The importance of time to you and independence in a relationship

How much time do you dedicate to your individual sphere in your day to day? And when you have a partner, do you dedicate the same time?

Imagine that you have ten plants in your garden and you feel that, at any given moment, one of them needs special care for some reason, would you stop taking care of 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: the couple, the family... and also of course that of personal development.

• Related article: "How do you know when to go to couples therapy? 5 compelling reasons "

How do we spend that time on ourselves?

When we start a relationship, it is usual that we want to have time shared and cultivate it, get to know 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 the two, but what happens if we don't also take care of our individual space? What would happen if we completely stopped watering one of those plants in our garden?

Taking time for yourself 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 relationship itself as it strengthens trust, the balance in the needs of both and enriches the shared moments.

Cultivating enjoyment with oneself is something very valuable since it reconnects us with those moments that generate personal well-being, it allows us to create a space reflection and individual leisure, and increases self-knowledge, which is a vital aspect for decision-making since it helps us to know what we want. Paying attention and self-care enhances our self-esteem and helps us not to 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 spending time with oneself is something selfish and also negative for the couple. It is very common for this chain of events, or very similar, to take place within the person:

• The thought arises, for example, "giving me time is selfish."
• This thought triggers an emotion, usually guilt.
• And both lead to behavior, generally not taking time for oneself.

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 observe what really happens when we dedicate that space to ourselves.

2. Spend time with our friends, family, and enjoyable activities

Spend time with friends helps to develop in a healthy way the feeling of belonging, of social bond and increases self-confidence, as well as self-esteem.

In addition, practicing pleasant activities individually helps to reconnect with oneself, which increases self-knowledge and the possibility of generating new strengths; in addition to, of course, it gives us new enjoyable activities to do as practice leads to new personal discoveries.

3. Reserve a moment of the 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 to reduce the level of demand and destructive criticism of the other since we promote our own rest and relaxation.

When we are tense and saturated with the day, it is very common that we pay for it with the other, and that our demands on the tasks that remain to be done, the attention that he pays us or the affection that he shows us, magnify.

4. Work on our professional goals and personal concerns

Not attending to our own goals and not dedicating time to them can make us forget the intrinsic motivations that move us in life; and it can create a disconnect with 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 helps in turn 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 life is ourselves, We will better understand how important it will be to take care of ourselves and pay attention to ourselves in order to feel good, and to be able to take care of our environment and the people who we want.

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 in the mistaken idea that a healthy and positive relationship is one that just shares all the time of the world.

As we can see, they are practically overlapping, making a single circle that would share everything, at all times. In these types of relationships, it often happens that we forget what is important to us: our friendships, the hobbies that are not we shared with a partner, the personal and professional goals we had (while we came to believe as our own those of the other). We thus generate a great disconnection with ourselves.

The previous mode of relationship can easily lead us to become dependent on the other. person, since by spending all the time with them we reinforce the idea that without him or her we could not to live. That dependency could be reflected like this:

Sometimes there is the irrational belief that dedicating time to ourselves, or not dedicating all the time to the relationship, would damage it and separate us from the other; or even It could mean that something is not working well with the couple and that for that 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 oneself and be true to all our areas of life, we realize that indeed this has a positive effect on the relationship with our partner. We observe that personal development, self-care, and quality time we dedicate to ourselves, increase well-being with others and the connection of the couple to promote more moments shared.

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 builds trust and love; increasing generosity and understanding, and decreasing control and possessiveness that lead us to mistrust the other person. This type of healthy relationship would be represented like this:

In short, dedicating time to oneself and to our individual space is of vital importance to increase our self-esteem, connect with our motivations and generate self-confidence. It is something very valuable in which we should prioritize, since 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 cope with. In addition, dedicating time to activities that we find enjoyable 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.

Looking for psychology services?

On 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 that individual time, which It will help to strengthen the mutual connection, it will increase the common well-being and it will contribute to the trust we feel with the couple.

If you are looking for support in this regard, 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 and taking care of the people most important to us, such as our partner.