One Tip to Building A Stronger Relationship

Here's One Tip to Building a Stronger Relationship.

What's going on you guys? Tyler, your Wandering Therapist, happy to be with you on this snow filled morning.

I often get the question, probably the biggest question I get as a marriage therapist, is how do I build a stronger relationship? We could go into lots and lots of detail over lots and lots of different things, but one principle that I wanted to talk with you today about is—the power of having a shared experience in building a stronger relationship with somebody.

There's some really big benefits that come when we purposely, intentionally seek out shared experiences with people that we want to develop stronger relationships with.

So, if you think of people in your life, maybe some people at church or somebody at work or someone who'd want to become better friends with, maybe you're thinking about your relationship at home with your kids or your wife or your husband.

If you're looking for a way to build a stronger relationship, think of ways that you can manufacture to have a shared experience with them—whether that's something related to your hobbies or interests; whether that's some type of a project that you work on together. It might be some service towards somebody else. But when you get with somebody and you do something towards the same common goal or the same common cause or purpose, it builds the relationship in ways that you can't otherwise get.

Here's a couple of ways that it does it. One, is that it gives you something to do while you're together. That shared time with one another becomes beneficial. And you don't have to have that awkward silence or awkwardness of not knowing what to say or do because you're already engaged in something that is helping you to have this experience with that other person.

The other thing that it does is it allows you to have a moment to fall back on when you see that person again. And you can go and talk about the things that you did together or the laugh about the things that happened or talk about the things that you learned together. It gives you some currency for future conversations.

An example of this. My younger daughter, Paisley, she's 13 years old. She just decided to get into hunting. This year we decided to put in for an elk hunting tag for a cow elk. We went out, probably in the course of a month's time, we went out together five or six times, where we spent anywhere from two to ten hours together with each other looking for Elk to hunt

In that process we had a lot of time to talk with each other. We had a lot of things that we went through in terms of struggles. We had to hike to the top of a mountain two or three times in the snow. We had to face the cold. We had to learn how to saddle the horses and ride them in the snow. All of those things together are now things that happened a month ago. Every time I come home or when I go in the car with Paisley to drop her off to practice or something, one of the things that she brings up to talk about is the elk hunt.

I remember this one particular moment where we climbed to the top of the mountain. My daughter actually, finally, ended up getting the elk that she was looking for and shooting her elk. In the aftermath of that, we were sitting at the top of a mountain in about 10 inches of snow, with clear blue skies and the sun shining on us. And that warmth of that sun was perfectly symbolic to the warmth of the moment that we were having together—having done this task, this challenge together as a as a father and a daughter.

If you've got people in your life that you want to build a stronger relationship with, consider crafting shared experiences with them, in whatever way that you can to be able to strengthen relationships.

Hope that's helpful you guys. Have a great day.

Thank you so much for being here with me. If you found this to be valuable for you, please hit the like and subscribe button. If you're facing particular struggles that you need help with or roadblocks that you're running into, please submit a question. I'd be happy to answer it for you.