One of the beautiful things that happens when couples begin thinking in neighborhoods is that they become much more intentional about where they are.
Imagine your partner has invited you into one of their Precious Neighborhoods.
Perhaps it is the neighborhood of music, or gardening, or photography, or cooking, or painting.
As they speak, you can almost feel them coming alive.
Their eyes brighten. Their voice changes. Their energy shifts. And you are witnessing something precious.
But then something happens.
Without meaning to, one of you wanders into the neighborhood next door.
Perhaps your partner says, “I stopped painting for many years.”
Instead of remaining in the neighborhood of painting, the conversation suddenly moves into another neighborhood.
“You never encouraged me.” “I never had the time.” “We were too busy raising children.” “We couldn’t afford supplies.”
What began as a visit to a Precious Neighborhood has quietly become a visit to a neighborhood of disappointment.
Those neighborhoods matter and deserve to be visited.
But not yet.
Every neighborhood deserves its own visit in time.
If someone has invited you into a Precious Neighborhood, stay there. Become curious. Ask questions. Notice what comes alive in them. And allow yourself to enjoy what they are sharing before moving somewhere else.
The neighborhoods of challenge will still be there tomorrow.
Today, something else is happening: you are discovering the person you love where they are most fully themselves.
That discovery is not a distraction from your relationship.
It is one of the resources your relationship will later draw upon.
When we linger in one another’s Precious Neighborhoods, we build trust, delight, and remember why we chose one another.
And then, when it is time to visit neighborhoods of challenge, we arrive carrying something we did not have before.
We arrive carrying one another.
And that changes everything about how we enter the neighborhoods of challenge.