Coaching practices for Shared Premises
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Shared Premises, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- We used to have our own little language
- We share everything — same friends, same schedule, every thought as it lands — and somewhere in all that togetherness the wanting evaporated, like there’s no distance left to feel any pull across.
- My partner and I have drifted into totally separate social lives
- On paper I live and work close to plenty of people, yet somehow our paths never actually cross
- My partner sided with their family over me again, or didn’t back me up in front of others, and I’m left unsure whether they’ll actually put us first when it counts
Practices that may help
- 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 - Creating space: the paradox of distance and desire
Build deliberate separateness — apart time, separate interests, separate friendships — as the condition desire needs to regenerate.
Mating in Captivity: Sustaining Desire in Long-Term Relationships - Invest in shared social networks
Spend time with people who affirm and are connected to both of you as a couple.
Relationship Maintenance Behaviors - Understand functional distance and not just physical distance
It's not just how far you live from someone — it's how often your paths cross.
The Propinquity Effect (Leon Festinger) - Create and protect the couple bubble
Agree that you each put the relationship above any third party, including family of origin.
Secure-Functioning Relationships - Practise including the other person in your self-concept
Close relationships develop when you genuinely incorporate the other’s perspectives and resources into how you think — not just spend time with them.
Self-Expansion Model: How Relationships Grow (and Stagnate) Us - Create and protect rituals of connection
Build small, consistent ceremonies that mark transitions and signal "we matter."
The Shared Meaning System - Become a regular somewhere
Returning to the same place on a predictable schedule is the simplest propinquity intervention available.
The Propinquity Effect (Leon Festinger) - Invest meaning in shared symbols and objects
Identify the objects, places, and phrases that carry meaning for your relationship.
The Shared Meaning System - Get buy-in from others who share your home
A solo foyer commitment is willpower; a shared household norm is architecture.
The Phone Foyer Method
Related concerns
- Couples Private World
Build a private world of in-jokes, gestures, and references that only you two share.
Cultivating complicity: shared secret aliveness
- Shared Meaning In Relationship
The shared meaning system is the top layer of John Gottman’s Sound Relationship House — the rituals, roles, goals, and symbols that give a couple’s life together a sense of shared purpose and identity. Gottman’s longitudinal research found that couples with a rich inner life of shared meaning were more resilient during conflict; the practices below show how to actively build one.
- Shared Values Couples
Map which values you genuinely share and which you each hold separately — without requiring convergence.
Align on core values — where they are shared and where they differ
- Couple Bubble Stan Tatkin
Agree that you each put the relationship above any third party, including family of origin.
Create and protect the couple bubble
- Household Task Sharing Relationship
Divide practical responsibilities in a way both partners experience as fair.
Share tasks equitably — and feel equitable about it
- How To Avoid Jealousy In An Open Relationship
Share your thoughts, feelings, and daily experiences — not just problems.
Practice openness through regular self-disclosure
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.