Kiddipedia
With the summer holidays in full swing, many couples are finding themselves spending more time with each other (and their kids) than usual. While this season can bring its challenges (long car rides, family drama and overstimulation, for a start), it also provides a rare opportunity to reset. By using this extra shared time, couples can intentionally rebuild closeness rather than letting old, negative patterns quietly take over.
Every couple I work with wants a deeper connection with their partner, and this time of year can make it easy to focus on what’s lacking in your relationship. While you may have once felt like you and your partner were deeply linked, thanks to the demands of work, household chores and that other full-time job called parenting, you may have lost your spark and aren’t quite sure how to recover it.
I like to remind couples at this point that connection doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t sustain itself through love alone. It’s created through specific, repeated behaviours and actions that build trust and a feeling of closeness. When I support couples to strengthen their emotional connection, there are two things that need to happen. The first is to interrupt the behaviours that erode the connection. The second is to do more of the things that create emotional safety and closeness.
Emotional connection leads to secure attachment
Feeling a sense of closeness with your partner is a form of intimacy and a core foundation of secure attachment. It’s the ongoing experience of feeling seen, understood and emotionally connected to the people who matter most.
Secure attachment develops when children, and adults, experience others as emotionally available, responsive and consistent over time. It’s formed through thousands of small moments where someone learns: “When I reach out, you’re there. When I’m upset, I’m not alone. When we disconnect, we find our way back.”
For children, emotional connection creates a sense of safety in the nervous system. When caregivers are curious about their inner world, acknowledge feelings and repair after ruptures, children learn that emotions are manageable and relationships are safe. This becomes the foundation for emotional regulation, confidence and resilience.
For partners, emotional connection plays the same role. When emotional bids are met with interest rather than dismissal, when vulnerability is handled with care and when conflict is followed by repair, trust deepens. Over time, this creates a felt sense of “We’ve got each other,” even when life is chaotic.
Secure attachment is not built through perfection or constant harmony, though. That’s not realistic, nor is it needed. These secure attachments are built through presence, responsiveness and repair, so as long as you keep showing up, you’re on the right path.
Reverse engineering the relationship you want
One of the things I often ask couples to do is to get clear on the relationship they want. In other words, I ask them to reverse engineer the relationship and family life they want to create.
This creates intention, and intention sets the tone for actions and behaviours that create the relationship you want. When you set your relational intention, it is far easier to act in accordance with the life and relationship you want rather than daily practises that mean nothing to you. In this way, you’re accountable to yourself (“If I say this/do this, will it bring me closer to the relationship I want”) and to each other (“I don’t think this aligns with the relationship we want, let’s try that again”). This is also a great exercise to do with children if age-appropriate.
Keen to try it for yourself? Try asking yourself (or your partner) these questions to help gain some clarity:
- What core values do we want to define our relationship? (These might be respect, trust, reliability, affection, kindness or curiosity.)
- How do we want to feel in our relationship? (Loved, cared for and supported, for instance.)
- What values do we want our children to have? How do we want them to feel in the world? (Maybe it’s respect, kindness and a sense of safety.)
Once couples have established clarity on how they want their relationship to look and feel like, I ask them to work backwards. In order to feel that way in your relationship, how do you need to talk to each other? How do you need to care for one another? If you want your children to feel resilient and confident, how does this align/change your parenting style?
Rather than hoping connection will happen naturally, it helps to get clear on the emotional environment you want to live in so you can shape it with your behaviour and actions.
Once this vision is clear, daily behaviour can be aligned with intention rather than habit. Here are some practices you can incorporate today:
Build family rituals around curiosity
For example, at the dinner table, take the time to ask curious questions. “What was your favourite part of the day?” “What did you do today that you feel proud of?” “What felt hard today and how did you navigate that?” “At any point today, did you feel nervous? Tell me more about that?”
Make your inner world visible
To do this, you need to pause and reflect on your inner state. This is a great practice for building a connection with yourself, which in turn allows you to build deeper connection with others. Naming your emotional state without blame (such as, “I’m feeling overwhelmed and need a moment”), teaches your children that emotions can be expressed safely and also lets your partner know you might need some more care.
Repair with generosity
To truly repair, it needs to be done with generosity in mind rather than justification. Repair isn’t about explaining why you were right, it’s about acknowledging the impact. When adults model responsibility and repair, children learn that relationships can bend without breaking and partners feel emotionally met.
Stay present during times of difference
Secure attachment isn’t built through agreement. Rather, it’s built when disagreement and differences of opinion don’t threaten your connection. Remaining curious and emotionally engaged during tension teaches both children and partners that closeness can survive discomfort and that your thoughts, needs and wants matter.
Keep it consistent
Connection is built through predictable emotional availability, not constant availability. It’s not about being endlessly present, but about being reliably responsive. Knowing that the connection will return (even after rupture) creates deep safety.
Daily habits to avoid
Common connection-eroding behaviours include chronic distraction, criticism or contempt, emotional withdrawal, expecting others to mind-read and leaving conflict unrepaired. These habits are usually signs of stress rather than lack of love, but over time they teach the nervous system that connection is unreliable.
Awareness is the first step. When families recognise these patterns, they gain the power to interrupt them and choose reconnection instead.
Remember that showing up matters most
Strong emotional connection doesn’t come from having a perfect relationship or family. It comes from showing up imperfectly but consistently with care.
When couples and parents get clear on the emotional environment they want to create, take responsibility for what erodes connection and practise emotionally responsive habits, relationships become more secure, resilient and warm.
Perhaps most importantly, children raised in these emotionally connected homes don’t just feel loved; they also learn relational skills that will support them to build healthy emotional connections in their relationships with friends and, later on, in their intimate relationships.
About Biannka
Biannka Brannigan is a couples therapist who specialises in working with partners on the brink of separation, guiding them back to connection, intimacy and trust. She holds a Master’s in Gestalt Psychotherapy and is trained in the Relational Life Institute’s couples therapy method. Drawing on her studies in Interpersonal Neurobiology with Dr Dan Siegel and her experience in Dr Joe Dispenza’s Inner Health Coalition, Biannka weaves cutting-edge insights on change and transformation into her therapeutic work. She also holds a Master’s in Community Development, giving her a systemic lens and a deep awareness of how forces like capitalism, individualism and patriarchy shape our relational patterns and emotional lives.
