The importance of time for yourself and independence in a relationship

Several key ideas to know how to find personal independence in a relationship.

How much time do you dedicate to your individual sphere in your day to day life? And when you have a partner, do you devote the same amount of time to yourself?

Imagine you have ten plants in your garden and you feel that, at a given moment, one of them needs special care for some reason, would you stop taking care of the other nine completely? Surely not, you would decide to dedicate part of your time to each of them.

This is the same is what we need to do with each of our areas of life: the couple, the family ... and also of course the personal development.

How to dedicate that time to ourselves?

When we start a relationship as a couple, it is common for us to want to have shared time and cultivate it, get to know each other's hobbies, teach each other ours, enjoy each other's company and make the most of that time together.

In fact, these moments increase our intimacy and strengthen the connection between the two of us, but what if we don't take care of our individual space as well? What if we stop watering one of those plants in our garden altogether?

Spending time for oneself is very important to reconnect with our personal sphere, to develop self-confidence, as well as self-esteem and self-concept, i.e., it is very important to take care of our personal space. and self-concept, i.e. the ideas and characteristics that form the image we have of ourselves. In addition, it helps the couple's own relationship as it strengthens trust, balance in the needs of both and enriches the shared moments.

Cultivating self-enjoyment is very valuable because it reconnects us with those moments that generate personal wellbeing, allows us to create a space for reflection and individual leisure, and increases self-knowledge, which is a vital aspect for decision making because it helps us to know what we want. Paying attention to ourselves and self-care boosts our self-esteem and helps us not to neglect the other areas of our life that are equally important to us. that are equally important to us.

1. Question thoughts that rob us of our independence.

Many times we can fall into the mistaken belief that dedicating time to ourselves is selfish and also negative for our partner. It is very common for this chain of events, or very similar, to take place within the person:

• The thought arises, for example, "giving myself time is selfish."
• This thought triggers an emotion, usually guilt.
• And both derive in a behavior, generally, not giving time for oneself.

This can generate a vicious circle that makes us feel worse and worse, without knowing exactly why.. When we draw this sequence, and we question and address this thinking, we can break it and observe what really happens when we dedicate that space to ourselves.

2. Spend time with our friends, family and pleasurable activities.

Spending time with friends helps to develop a healthy sense of belonging, social bonding and increases self-confidence and self-esteem..

In addition, practicing pleasurable activities individually helps to reconnect with oneself, which increases self-knowledge and the possibility of generating new strengths; besides, of course, it brings us new enjoyable activities to do as the practice leads to new personal discoveries.

3. Set aside a time of the day or a space in the house to spend time with ourselves.

This helps us to release the accumulated tensions of the day, allows us to disconnect from the pressures, and helps us to reduce the level ofIt allows us to disconnect from the pressures, and in turn helps us to reduce the level of demands and destructive criticism of others as we encourage our own rest and relaxation.

When we find ourselves tense and saturated from the day, it is very common that we take it out on the other person, and that our demands on the tasks that remain to be done, the attention they give us or the affection they show us, are magnified.

4. Working on our professional goals and personal concerns

Not attending to our own goals and not dedicating time to them can make us forget the intrinsic motivations that drive us in life; and can create a disengagement with ourselves and our passions.

On the contrary, if we observe and take into account our own goals and dreams, we are helping us to strengthen our inner motivation and our bond with ourselves. strengthen that inner motivation and that bond with ourselves..

And how does it help the couple?

In addition to making us feel better, dedicating space and time to ourselves helps in turn to connect with the care for others and therefore also for our partner.

If we change the order of priorities and understand that the only person who will be with us every day of our life is ourselves, we will better understand how important it will be to take care of ourselves and pay attention to ourselves in order to feel good, and to be able to take care of our environment and the people we love.

But let's see in a very graphic way the different types of relationships that can exist depending on the level of independence of the members of the family.. Let's imagine that one member of the relationship is represented by a blue circle and the other by a purple one.

When we start a relationship and dedicate all of our time to that shared sphere, we can fall into the misconception that a healthy and positive relationship is one that rightly shares all the time in the world.

As we see, they are practically overlapping, making a single circle that would share everything, at all times. In this type of relationship we tend to forget what is important to us: our friendships, the hobbies we did not share with a partner, the personal and professional goals we had (while we come to believe that the other person's are ours). We thus generate a great disconnection with ourselves..

The previous mode of relationship can easily lead us to fall into a dependency towards the other person, since by spending all our time with him or her we reinforce the idea that without him or her we could not live. This dependence could be reflected in this way:

Sometimes there is an irrational belief that dedicating time to ourselves, or not dedicating all the time to the relationship, would damage the relationship and take us away from each other; or it could even mean that something is not working well in the couple. or it could even mean that something is not working well in the relationship and therefore we will stop sharing our life with the other person.

However, when we pay attention to how healthy it is to spend time with oneself and to be faithful to all our areas of life, we realize that it does indeed have a positive effect on our relationship with our partner. We observe that personal development, self-care, and quality time we dedicate to ourselves, increase well-being with others and the couple connection to foster more shared moments.

We should not forget at this point the importance of assertive communication and active and empathetic listening. to share our needs as individuals with the other person, and to listen to the needs of our partner. This enhances trust and love; increasing generosity and understanding, and decreasing the control and possessiveness that lead to distrust of the other person. This type of healthy relationship would look like this:

In short, dedicating time to oneself and to our individual space is of vital importance to increase our self-esteem, connect with our motivations and generate self-confidence. It is something very valuable that we should prioritize, as it reminds us how important we are to ourselves. reminds us how important we are to ourselves and how important it is to take care of ourselves in order to love and value ourselves..

Spending time with friends and family builds security and strengthens us to be able to manage the emotions that arise in situations that we may find difficult to cope with. In addition, dedicating time to activities that we find pleasurable and to our hobbies independently, connects us with ourselves and reinforces our self-esteem and self-knowledge.

Likewise, working on our professional goals and personal objectives enhances our intrinsic motivations and helps us to maintain the link with ourselves and our desires.

Looking for psychology services?

At TherapyChatwe know that cultivating and enjoying your own space is not incompatible with spending quality time with your partner and doing activities together. However, sometimes it can be difficult to achieve that balance between couple time and individual time, which will help strengthen the mutual connection, increase the common welfare and contribute to the trust we feel with our partner.

If you are looking for support in this aspect, in TherapyChat, we have a great team of experts who can guide you to achieve balance in your relationship. Because when we take care of ourselves and feel good about ourselves, the better we can enjoy being with and caring for the people who are most important to us, such as our partner.