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Why is Attention Important in Your Relationship?

Consider your relationships with other people, whether acquaintances or your lover. If you’re not paying attention, you won’t see them. If you’re continually switching attention, you will only see them a little. When you give them your full attention, they become, for that time, your entire world. You see them for who they are, though of course filtered by your beliefs and prejudices. And this other person, whether a checkout clerk or your lover, can feel your gaze, will respond to your attention, because our reactions are very much social in nature.

It is only through attention that a relationship exists at all. If you pay no attention, that person does not even exist for you. When you walk with someone, you pay attention to pace and direction, lest you become two separate bodies in the crowd, and so it is in a relationship: it is your true attention to each other that holds it together and makes it real.

We'd love you to pay attention to the rest of what we wrote, so click here!

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. Mary Oliver
Kit and Kat on Not Taking Your Partner for Granted 

Bookshelf

Successful Relationship Reading Corner

In this week's blog we wrote about attention and why it is so important in all relationships. Here are some articles discussing that.

Pay Attention. Is This The Simplest Relationship Key? "Experts also point out that paying attention to your partner is not something that always comes naturally. Once the honeymoon period is over (and you no longer find everything they say absolutely fascinating!), it’s easy to substitute genuine interest for routine chit-chat."

Marriage and Paying Attention "couples got so busy with the details of their hurly-burly lives that they forgot why they got together in the first place. The "we" got lost. Who has time for courting or fooling around or taking a walk or doing nothing when every hour and minute has been preempted by the unlimited details of the modern, upscale, child-centered suburban quest for a better lifestyle in a bigger house in a better neighborhood? You have so much to do that it's hard to pay attention to your spouse, to be sensitive when he or she needs some downtime, some solitude with the soulmate, a little smooching or TLC."

The Price of a Great Relationship? Paying Attention "Paul says she’s not the only one who feels that way.   All he ever hears from her is that he’s supposed to remember to pick the kids up from school on Tuesday, or that it’s the night to take the trash to the curb, or not to forget that Nan’s recital is Friday night. What they both so desperately want from each other is simply some personal attention.  It’s what we all want from each other, in all of our personal relationships."





Spreading peace one relationship at a time
Phil and Maude
 
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