In today's episode, you’re in for a deep dive into a pivotal aspect of relationships – discovering how to proactively plan with your partner to keep those emotional cups filled, especially during life changes or temporary stress. You will be guided through the art of ensuring your connection remains strong and fulfilling, unveiling the secrets to achieving resilience through thick and thin.

Learn the power of filling up emotional cups through both small, daily micro-moments of love and more intentional, grand gestures or activities. The magic lies in integrating these into your daily routine which are remarkably effective in nurturing long-term growth and sustained energy in your relationship.

Life changes, whether it's a new job, becoming parents, or blending your lives together, will be approached with a newfound understanding of the importance of time, space, and kindfulness. Yes, kindfulness – the art of being mindful and kind as you navigate changes together. Worried about wasting time? I'll show you why proactively investing time in creating functional, caring, and fulfilling relationships is far from a waste.

About the Host:

Meet Crystal, your relationship and social health coach. Crystal is the founder of Sparked Forever Relationship & Singles coaching. She started her journey supporting the neurodiverse community in navigating this, sometimes frustrating, neurotypical social world. Lessons and inspiration from her earlier work drives Crystal’s passion for bringing couples and singles together through acceptance, understanding and big picture thinking to grow vibrant relationships. Crystal understands that the foundation for our social health and well-being starts with making connections to others. When Crystal is not working with couples, she loves to be out on adventures with her partner and bonus kids or spending time connecting with friends over good food and fun music.

Links:

https://sparkedforever.com/

https://www.instagram.com/sparkedforever/

https://www.instagram.com/sparkitsocial/

https://www.tiktok.com/@sparked_forever

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Welcome, everyone to our love space today, I know that we're all coming out. I mean, maybe we're still a bit, hibernating. But I know we're all coming out the holiday winter season. And we're finally going to jump into this new year. And I don't know why, but really, this year, I'm very excited about getting this new year started. I'm really just feeling the good vibes from this freshness and the new start kind of aspect on everything. So maybe some of you are feeling that too. I don't know if you are out there, but I'm just feeling really excited and blessed to be starting this year. And so you know, trying to be you know, I guess like an adult. A kind, mindful, you know, thoughtful growth mindset, blobby blue blood kind of person, you know, is doing some reflecting, you know, on life and work and of course, relationships and love, because, you know, that's what I love. And that's why we're here. And you know, that kind of stuff that we tend to think about at the close of a year or a chapter and the birth of a new year or chapter. And one of the things that really stood out to me was this idea of time. And I know, I had quite a few situations just over the holidays, where, you know, plans just got misaligned. And the timing just really seemed to be off for a lot of things like like the, the time for things just didn't line up, the plants just didn't line up. And I really even, like not even realizing it, I did a blog for the holidays that I posted in December. And that actually, when I went and thought about it, even the big picture of that was time, if you want to check out the full blog, you can on my website, as always, that's spark forever.com If you want to get into the whole thing, but the main gist of the article is that the importance about keeping our emotional couples cups filled up, when we're kind of in these busy times, or when we have new time demands on ourselves. And for a lot of people this time of year can be quite busy, right, the kind of winter fall holiday season, because we have, you know, extra social commitments, we have extra family visits, if we have kids, there may be extra activities, school plays, productions, you know, whatever else is going on. And so that's what really spurred me on to write that article was to get people thinking proactively about how to keep their cup of cup, you know, their emotional cup filled up, when when we have these busy times that pop up in our life and really thinking about, you know, not just setting aside time for the big moments like the date nights, which I know some of us are not so big on and some of us love them. But also just these small micro moments of love to think about those.

But you know, and thinking back on it, or in thinking future on it, right? Because we're going into New Year, let's think future on it, can we make that a new term, I don't know, and thinking future on it, this could really apply to not just these temporary times where our schedules get a little busy and a little crazy, and we have to think about rejigging time or sometimes, you know, even with this holiday season, some of us are just on the page of like, Ah, we're just going to scrape through it. It's like a month, month and a half, however long, you have celebrations for, you know, we're just going to scrape through and hope we come out the other side. But what about the changes in our life, that kind of change our time focus for the foreseeable future, right, like are actually kind of more of a permanent change rather than a temporary one. You know, like, sometimes, like getting married, I guess getting married, there's the whole wedding aspect that's more of that temporary piece where we all kind of go nuts and crazy and have to plan this ginormous party, or some of us don't good idea. But, but they're getting married part like the joining two lives together, right? Like that's a big permanent change. You know, having kids or for babies, or adding kids into your life, you know, big moments where you might be, you know, career growing moments that aren't just like, I have to get this project work thing, blah, blah, blah, you know, dead by the end of this month, but like, Oh, this is gonna be a one or two or three year process to grow my career or I'm really starting off in this new job space. That's going to take a lot of focus for the next bit right these big more kind of permanent changes in our life. and all of these moments, they need time. Right? These are new things that are needing their own space and their own time, and probably some kind fulness. Right, even if it's not carefulness as well, probably definitely, as a couple towards each other, but you know, if one person is going through a big career growth moment, they're gonna have to be kindful, right, they're gonna have to be kindly intended and be in the moment in the journey that they're on in that part of our life. Right, and when we start going from, you know, being single to living in a long term relationship, right? Rather than going from single to being married, or single to be life partners, or however you guys are doing it, you know, are welcoming kids into that dynamic, right? Like, I can remember, you know, I love my bonus kids and my, my first kind of long, big relationship, kids were not on the list of choices. And that was fine. That was a mutual decision. And then with the with my LOL, my love of life right now. I got bonus kids that came along with us committing to each other. And that's been magical, but at the same time was like, wow, well, there's other humans that need to sit that need communication and affection, and kindness and energy. Wow, okay, cool. That's great. But that's, that needs a whole time refocus, right, like the weeks we have the kids versus the weeks, we don't have the kids, you know, the focus is very different. You know, and me and my LOL, we had to really get together and collaborate together to blend our lives in that way, and to think about the new time demands, and you know, how to manage them, and how to kind of be proactive with them, and proactive in deciding what we were going to keep, or what we were going to adjust of how we're coloring in our big picture, right of how we're keeping all of our big picture pieces filled up and vibrant. So that we can provide a vibrant household. Right for our kids, that's fairly important. And that took that took time. And that took adjusting. And you know, and then again, like, more time and adjusting. So when you get to when the kids get to new parts of their own lives, then your life as a parent or a co parent or whatnot, it it also changes, right.

But it was so important that we took that time to collaborate on that, that we took those moments, though, because now it's more about the energy, right, that we put into our time, rather, are put into our day to day rather than having to continuously, you know, take up time or feel like we're wasting time, right. And people do get stuck on that, that idea of wasting time. And I think that's because, you know, time is sort of, I mean, some people tell you and we're not getting into that, somebody will tell you that like time is not a real thing. But time is a non renewable resource for us, right, whether we believe it the the concept of time or not, something keeps happening and marcha gone and we age and things go forward and into the future. And sometimes that can be easier to ignore, and to just kind of bare sands, or sand, or head in the sand and just kind of go through the day to day. And that's often where I find some couples can be resistant, or one part of the couple can be resistant and to being proactive about putting energy into the relationship as a worry about time, right? How much time does it take to have sessions with crystal? How much time does it take to do these micro moments of love? How much time does it take to go on a date Nick, how much time does it take to communicate more effectively? How much time how much time? But how much time does it take or rather is wasted by constantly Miss communicating, constantly misunderstanding each other. Constantly wasting your friend timeout venting about your romantic partner instead of just enjoying life and having fun and checking in with each other.

When our relationships are in a bad place How much time is wasted just feeling bogged down and alone and disconnected. Those are the things that take up too much time. Those are the things that are really actually wasteful of such a precious resource. We can take time at the beginning, and it will pay for itself, believe me, it does pay for itself, we can take that time at the beginning, to focus on a relationship. To start building those solid foundations in the solid understandings of the big picture. The less and less time it takes to keep that going and to maintain it. Right, the more time and energy that we put in at the beginning, and how we're going to fill up our emotional cups every day as a couple and with each other. Where we're gonna get our micro moments of love from where we're gonna get our bigger, more indulging, is that the word intelligent, where we're going to indulge, there we go, where we're going to indulge in, you know, more intense bigger moments of love. Right.

So, in thinking back on the year, and it being a reflection and as having kind of a new start, and you know, usually people go into resolutions, but we know, I mean, I think now resolutions just like relationship works outdated. I don't think any of us are really doing resolutions anymore, right? But those are all outdated, don't help us grow. Just help us feel like failures a boo. So we're forgetting, we're forgetting about those resolutions. But I feel like I want to put a little New Year challenge out there to all the people in my love space to find the time to make the decision. Right whether even if it's just listening to this podcast, even if it's just you know, going and checking out some of my blogs, even, you know, even if you want to be you know, like dive deep in a book, some sessions, whatever little change you're going to make, I want you to find some time, some time to put in to being proactive about your relationship, being proactive about putting time aside to collaborate with the love of your life. I'm challenging you to find time to get sparked