Q. I am in a relationship at the moment but am considering leaving. I have one child to my partner, but we just don’t get along anymore. He is nice and all but we just don’t have the spark we had when we got together 3 years ago. Can you help?

A. There are many things you could focus on in this situation. I would like to focus on the spark that has been lost. Do you know where it was lost? Can you define a time when it was lost?

Think about how you were feeling at that point, when you realised it was not there.

When we get together with another person and the relationship becomes intimate, we begin to share our feelings with our partner. The more information we share about our feelings the more intimate our relationship becomes. If this sharing of feelings ceases, either through not listening or not speaking, our relationship slowly becomes less intimate. We can loose the spark.

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If we examine the emotions of both partners we realise that although they are both wanting the same outcome of the relationship to stay together, neither can see that they personally are responsible for any part of its slow demise.

In any relationship, you must have equal emotional input. Men can offer emotional input characterised by the male sex and females can offer emotional input characterised by the female sex. These two inputs will add up to 100% of the emotional needs of the relationship. Somewhere along the way though in this scenario, communication between partners was replaced by an input from an outside distraction. This distraction could be as sinister as another person, or as simple as spending to much time on the Xbox. As the communication slowly closed down so has the desire to please. How? Without communication we become blind as to the needs of our partner. Because we loose sight of the needs of our partner, we can no longer fulfill our desire to please, or love. You may have heard a partner say, ‘I want to love you but I don’t know what to do’. Then I would say without a doubt, that they are wanting to love you, but they lack the understanding of what love is.

Love: Is the desire to please. Without communication you lack the ability to love. Without communication and love there is no spark. Without a spark, there is no desire to be in a relationship.

So here is what needs to happen. Open a communication channel with your partner. Tell him/her this with a smile, ‘I want to love you and thus I have a desire to please you, what are your desires so that I can love you?’

You may get a stunned look, if so then ask your partner to read the piece of paper you have. It has written on it the above statement. Tell your partner what the definition of love is, ‘The desire to please.’ and that it would please you if he/she read the note.

This will open the communications channel. Now you will need to complete an exercise to rekindle the emotional intimacy between you.

On seperate pieces of paper each of you write down what you like about each other. Write as many things as can in 5 minutes. This is your list of reasons why you are going to stay together. Next on another piece of paper write down your favourite experience you have had with your partner. Then with a budget of say $50.00 put together an experience you can have together. Your experience together should not be about the expense, rather aim to have time together. It would be better to spend $50.00 on a taxi to and from the park, where you could spend a few hours sitting, talking and laughing, then to spend fifty dollars on renting a pile of movies where you have to be quiet.

If both of you aim to practice the definition of love 100% of the time then imagine how wonderful your relationship would be.

If your relationship has you both inputing 100% love then imagine how wonderfully loved your son will feel.

Keep your lists in a safe place and add to it weekly. Set aside a night per week where together you examine your lists. Give yourselves a reward for communicating each week and note down on a scale of one to ten how you are feeling within the relationship. It might be an idea at first to have a Star that can be stuck to the fridge, one blue and one pink. If either of you have a feeling that you are unsure of, stick your star on the fridge. Keep your eye open and if you see your partners star on the fridge then quickly make a time to discuss this feeling. You can even contact me and ask for some advice.

If you would like to ask a question, then you can either post here or Contact Me here