perspective and what our experience is to whatever’s occurring, we inspire compassion and connection in our partner too. We’ve gone from the instinct to blame and protect, to self-disclosure and vulnerability. This is how we inspire them to let their guard down and feel safe to share their own emotional perspective and experience too.

The ability to create a safe space for our partner starts with our ability to create emotional safety consistently within ourselves.