Before Our Time Together - Topics We May Explore.

We’re not really taught how to do this - how to relate, communicate, or stay connected through the messy parts. Most of us are figuring it out as we go.

What you’ll find here are ideas, tools, and reminders drawn from my own experience and from the work I do with clients. These are common themes that tend to show up in relationships, and things you might like to reflect on as you explore your own.

Relationships are a practice. A skill we learn over time - not something we’re just meant to know.

If we’re working together, you’re welcome to read through this before a session. You might want to sit with one or two ideas that resonate, or bring something forward that feels alive for you. Use it as a place to begin, return to, or deepen.

(in no particular order) Weekly drop-ins

Connection needs tending. Setting aside time each week to check in, emotionally, practically, relationally, creates a rhythm of care. It helps prevent small things from becoming big things and invites presence back into the space between you.

Transparency

Honesty builds trust. Speaking what’s true, even when it’s vulnerable or messy, creates clarity and safety. Transparency isn’t about perfection. It’s about sharing yourself, letting yourself be seen, even in the places you’re still figuring out or scared to share.

Know what you want before you try to create a relationship

Clarity is a gift. Knowing what kind of relationship you're calling in, what you value, what you need, what you’re available for, gives your connections direction and integrity. It also helps you recognise when something (or someone) isn’t aligned.

Know yourself

Relating starts within. The more you understand your desires, boundaries, triggers, and patterns, the more clearly you can meet another without losing yourself. Self-awareness doesn’t make you perfect. It just makes you more available for real connection.

Notice your conditioning around relating

We’ve all inherited stories about love, gender, roles, and power - some loud, some quiet, some so deep they feel like truth. These stories shape how we show up in relationship: how we give and receive, what we expect, how we navigate conflict, and what we believe is possible. Often, they come from culture, family, religion, or past relationships - absorbed without our consent. And until we bring them into awareness, they tend to run the show.

Noticing your conditioning isn’t about blame, it’s about choice. You get to decide what still fits and what you're ready to unlearn. From that place, you can begin to relate from who you are now - not from who you were told to be.

Healing your relationship with your parents

Whether they’re part of your life or not, your relationship with your parents lives inside you. It shapes how you love, how you seek safety, and what you believe you deserve. Healing doesn’t always mean reconciliation - sometimes it means grieving, setting boundaries, or simply seeing things more clearly. You don’t have to carry their patterns forever. You get to choose who you become.

Know your wounds and sensitivities

We all have tender spots, shaped by past hurts and unmet needs. Knowing where yours are lets you care for yourself and communicate with others before those places get pushed. It also helps your partner understand how to love you better.

Time and space

How much togetherness do you need? How much solitude helps you reset? Getting clear on your relational rhythm, how you balance connection and spaciousness, supports your nervous system and keeps resentment from building. It’s okay if this changes over time.

How do you want to be loved?

Affection, affirmation, acts of service, shared joy, love lands differently for everyone. Take the time to notice what actually helps you feel loved in your body, not just what you’ve been told should. When you know this, you can ask for it with more ease.

How do you feel supported?

Support isn’t one-size-fits-all. For some, it’s practical help. For others, it’s presence, listening, or being held. Understanding how you receive care lets you communicate clearly and invites others to meet you in meaningful, attuned ways.

Know your nervous system

Your body carries so much wisdom about what feels safe, connected, or overwhelming. Knowing what soothes you, whether it’s space, touch, words, movement, or quiet, helps you regulate during tough moments. A regulated nervous system makes deeper intimacy possible.

Know your survival responses

When things get hard, how do you react? Do you shut down, lash out, fawn, freeze, or flee? These are natural, protective patterns. Understanding them with compassion gives you more choice and softens the charge they hold in relationship.

Get educated

Relationships take skill, not just chemistry. Read books, listen to podcasts, take workshops. Learn about attachment, boundaries, communication, pleasure, and repair. The more you understand the terrain, the more grounded and confident you’ll feel navigating it. Being emotionally and relationally educated is attractive - it shows care, courage, and a willingness to grow. It’s hot to know yourself and be committed to learning how to love better.

Open relating isn’t for the faint of heart

It asks for honesty, self-awareness, and strong inner scaffolding. Expect your stuff to come up - insecurities, fears, power dynamics, old wounds, all of it. But if you’re willing to stay present, learn through experience, embrace mistakes and trip-ups, and be kind, patient, and clear, open relating can become a deep path of personal and relational evolution. It stretches you, but it also expands your capacity for love, choice, and self-responsibility. It’s not just a lifestyle - it’s a practice.

If you aren’t sourced, you may get hurt

Come into connection with a full cup. When you’re depleted or disconnected from yourself, it’s easier to lose your centre or attach from scarcity. Being well-resourced, emotionally, physically, spiritually, helps you relate from fullness, not hunger.

Therapy is cool

There’s something powerful about having a space that’s just for you - to unpack, process, reflect, and grow. Therapy supports your relationships by supporting you. Your partner and your friends can love you deeply, but they aren’t meant to be your therapist. Whether you’re single or in relationship, working with a professional helps you deepen your self-awareness, explore your patterns, and find more choice in how you show up. There’s no shame in getting support. In fact, it’s one of the most loving things you can do for yourself and those around you.

Books are great

Books offer language, frameworks, and reassurance that you’re not alone. Many of us never learned how to relate. Books can help fill in the gaps. They’re also great conversation starters if you’re learning alongside a partner. See my recommendations.

Slow is good

Pace matters. Going slow helps your nervous system stay regulated and attuned. Love deepens when you’re moving at a speed that lets everyone stay present.

Know what you can and can’t control

You can’t control how others feel or behave. But you can choose how you respond and what you stay available for. That’s where your power lives.

Learn to communicate without blame

It’s easy to fall into blame when we’re hurt or misunderstood. But blame creates defensiveness and distance. Speaking from your own experience, your feelings, needs, and longings, opens the door to real understanding and connection.

Check your expectations

Unspoken expectations are one of the quickest ways to create tension in a relationship. Sometimes we assume our partner knows what we need, or expect them to play roles we’ve never consciously named. The more clearly we understand and communicate what we’re hoping for, the more space we create for connection and mutual understanding. Clarity takes courage, but it’s an act of care - for yourself and for the relationship. When expectations are brought into the light, they can be met with honesty, instead of confusion or disappointment.

Repair matters more than perfection

Every relationship will have moments of tension, misunderstanding, or disconnection. What matters isn’t avoiding conflict - it’s how you respond to it. When something ruptures, the most healing thing you can do is turn toward each other, not away. That means being willing to listen, to take responsibility for your part, and to express care even when it’s uncomfortable. Small gestures of repair - a soft word, a reaching hand, a sincere “I hear you” - rebuild safety and trust. Repair isn’t about solving everything right away. It’s about showing that the relationship matters more than being right.

Know your turn-ons and turn-offs

Not just sexually, but emotionally and energetically. What helps you open? What shuts you down? These cues live in the body. Knowing them helps you stay in connection with yourself while connecting with another.

Take space when needed, lovingly

Space doesn’t have to mean disconnection. Sometimes a pause, a breath, or a walk alone is the most loving thing you can offer. What matters is how you communicate the need and how you stay connected through the space.

Be kind and compassionate

To yourself. To your partner. To the parts of you still healing. Kindness softens defensiveness and creates space for truth to land gently. Nothing meaningful changes with the flick of a switch. Growth takes time. Be patient with the process - with yourself, with your partner, and with the tender places you’re learning to love.

Talk to people. Find community

No one person can meet all your needs - and they’re not supposed to. We’re meant to be held by many: friends, mentors, kin, chosen family. Let yourself be part of something bigger than a couple. Your partner can’t be everything, and your relationship shouldn’t be the only lens you live through. Perspective, support, and nourishment from outside help keep love spacious, grounded, and real.