11. Why Self Care Is So Important To Your Relationship

Hi, I'm Karyn, Couples Therapist and Relationship Coach with A Better Relationship Coaching and this is my podcast A Better Relationship in 5 Minutes. 

So today I wanted to talk about why self-care is so so important in your relationship. I hear a lot from people that I work with that it's hard to find the time or they're just too busy, some version of they just can't find the time to fit it in.  And I just really want to emphasize that, one, it doesn't have to be, you know, like a weekend getaway for, um, you know, self-care.  It can be really simple things. And also that it actually is very important in terms of, um, helping your relationship.  

The reason that, you know, we need to give back to ourselves in addition to everybody else that we're giving to in our life, right, um, is because we only have a finite amount energy that we can give to people. 1:04 So, when we're constantly giving to someone else and we're not giving back to ourselves, we're going to run out and we're going to feel that burnout.  We can maybe start to feel resentment and really, you know, really feel like our needs are not being met, which is-- whether we realize it or not as we're going along and maybe moving at this fast pace kind of keeping up with all of the things--we may not realize it, but eventually this catches up with us.

So if you think about you know, a pitcher of water, that's everything you've got, right?  When you're pouring it into all of these other little cups, your kids, your partner, you know, extended family, work, all of these things are emptying your pitcher.  Eventually, you're going to be running on empty, and so self-care is really filling that pitcher back up with things that we enjoy, things that make us feel good, and then that allows us to then continue to give to the people around us.  Like for me, for example, I really enjoy listening to music and reading. So, when I take the time to do those things, and again, it doesn't have to be, you know, hours upon hours. If I just give myself even twenty minutes at the end of the day or thirty minutes at the end of the day for me to read. you know, when maybe I've had a busy day and I don't have more time than that. If I can just fit that in for myself, it goes a long way.  And it gives me something to look forward to.

So, when we're, able to do those activities, we feel better. We feel like we're getting something that we really enjoy too does help us to feel like our needs also have a space and are important to me.  When we don't have that happen it's very very easy for resentment to seep in and as I have said many times resentment is a relationship killer.  So we need to make sure that we're kinda of cutting that off right in the beginning and try to avoid that resentment in all the different opportunities it has to kind of creep in.  

So this is one of those ways and when we are able to feel like we're filling our pitcher right with that water and we're feeling good and we're feeling content and satisfied umm that doesn't mean things aren't hectic right because they will very likely continue to be so. But when we at least feel like we're getting something for ourselves, we're able to better show up in our relationship with our partner.  

If I feel supported, then I'm, it's easier for me to support my partner and so my husband benefits from that and then our relationship benefits from that.  Sometimes this takes coordinating and to support each other. So my husband has things that he really enjoys doing and I need to be able to give him the space to do those things because I know when I do that he feels supported and he's you know he's filling himself so that he can then be able to come back and give to our relationship in a way that we both end up benefiting from.

So I want to encourage you to think about the things that you really enjoy, that you feel like give back to you  also how you can support your partner in doing that for themselves because that will have a double benefit of them just feeling better, they're able to do these things that they really enjoy and you know they feel good when they are doing. also they'll feel supported that you are helping them do something that they really need.

So put a comment below and let me know what you do for self-care.  I would love to hear about that. I hope this was helpful and until next time take care of and take care of each other.