In the beginning while practising couch time, it is hard for my Significant Other to get into the habit. He prefers to spend time watching TV together, which means that both our eyes will be glued to the google box. That does not really meet my relational need! Then I got inspired from the tips I learned from J.
I train J for structured play time. That means that for 30 minutes, I will play with him. For the next 30 minutes, he will play by himself. When he was younger, independent play time was difficult. I realised that I couldn't expect J to be able to do 30 minutes immediately overnight. So I use a timer and set it initially to 5 minutes and slowly work it up to 30 minutes for independent play time. In this way, slowly and steadily, he made progress.
I do the same for our couch time. Start with 5 minutes on the timer, and when the timer goes, don't extend it. Thank your spouse for that gift of 5 minutes. In this way, it is more achievable :-)
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