You totally smashed it!

I visited a couple recently who reached out to our ‘Reconnect’ couples mentoring service when they were at crisis. They were battling health problems and facing significant family issues that were out of their control. They felt like they were firefighting all the time and they could hardly communicate with each other.

They were matched with a supportive Reconnect mentor couple who welcomed them into their home for their sessions, took time to listen and facilitated some helpful tools with them that they could use to begin to listen to each other and to connect again.

Six months on from their sessions, they shared how life in many ways continues to be difficult, some pressures have remained, others have changed but there is some light at the end of the tunnel, and they now have hope that some level of normality will return.

They acknowledged that, thanks to the time they’ve had with their mentor couple, they’re more aware of what they can do to stay connected in the next season. They also shared how the affirmation they received from their mentor couple had made a big difference to how they perceive their relationship.

One of our goals as Reconnect Mentor couples is to hold up an imaginary mirror to a couple’s relationship and ask them what they see. Many couples have never had any aspect of their relationship affirmed because we just don’t tend to do this in the course of day-to-day life. We want couples to have hope for the future and so we ‘look for the gold’ in their relationships and we share what we see with this. Having hope encourages us to ‘go again:’ to try again, to forge a new way together, on the same team, whatever we’re facing.

What is lovely is that they didn’t just receive this affirmation, but they have also started to affirm each other. One beautiful example of this was a card on the coffee table with the words “You totally smashed it” and a big bunch of flowers beside it. The gentleman proudly told me that he was so proud of his wife for a recent achievement, and he went out to buy her a card and flowers to affirm her actions and to express how he felt.

They now have plans for their future together and goals of what they are going to do to keep connected and walking in the same direction.