romance Tag

Posts tagged 'romance'

How to Have a Hot Relationship

Couple in a hot relationship lying on the grass

Having a relationship is like playing a game of “hot-cold”. We used to play it when we were kids. In this game, someone searched for a hidden object and we gave them clues by saying “hot” when they got close to it and “cold” when they moved away. I remember we used to say “steaming” when the person was very close and “freezing” when they were really far.

Relationships are exactly the same. If both partners are closer to fulfilling each other’s need, they have a hot relationship. If they are far from fulfilling each other’s needs, the relationship is cold.

When two people come together, each one is different from the other. They have a different history, different needs, different expectations, different styles of communication, different skills and talents. Yet, they find something in the other person that makes them attractive to them.

Think of attractive as “hot”, very attractive as “steaming”, unattractive as “cold”, and very unattractive as “freezing”. The scale from “freezing” to “steaming” can predict the quality of the relationship depending on where people sit on the scale.

I work with many couples who come for coaching to save their marriage or long-term relationship. Too many of them say that there is no warmth in their relationship. They have a freezing feeling which makes it hard for them to sustain the relationship.

This post is part 33 of 34 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Happy Friendship Anniversary

This week, Gal and I celebrated 36 years of being together. We have known each other for 37 years, been a couple for 36, lived together for 31 and been married for 29 years. Every year, we celebrate our friendship anniversary instead of our wedding anniversary, because our wedding experience was not a very happy experience and we would really like to celebrate a happy thing in our life rather than an event we never liked.

I have a relationship philosophy that worked very well for me over the years. I am happy that my philosophy, together with Gal’s, brought us together to this anniversary. We still fight. We still disagree on things. We are very different in many ways, but we are still friends who love each other and care about each other greatly.

In my sessions, I share with my clients my formula for happy relationships. After each session, I send them a summary of the topics we covered, so they can reflect and work on their relationship. I have decided to include them here with the hope that many more people will use them to reach happy, supportive and loving relationships.

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Have Good Sex to Save Your Marriage

Sex is one of the top three reasons why couples divorce. That means that it is highly important to work on improving your sex life. Of course, good sex goes hand in hand with good communication, trust, respect and working on keeping the relationship alive.

Attitude to sex is something many couples need to work on. In our growing life, there is not enough education about the importance of sex for health and wellbeing. It is a very sensitive topic that most people are left to learn from experience, friends or even the World Wide Web through porn movies (which unfortunately present a very unhealthy picture of the importance of sex and how to enjoy it).

Many of the clients I see who are separated or considering divorce report that sex was a major issue in their relationship. Not enough, not satisfying or enjoyable, too much, too little, too fast, too slow, only when drunk, feels like a chore, they feel their partner does not deserve it, no romance, not sexy. Every one of these is sad and painful for both parties.

This post is part 28 of 34 in the series Save Your Marriage

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How to Feel Good: Smiling

The tip for today is a very simple way to feel good, instantly – smiling.

The good thing about smiling is that it a two way street – smiling creates a happy feeling, and feeling happy makes you smile. It does not matter where you start – the feeling or the smile. When we experience joy, the muscles in our brain contract and start a positive loop of feeling even more joy. This is not a new science. As early as the 1870s, Charles Darwin first suggested that facial expressions did not just express emotions, but could actually induce them.

Smiling has been studied for years. In 1989, psychologist Robert Zajonc compared the mood of participants asked to make the long “eee” sound (which involves the same muscles as smiling) and those who were asked to make a long “ooo” sound (which involves the same muscles as frowning). Zajonc found that the people who made the “eee” sound felt much better.

This post is part 2 of 4 in the series How to Feel Good

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Know Your Partner: Attitudes About Gender and Sex

You cannot truly know your partner without discussing beliefs about gender and sex. Even in our modern society, these topics are not easy to talk about, but are very important.

Our attitudes towards gender and sex stem from our childhoods. Sometimes it is because of something we hated and sometimes it is the opposite, something we liked or never really questioned.

I grew up in a house where my mom thought boys were worth more than girls. I, of course, am a girl and I had three sisters and one brother. For my mom, my brother was the “prince” and we were supposed to serve him. My dad on the other hand, was the opposite. He taught me a lot about gender equality. He cooked, he cleaned, he helped us with homework, he did artistic things. He would even force my brother to be part of the dish washing roster. I did not like my mother’s attitude and chose to follow in my dad’s footsteps where my own life was concerned. When I was looking for a partner, this was one of my “musts”, I was not willing to live with a guy who thought girls were supposed to serve boys. When Gal and I started going out, I was happy to discover he was on the same page as me.

This post is part 7 of 8 in the series Know Your Partner

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Know Your Partner: Appearance, Work, Money and Health

Welcome to the third installment of “Know Your Partner”. In this series war are talking about questions you and your partner should discuss before you move in together, get married or have kids. These questions will help you find your partner’s “musts”. To read more about “musts”, check out Know Your Partner: Musts. In the last post in the series, we listed questions about relationships, every day life, family background and friends. This post covers questions about appearance, work, money and health.

This post is part 3 of 8 in the series Know Your Partner

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Know Your Partner: Questions to Ask

Last week, we talked about how every person has “musts”, things they absolutely cannot live without. It is important for each person in a couple to know their partner’s “musts” before they decide to move in together, to get married or to have kids. This week, I thought I would give you a list of questions to help you along your journey. This list includes questions about relationships, everyday life, family background and friends.

This list is very important to use in different relationship situations:

Before moving in with someone.
Before marriage.
Before deciding to have kids.
On anniversaries – in order to update each other about the ways we have changed.
When experiencing relationship conflict.
Before making the decision to break up a partnership.
There are a few rules to remember when asking these questions. This will make the question and answer process more effective and successful:

This post is part 2 of 8 in the series Know Your Partner

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Know Your Partner: Musts

Any relationship is a form of agreement between two or more people. The deeper the relationship, the more things you will need to agree on for your relationship to stay positive. Some relationships, like marriage and having children together, are more important than others. They have a huge impact on our lives and our futures. I call them love agreements.

Love agreements will change over time. Just how they change will depend on the circumstances. Each person changes within themselves and their agreements with each other change accordingly. For couples, it is very important for each side to make sure they are “sailing in the same direction”. While each of them may change in different ways, together, they want to be going the same way. If one wants to sail north and the other’s greatest desire is to sail south, then their relationship will suffer. One or both of them will have to compromise.

When we talk about relationships, the word compromise pops up as a desired outcome. I think compromise is important, but I also believe that some compromises cannot last for very long. They are often the source of conflict and can cause much heartache.

This post is part 1 of 8 in the series Know Your Partner

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Kiss Your Kids

Kissing is one of the best tools parents have in their parenting tool kit. Kissing has been known for ages to make miracles, to heal a wound and to get rid of worries and pain, particularly for children.

Would you not want the power to get rid of worries and help ease pain?

The real magic lies in what children think about the kiss. It is the same kiss you get when you are older, but it has somehow lost its magic for many people. Maybe we grownups need to re-adopt our childhood beliefs about kisses and to kiss more.

My family was not a kissing family. I have watched my mom kissing her little grandchildren constantly, which made me think she believed it was appropriate to kiss kids, but not grownups.

This belief seems to be similar in different cultures. One of my clients said to me once that every two to three years, when he meets his dad, who lives overseas, they shake hands.

Gal and I have always kissed each other when we to up in the morning, left home, came back and whenever we had a good time or wanted to make each other feel good.

When I was 27, we visited Gal’s host family in Connecticut (he was an exchange student there in his Junior Year of high school). Sally and Sam were an amazing couple. When they went to bed, they gave us a hug and a kiss as if they had not seen us for a long time, although we had come that same day. When they got up in the morning, they did the same. At first, I thought it was just for the first day of our arrival, but they continued to hug and kiss us every day. I loved it!

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Easy Divorce

Everybody also knows that divorce is painful to all involved. Regardless of your circumstances, both partners and all their children get hurt. Yet, the rate of divorce is soaring and being single again after having children is now part of many parents’ lives. Divorce seems hard to go through, but awfully easy to choose.

In the past, divorce was unacceptable in many societies. Once people got married, which was often by parental arrangement, they were stuck with their partners for life. Marriage was literally “until death do us part”. Being married for life was what everybody did. The average divorce rate was 0%.

Believing that ending their marriage while both partners were alive was not an option, the only available course of action was to make the marriage work. Sometimes, that was just as much fun as digging holes, but everyone dug 7 a day and kept their mouths shut.

Now, when you try to make a marriage work and you are committed to it for the long haul, you make decisions accordingly. You join bank accounts, split the responsibilities for best household performance and comfort, do your best to get to know your partner and try to be accommodating. In return, you could also rely on your partner to be there for you in times of difficulty, simply because he or she was as committed to the marriage as you were.

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