The 5 Seasons of Connection to Your Love Partner

By Leanne Kabat

Once upon a time, you faced each other and said, 'I do.' If that day feels like a lifetime ago, you might think your relationship can never get back to a place of pure bliss. That's just not true. The reality is the love you felt for your partner is still in your heart but it's buried under layers of irritation, frustration, resentment, or confl

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leanne Kabat Media
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781733541039

Book preview

Chapter 1

Seasons in Relationships

When we experience the first snowfall of the winter, we dig out our warm clothes and trade in our sneakers for fuzzy socks and boots. A beautiful summer day means we face the world with sunscreen and a smile. We know what a typical day in each season brings which helps us prepare for the day.

But what happens when a cold-snap hits in the middle of summer? Or a heat wave hits in winter?

Everyday millions of us experience bone-chilling cold or heart-melting warmth without leaving home.

This is the world of our love relationships.

Just as nature has its seasons, so does your relationship. It’s a collection of emotions and experiences ranging from the fun, light playful moments to the angry troubled, frustrated times, and everything in between.

In my experience, every relationship endures all the seasons, but the healthiest relationships know how to keep navigating back to Summer. If you aren’t sure how to do that, don’t worry, we’ll do it together. As a family life coach, a former teacher and someone who has been married for 24 years, I’ve seen the nooks and crannies of all the seasons in many families and I can promise you that you are not the only one who feels the freezing blast of Winter or the glorious warmth of Summer with your partner. Whether your relationship would benefit from a few tweaks for better connection or is struggling with conflict, this book provides a powerful framework to help you nurture the loving, kind, collaborative relationship you crave, bringing true connection and deep love back to your home.

Long-term View of Relationships

Here is a long-term view of seasons most couples experience to varying degrees:

New relationship begins. (Spring)

Happy time of pleasure and joy. (Summer)

Stress of some kind creeps into your life. (Fall)

Conflict or confrontation ensues. (Winter)

You find your way back to each other and enter a new phase of the relationship. (Spring)

When you first meet and start building your relationship, you might dream about the future with this person, sitting on a porch swing watching your grandchildren play in the yard. But most of the time, your relationship is lived day by day, hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute.

The 5 Seasons framework helps you and your partner reduce conflict and increase connection using an easy system of seasons to identify where you are and get you where you want to go in your relationship. Sometimes, figuring out where you are is uncomfortable, or it unleashes a raging fireball in your belly, and you just don’t want to go there. It’s okay. You are not alone.

Sylvia was my neighbor. She moved in when her husband landed his dream job at a local tech firm. While her husband had a new network of friends at work, Sylvia fell deeper into sadness for losing her family, her friends, and her entire way of life back home. Even so, she worked tirelessly for her family here and her new community, making special cakes for the school auction and creating ‘boo-bundles’ of candy at Halloween. She always spoke fondly of her husband, until the night I found her crouched down by the mailbox, crying.

It took many minutes of holding her hand and holding space for her emotions before she could speak. Even then, the tears kept streaming down her cheeks.

Again, my husband spontaneously invited his co-workers to our home for dinner, giving me no notice. On top of managing homework and activities, I had to tidy the house and whip up an impressive dinner for four extra people. I never do that to him, pile on so many unfair requests, but he does it all the time.

She said she put away the simple dinner she was preparing for her family and cooked a more elaborate, more impressive feast for their guests. Sylvia’s husband brazenly questioned why the chicken was dry and why the wine wasn’t chilled enough, all in front of their guests. She was hurt but she responded by putting herself down as a lousy hostess. After he waved his colleagues off, her husband walked inside and went straight to bed, leaving her in the kitchen with a huge mess and a broken heart. Out here in the dark, under the moonless sky, she said, I hate when he treats me like a circus animal whose only job is to jump through flaming hoops while being hit with a metal stick. Ouch.

That evening, Sylvia asked the same questions I had heard so many of my friends and clients ask:

Am I that unlovable?

Where’s the fairy tale?

What’s wrong with me?

What’s wrong with them?

Where’s my happy ever after?

What did I ever do to deserve this?

Is this really the best love has to offer?

How long did your honeymoon period last?

Researchers tracking hormone levels and behaviors say the honeymoon period lasts between 6 to 24 months, depending on the couple.

When you’re in the honeymoon period, the world is a happy, beautiful place. You wish it could last forever, but all things eventually change. You’ll know this magical time is over when you start to:

get irritated with qualities in your partner you originally thought were cute and endearing.

notice the passion doesn’t feel as spicy as it once did; might be boring or more like a chore.

share your successes/struggles with friends and other people before sharing with your partner.

bump together in conflict more often.

When this happens, it doesn’t signal the end. In fact, it’s often a time of renewed commitment because the rose-colored glasses are off and you can see each other more clearly, allowing you to choose to be in this relationship for the long-term.

There are many things that can impact the length and intensity of your honeymoon period. Sometimes having kids right away adds to the magic, sometimes it makes the magic harder to find. Sometimes starting a business or moving to a new town adds elements of excitement, sometimes it’s crushingly hard. Sometimes illness, unemployment, or family stress enters the relationship, creating a different experience than what you had planned. Every couple faces issues that has the potential to make or break the relationship, and if you faced some intense challenges with your partner and made it through, your honeymoon period could’ve ended much earlier, but your commitment could be much stronger because of your shared survival experience.

The Love We Learn

Being in an intimate relationship can be soul-filling, heart-warming, and life-affirming. It can also be utterly challenging, frustrating, and exasperating. It’s not a simple experience, and there are no simple solutions.

Being in a love relationship requires us to navigate one of our most intricate adult connections, and we don’t often have much experience before making these lifelong commitments. We may have had a few other short-term liaisons, but most of what we know about intimacy is what we learned from our parents.

I have many happy memories as a child and my parents divorced after decades of conflict. My mom sacrificed constantly, living in a steady state of worry and exhaustion. I watched my dad, an alcoholic, do whatever he wanted, when he wanted, without concern for anyone else’s sanity, safety, or security. We moved nearly fifty times before I could drive and I attended five different high schools, all while he snubbed any help. That was my first and deepest model for ‘grown-up love.’ I learned many unhealthy behaviors, but I didn’t learn how to do it well, how to integrate, negotiate, articulate, collaborate, and communicate in love-growing ways.

Sadly, my experience is not unique or uncommon. Many of us had serious childhood traumas, trials, or troubles which meant we didn’t learn healthy love habits and behaviors. We can either carry on doing our best with what we have, or we can choose to break the cycles and create a new model for love, connection, and interaction. To do that, we ask:

What behaviors did I learn from my childhood?

What do I currently understand about love?

What do I need more of/less of to grow my love?

Many couples come to me for help with their parent/child relationships, but oftentimes, underneath the parenting layer, we find their own old stories, unmet expectations, unhealed hurts, or places of disconnection. If they need a professional, I insist they pursue therapy, however many times it’s a matter of working through the exercises to discover their personal seasons, values, love styles, fears, and communication pathways. We end up deepening their love bond and creating new systems to positively impact the parent/child relationship. Win-win!

To nurture and nourish true connection, it starts with a craving to connect. That may seem obvious, but some people who’ve been hurt don’t want connection, they want to be right, validated, or vindicated. Those feelings, although real, don’t lead to true connection.

I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.

~ Brené Brown, Author and Thought Leader

The 5 Seasons of Connection

As I was developing this framework for family interactions, I knew it would fit love relationships as well. In the happy times, both people are relaxed and generously offer help and grace. Inevitably, something would happen, someone would act, someone would react, and a problem would arise. Maybe there would be angry words or blaming. Maybe someone would shut down and withdraw. The good times were like long, beautiful summer days . . . and then a brutal winter storm would rip through and leave everyone in the cold.

As I thought about beautiful summer days, bitter winter storms, spring thaws, and fall’s chill, I saw astonishing parallels between nature’s cycles and our relationships. From this idea and divine inspiration, I created the 5 Seasons of Connection.

Before we go on, a few disclaimers.

This book is for anyone in a love relationship, both female/male as well as same-sex couples. I’ll use the pronouns ‘them/they/their,’ not ‘him/her.’ Love is love.

The strategies in this book are for couples who have a mostly positive, loving relationship AND who face normal levels of unhappiness or frustration. If you need professional help, I urge you to seek the best care.

Also, four different seasons don’t exist everywhere; you may live somewhere with two seasons. It’s okay, you don’t have to live in a four-season climate to understand this framework. In The 5 Seasons of Connection, I use nature’s four seasons symbolically to illustrate the ever-changing bond we have with our partner.

As you read this book, you’ll find exercises to explore and questions to answer. It’s best if both of you work on your own answers and then share with each other. Your love will thrive when you each contribute your own thoughts, experiences, beliefs, struggles, hopes, fears, and dreams to the future of the relationship.

Here’s a quick overview of the 5 Seasons:

Winter

Winter is the absence of connection. We feel angry, hurt, dissatisfied, or shut down. We want to spend the least amount of time here as it hurts our connection the most.

However, we don’t want to eliminate this season entirely because it serves a purpose: Winter shows us things we need to remove or change in our relationship. Winter is heavy and hard, but then Spring comes to stop the storm.

Spring

Spring is how we get out of the dark, damaging days of Winter. It’s the season of bridge-building. Here we find common ground and invite our partner to reconnect. We listen more and speak less as we find our way back to each other by nurturing kindness and bringing more respect to our interactions.

Summer

Summer is all about loving, connected, open, and respectful interactions. This is the season we want to spend the most time in while laughing, sharing, and building lasting memories. Our love is strong, our happiness is evident, and we want this to last forever.

Summer isn’t about staying in a fake state of perfection, though. In this season, you are your best self while your partner is their best self.

Fall

Fall happens when something cold rushes in—a harsh word, a snarky response, a passive-aggressive dig, or a rigid, polarizing reply. Here, there’s a new chill in the air. Feeling hurt, we start to pull away from each other.

Crossroads

The fifth season isn’t found in the seasonal calendar but lives here and it’s called the Crossroads.

A crossroad is defined as An intersection of two or more roads. A point when a crucial decision must be made that has far-reaching consequences. ¹

We make a crucial decision at every Crossroad. Do we react with anger or frustration and slide into Winter? Or do we lead with love to bring our relationship back to Summer? Our decisions create an impact that can be short-lived, or it might linger for days, weeks, or years.

Being intimately involved with another person provides endless opportunities to be at the Crossroads where we choose connection or disconnection.

Did you notice the key word? We choose.

"No, I love them! I’d never choose disconnection."

Choosing Disconnection

Ava put her master’s education dreams on hold to stay working so her husband Will could go to law school. While he was paying his dues as a young lawyer, she gave birth to a beautiful girl, Zoe, and they agreed she’d stay home. She knew she’d raise their daughter mostly alone because he was working day and night at the firm, often sleeping on the sofa in his office.

When Zoe started pre-school, Ava felt the pull to resume her education. The two agreed night school was the best option. Soon, Will began making snide remarks about the messy kitchen or accuse her of flirting in her study group. Between running the house all day, being with Zoe all afternoon, and studying all night, Ava was maxed out. Will’s snarky comments left her hurt and defensive. She called him selfish and paranoid. Ava left dirty dishes in the sink to show him.

The negative behaviors escalated until one day Ava said it was time to end her marriage; Will’s relentless attacks were giving her tension headaches and insomnia. She only saw one way out- divorce. Ava and Will didn’t consciously choose disconnection, but they did choose it by how they communicated their fears and frustration in negative, Winter ways.

Let’s talk about the individual seasons and how you can avoid the conscious and unconscious ways you disconnect from your partner on your journey to the deepest levels of love.

Chapter 2

Winter

Have you ever been outside in the deepest part of winter, in the darkest time of night, and listened?

Winter has its own heartbeat.

There are no birds chirping or bugs buzzing, like in summer. Winter is hollow and muffled, with bitter winds howling through barren trees. Winter can be downright harsh: severe temperatures, chilling winds, early darkness, and the fewest hours of daylight.

In our relationship, Winter is the season we feel the most frustrated, furious, hurt, or powerless.

We’re emotionally frozen and enduring the darkest times separated from our love partner.

We try to avoid each other during Winter, but if we are together, a heavy, oppressive mood fills the air. Our bitter phrases are muttered, replies are short and curt, and hurtful words hang in the air like our frosty breath.

What is Winter?

Winter is a time of deep, profound disconnection and it may elicit cold, harsh reactions, such as:

Anger

Sarcasm

Scorekeeping

Finger-pointing or blame

Disrespectful words or actions

Passive-aggressive, lowball zings

Withholding or the silent treatment

What Might Winter Look Like for You Day to Day? ²

Staying busy to stay apart

Irritation at minor mishaps

Uninterested in being together

Offended when they give advice

Closed-off in your body language

Unable to work together in peace

Unwilling to chitchat about your day

What Brings You to Winter?

There are many paths to Winter, and long, lonely Winter seasons are a reality for many couples.