Quality Time
By Amber Dalsin, M.Sc., C.Psych.
A 3-Part Formula for Quality Time
It is nice to spend time with your partner, but if you’re looking to make your relationship stronger, to build or maintain that loving connection, you may want to look at how you are spending that time.
Let’s do some quick relationship math.
On average, how much time do you spend with your partner in a week?
We can call that A
How much of that time is spent on mundane tasks, making everyday decisions, scrolling on your phones, or in disagreements?
We’ll call that B
So really, how much quality time do you spend with your partner?
A - B = Quality Time
What is quality time? In this case, it’s time that you spend making your partner feel loved and special, getting to know their inner world, sharing yourself, and building each other up.
Quality time involves:
quality conversation,
quality activities, and
focused attention.
Quality Conversation
Deep emotional and intimate connection is built on deep knowing. This involves collecting and staying up to date about the information in your partner's life: the stories, the excitements, the stresses, and the strains. When you keep up with each other’s major life events and history you know how your partner likes the kitchen to be cleaned, their favorite salad dressing, their favorite TV shows, their best friends, and their secret wishes and desires.
Couples that have a detailed, rich knowing of each other are more equipped to deal with stressors outside of their relationship and conflict inside their relationship. They keep up to date and they can talk to their partners about what they are thinking and feeling, and these relationships are more solid and able to weather difficult storms.
Quality Activities
These activities are designed to either build or reinforce your knowledge of your partner’s inner world, creating intimacy and reinforcing a knowing, loving relationship. Some brilliant quality activities can be found in the book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver and include:
First Date Questions
Don’t let the name bias you. These can be any date, anytime questions. Use “get to know you” style queries to encourage your partner to open up and spark some quality conversations.
Share Who You Are
Get personal, give details, and don’t be afraid to tell secrets. Your openness will tell your partner you trust them and make it safe for them to share too.
Childhood Stories
That feeling of knowing who your partner is can be deepened by knowing who they were. Sharing stories of your childhoods is a great way to bond with your partner and to see them in a different light.
Games That Increase the Sense of Knowing
There are a lot of board games out there that provide a really fun way for partners to learn more about each other, and in some cases, to prove how much they already know. Games allow you to safely express thoughts and feelings in a playful way.
Listening to (or Reading) Books Together
After choosing books that appeal to each of you, and sharing the experience of reading them you can then generate quality conversations by discussing them.
Focused Attention
When you are showing interest in your partner and demonstrate caring, it puts money in the love bank of the relationship, it creates a positive balance that safeguards against future relationship problems. Focused attention is asking questions and listening to your partner’s thoughts and feelings. Focusing your attention on them, and what is important to them, even if you don’t share their interests.
One way to show focused attention is to ask open-ended questions.
Open-Ended Questions
If your questions can be answered with a quick and succinct “yes” or “no” you may want to try for more open-ended questions that ask why, how, and what your partner feels.
When you think about feeling heard and understood and truly appreciated, it’s in the day-to-day things – a genuine knowing of who each other are. You can get there by spending that quality time with your partner.
With quality conversation, quality activities, and focused attention you can turn the time you have together into quality time and ensure yours is a relationship that is close, caring, and lasting.
This blog is not meant to be a substitute for couples therapy or relationship counselling. This should not be construed as specific advice. See a relationship therapist in your area to address your specific problems.