Coaching practices for How to Cope with Loneliness in Marriage

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Cope with Loneliness in Marriage, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• My partner and I have drifted into totally separate social lives
• My partner has become so much a part of the furniture of my life that I barely register them anymore, and I catch myself being short or distracted
• Nothing is technically wrong, but I’ve stopped noticing the good things about my partner and the small resentments just keep stacking up quietly
• We used to have our own little language
• On top of the actual problem there’s this lonely conviction that I’m the only one who falls apart like this, that everyone else has it together

Practices that may help

1. Invest in shared social networks
   Spend time with people who affirm and are connected to both of you as a couple.
   Relationship Maintenance Behaviors
2. Imagine the absence of a key relationship
   Vividly imagine your life without a person you love — specifically, in detail, what would be missing.
   Negative Visualization for Gratitude: The Stoic Path to Appreciation
3. Build a culture of genuine appreciation as a horsemen antidote
   Daily authentic appreciation is the structural counter to contempt -- and it has to precede the conflict.
   The Four Horsemen: Gottman's Warning Signs of Relationship Breakdown
4. Cultivating complicity: shared secret aliveness
   Build a private world of in-jokes, gestures, and references that only you two share.
   Mating in Captivity: Sustaining Desire in Long-Term Relationships
5. Common humanity: remember you are not alone
   Say to yourself: "Suffering is a part of life — I am not alone in this."
   The Self-Compassion Break
6. Turn toward bids for connection
   Respond to small, everyday bids for attention as if they matter — because they do.
   The 5-to-1 Positivity Ratio in Relationships
7. Rekindling after a drift: returning to aliveness
   Recognize a drift in erotic connection as normal — and name it as the beginning of a renewal, not a failure.
   Mating in Captivity: Sustaining Desire in Long-Term Relationships
8. Shift from one-person to two-person psychology
   Stop managing your distress alone and start managing it together.
   Secure-Functioning Relationships
9. Schedule social contact as a priority activity
   Treat social interaction as a prescribed activity, not as something to do when you feel ready.
   Pleasant Events Scheduling, Made Practical
10. Regularly share novel and enjoyable activities
    Do new things together — not only comfortable or habitual ones.
    Relationship Maintenance Behaviors

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