Keep it simple. Make it better.
There are times when married life hits rough patches.
There are also times when things can get stale or routine.
That’s when you need to up the “sexy” factor between you.
I’m not saying you need to have more sex (like that’s a bad thing), I’m saying you need to add a touch of spice and energy between you.
How?
Glad you asked.
This is exactly what we’re discussing in Episode 20 of Sexy Marriage Radio.
Enjoy.
Let us know how it goes.
There’s a popular belief that once a person gets married, everything will be smooth sailing.
Romance will naturally occur, your spouse will be your best friend, and there will be plenty of “Hallmark” moments between you.
If you’ve been married any length of time you know this simply isn’t true.
One of the main problems many couples face in marriage is they create a marriage that’s too close. They strive to capture the illusion of what they thought it would be like in the beginning by getting closer to each other.
This creates a fused relationship.
In a fused relationship system, your options for getting your needs met are limited to the people within the system, or to the ways people in the system approve of (read that sentence again).
When couples co-create a co-dependent relationship in which they strive to complete each other, they kill any chance of having any kind of evolving, passionate, fulfilling relationship.
The more couples become fused, the more they resent each other, try to change each other, push each other away, lose interest in each other, lose sexual passion, blame each other, and fantasize about escaping.
I believe that a majority of problems people experience in their marriage are the result of fusion.
In a fused system there is no “I”, only “we”.
There is an expectation that everyone should think alike, behave the same, have the same opinions, and want the same things. It is assumed that each member of the system will be there to meet the needs of every other member.
When this happens, the neediest and/or most anxious members of the system usually dictate how much pressure there is to conform and sacrifice self in a “Borg-like” manner.
Shortly after I begin working with a couple I ask them, “Do you believe that the source of the problems you’re experiencing currently are the result of you both being too far apart (living separate lives or drifting apart) or too close together (fused)?”
Without fail, the couple will reply – too far apart.
I then propose that it’s the opposite. That actually they’re too close together and that is what is creating all the problems.
If the couple will accept this view and begin to explore it more in detail as it plays out their marriage, they will begin to see dramatic improvement in their lives.
Fused systems fear change of any kind.
They also exist in a state of constant anxiety.
These rigid systems don’t like individuality, space, passion, integrity, or members having close friends outside of the system. They are characterized by guilt, covert contracts, emotional eruptions, passive-aggressiveness, isolation, secrets, hidden behaviors, and rebellion.
Also, unrealistic expectations are rampant in fused systems. Like these:
Members of the system have to “push-back” to have space and hold on to themselves in any significant way. This often leads to acting out and self-destructive behavior (the reason most couples seek out therapy).
For example, one spouse in a fused system might want the other to lose weight. Even if it would be in the best interest for that person to drop a few pounds, they will have to push back (this is called “disengagement”). This is an unconscious attempt to avoid losing self to their partner’s control (they have probably been doing this since childhood), and to prevent their partner from “winning”.
Scoreboarding is actually rampant in marriages.
It’s the idea that since I did something for you and our marriage, you should return the favor to me. It’s the classic exchange based principles.
The simple truth – marriage (and life) is not fair. If you go into a relationship expecting your generosity, gifts, strengths, love, passion, etc. to be reciprocated in kind, you’re going to wind up severely disappointed or angry.
Plus, if you enter into a discussion or issue with the idea that you should win, then what does that make your spouse? A loser. And who wants to be married to a loser?
A mature adult is someone who takes responsibility for getting their needs met.
Let’s build upon this idea. Mature, growing people co-create a number of cooperative systems to help them do this. An intimate relationship is just one of these cooperative systems.
Great marriages are the result of two mature, grown up people – both of whom have full, satisfying lives – cooperating with each other to get their needs met. In this kind of differentiated relationship, each partner compliments the other, but doesn’t complete them.
It is this kind of commitment to living a full life that helps maintain the growth in a relationship that is so important for attraction, passion, energy and great sex.
For more on this idea, consider joining Blow Up My Marriage. Enrollment begins this week.
January 14th is my 40th wedding anniversary.
I was 17 and pregnant when I got married. I was mom to four little girls by age 22 (my third pregnancy was twins).
The odds were stacked against us.
The first 10 years were filled with drama and insanity. We talked about going our separate ways. Deep down we knew we never would.
We knew there had to be a better way.
A friend suggested we seek professional help.
We overcame the fear of change, the fear of getting real, with ourselves and with each other, and the fear of getting professional help.
In 1982, every Wednesday night for six months, we hired a babysitter, drove 45 minutes to town, and paid $50 an hour out of pocket to see a therapist.
We were ready for change, we let go of blame, excuses and took responsibility. We were willing to look at the good, the bad, and the ugly. Our therapist would give us homework. We never missed a lesson.
The secret to a loving relationship is to do the work it takes to grow lovingly and peacefully into the future.
We learned to take down emotional barriers, open up and reveal our true selves, and do away with long silences. We learned to choose to be happy over needing to be right. We learned how to be good friends.
Most importantly we learned to forgive.
Today we know how to work together and be together. We know how to give each other space and trust each other. We know how to have fun, play, and be adventurous together.
We also argue, blame, get mad, forgive and begin again.
When it’s difficult, we take it slow. We take a time-out, walk away, get centered, and look within for the answers. When it’s difficult, we lean on each other.
You don’t have to wait for tomorrow to be again. Every moment is a clean slate.
When it’s easy we celebrate. Over time, you learn how to do “easy.” The other is too exhausting.
Once you commit to the end, there’s a certainty, a knowingness that brings inner peace and peace to the relationship.
The following tips when practiced will help you have a long and healthy relationship.
Kindness creates a mood of love.
Make a decision to be kind. Set a loving intention each morning. Use your manners. Look at each other with loving eyes. Love is a choice. The more love you choose, the more joy you feel.
Let go of fear.
?Love is letting go of fear. Learn to trust each other and count on each other. Know when to speak up and when to calm down. Open your hearts and offer each other a sense of safety. That’s how trust grows.
Your partner isn’t the source of your pain.
?You are 100% responsible for your relationship. If your partner is abusive, you’re responsible for “being” there. Get help and do what you have to do. Give up blame and learn to be accountable.
Focus on changing your own annoying habits.
It bothers me when my husband eats too fast. I only need to focus myself. Drop your attack thoughts. Add the words, “Just like me,” to anything you want to accuse your mate of doing. For example, “You eat too fast” changes to, “You eat too fast, just like me.”
Make forgiveness a way of life.
Think of yourself as a forgiving person. Grow into it. You can’t experience love when your heart and mind are full of hate. Let go of hurt and resentment.
Give up the pain of the past. It’s impossible to have a loving relationship without forgiveness. Impossible! Turn your burdens into blessings.
Create a spirit of unity.
Learn to ask for and receive love. Give more than you receive. The more love you share, the more love you have. Point all of your actions to love. Believe the best is yet to come.
Create room for intimacy and sex.
Turn off your electronics and spend quality time alone. Intimacy can be described as, “the ability to open up and reveal your true self or in-to-me-see.”
When you create intimacy in your relationship, sex is filled with meaning and love.
Seek help.
If these steps seem to difficult, reach out and get help. Don’t use money ask an excuse. If you have to scrub toilets or collect garbage for extra cash, do it. Your marriage is sacred. Learn to value it above all else, never let it fall apart or die.
Tess Marshall is the founder of The Bold Life and author of the new ecourse (just launched this week), Take Your Fear and Shove It.
Here we go again!
Every time we need to discuss something, we have trouble doing it without fighting.
Help!
Having effective discussions and reaching peaceful agreements that work are often challenges for married couples.
Increasing skillfulness in this area will help your marriage mature in a healthy way and stay strong and happy.
For a couple to reach decisions without conflict, new skills are needed.
Here are 10 key guidelines for couple decision-making that will help you gradually improve:
Decisions work best when you have equal voices in couple discussions, sometimes known as “couple consultation”. It is vital for you both to express what is on your minds and hearts freely. Either withholding your input or dominating the conversation will both negatively affect the outcome. If one of you tends to be more dominant in speaking, you will need to use self-discipline to give the other an opportunity to speak. The less dominant of you may also need to practice assertiveness. Free expression happens when you are both willing to listen patiently to one another and not interrupt.
It is vital to ensure the purity of your motives and intentions in any discussion. If either of you has a hidden agenda—an unspoken intention or goal—or you want to manipulate one another, the couple consultation is on a weak foundation from the very start. Be very aware if you have developed the habit of manipulation, particularly toward those of the opposite gender. Consultation is not a method to get your own way. You will be wise to help one another in changing this pattern, or it will have a consistent negative effect on your relationship.
Author John Kolstoe shares this wisdom about consulting together:
Since its purpose is to find a solution, consultation should not be used just to gain sympathy or to dump on someone. It’s not consultation when talking degenerates into a gripe session or gossip or complaining. These activities merely rehash the problem, making it worse. Rather than letting the anger out, this sort of dwelling on the unpleasant things of life causes delay, magnifies the hurt, and interferes with long-term healing. … In consultation, the intensity of suffering is diluted while the solution is developing. (Developing Genius, p. 201)
While it is normal and healthy for people to have different perspectives, and couples need to learn how to reconcile them, serious and regular conflict is an indicator of a marriage in trouble. John M. Gottman, PhD, and his team at the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle, Washington, have discovered a number of couple communication behaviors that warn of a conflicted couple (The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work).
The warning signs are:
If you are experiencing serious conflict in your marriage, and find that you are unable to build new skills on your own, please consider seeking professional help from a therapist.
Most couples, however, can decide to try new ways of interacting and make positive changes to reduce or eliminate fighting or serious disagreements. Think about how you feel when disunity arises between you, and make a determined effort to find new ways of reaching harmonious decisions.
Welcome to 2012.
This year, same as the past several years, I’m on a mission to write and live a better story.
How is living a better story accomplished?
There are several parts to a great story (taken from Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years).
So how exactly does this apply to you?
Every story has a main character.
That’s you … check.
The character has to want something.
Again, this is up to you. What do you want in life? This year? Today?
I’ll share a few things on my list. I also want Simple Marriage to be one of the best resources on the web for marriage and relationships. My wife and I both want to volunteer more in our community. We want to share life more with friends.
On a relational level, my wife and I want to continue to connect even more. To have more adventures, deeper conversations, better sex (yes, she’s on board with this, it’s not just my wish), and overall more fun together. To make this happen, we have to do more of the following.
The character has to move into the conflict in order to get what they want.
In the movies, this is called the inciting incident. It’s what sets the stage for the climactic ending where the main character saves the child, or defeats the bad guy, or goes the full fight with the much younger boxer.
On a marital level, we are presented countless opportunities to move into the conflict, but often this option is counter intuitive. Whenever you and your spouse disagree or see things differently, this is a great time to move into the conflict.
Bear in mind however, moving into the conflict doesn’t necessarily mean you must win.
If you enter into relational conflict with the plans on winning, you often wind up losing in the end. After all, if you must always be the winner, what’s that make your spouse?
I used to think that conflict was something to be avoided. That I could somehow navigate life and relationships without it. I’d take the easy way out of things. Even going so far as not speaking up if I was given the wrong meal at a restaurant.
During the first several years of marriage, I’d do almost anything to avoid conflict. I lived by the old adage - “happy wife, happy life” or “happy spouse, happy house.”
It didn’t take long to realize that when I lived according to other people’s happiness and when I habitually tried to avoid conflict, I harmed myself in the long run.
Conflict produces change.
Truth is, none of us really want to change. That’s why so many new years resolutions fail.
So what does it look like to move into conflict?
For you it may mean you finally voice your opinion on something. Or you speak up during sex because you’re getting nothing out of it at the moment. Or you start your own business on the side. Or you tell important people in your life “no” for the first time.
For me it meant speaking up and risk upsetting or disappointing my wife. It meant quitting a career to finish graduate school faster.
Basically, moving into conflict often is more about following your gut. In the midst of conflict, you generally have a gut feeling about the best way to handle the situation. Many times however, this is ignored and you simply react.
Slow down, breathe, listen to you gut.
There has to be a climactic resolution.
This is not simply when you die, although that definitely is a resolution. This is when you achieve your goal. When you connect deeper with your spouse. When you stand on top of the mountain.
Whatever it is, begin with the end in mind.
Imagine what it would be like to stand on top of the mountain. Or to truly have a mutually satisfying sexual encounter. Or a deeper connection.
This will help you envision the steps that may be necessary to get there.
Then move into the story and don’t look back.
What do you think?
In Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project she compiles a list of truisms about life as an adult – The Secrets of Adulthood.
While marriage is best when it involves two grown ups, relationships often have slightly different rules and truths.
So what are the Secrets of Marriage?
Here’s what I’ve come up … add your thoughts in the comments.
Your turn.
There is a popular belief in the marriage and relationship world that when the doldrums hit and you find yourself more numb than really alive, you should look for ways to get back what you once had.
Call it a spark. A zest. A passion. Whatever.
The point is, something’s missing and since you once had it – you can go back and find it again.
Wrong.
Life is not lived backwards.
Our past is important.
Who we once were is what our spouse found attractive (since that person caught the eye of your spouse and reeled them in the rest of the way). But the previous version of you is long gone and trying to go back and find him/her is a path to more frustration.
While you may be able to produce a brief spark by reminiscing about when you were dating, it won’t be a lasting spark.
The main reason – you’re up against the “love drug” in your brain.
When you first met and fell in love with your spouse you both experienced a chemically induced high. Your brain flooded with a chemical called Phenylethylamine (PEA), which remains in your brain from 6 months to 2 years. PEA produces a feeling of euphoria, a sense of belonging, and a feeling of obsession (which is why you want to talk and be with your new found love every moment).
As PEA fades over time (and it will) many people believe that you can recreate the same levels of emotion within the relationship. Problem is, you can’t.
You cannot go back a manufacture PEA in your brain within the same relationship (although I’m sure the pharmaceutical companies are trying to figure out a way).
What you can do, increase the levels of Oxytocin in your system.
Oxytocin is known as the “bonding” chemical. It produces the deep connection to others, the lasting bond that long term relationships create. Oxytocin is released when you bond with another person – the most intense experiences are mother and infant while nursing and during orgasm. But other contacts create this bond as well: massages, eye contact, hugs, holding hands.
On the other end of the spectrum, going through crisis and tragedy together dramatically increases the levels of Oxytocin as well.
This is why it is worth it to work through the rough patches in marriage.
What it produces is a deeper, more lasting bond.
Now that you know what you’re up against when you face the monotonous times in marriage, here’s a couple of ideas to help up the Oxytocin in your life:
1. Catch romance where you can
You can learn to build romance at unexpected times — during your daily commute, while doing laundry — you can even do this through a long, lingering kiss or just holding hands. In other words, the next time you hear find you’ve got a couple of minutes to yourselves, make use of it — give that Oxytocin a boost.
2. Nurture your separate selves
Having your own hobbies isn’t a sign you are drifting apart. On the contrary, developing individual interests allows for a richer life as a couple. Taking personal responsibility for your own well-being relieves the your spouse of the pressure to “provide” happiness — so go ahead and nurture some solo adventures. That’ll also keep each of you stocked with plenty of adventures to chat about, which also tightens your bond.
3. Take on a project together
Separate interests aside, exploring new ground together is also important since it strengthens your history of shared experiences (Oxytocin boost). Commit to run a 5K together. Create a project for your home or kids. Big projects together offer increases in Oxytocin because they are often filled with highs and lows, but the lows will create a bond as well. Couples who take on adventures together get a sense of daring and accomplishment that can really kick up their chemistry!
4. Touch each other (sexually and non-sexually)
The boost of connection you receive from human touch is huge. And every touch doesn’t have to be sexual in nature. Sure, sexual touch is important and will increase the connection, but so will non-sexual touch. Hold hands, hug, sit close beside one another, cuddle. Each little (or big) gesture can cause a boost of Oxytocin for both of you.
Got any more to add? Share them in the comments.
Acronyms are great reminders to do something we otherwise might forget.
Businesses and government agencies often use acronyms to ensure consumers will remember them. IBM. AOL. AT&T. NASA. IHOP.
I don’t know what A&W stands for, but I do know they make wonderful cream soda.
In marriage, there is an acronym I’ve found to be the most effective in helping a couple grow in love, become more patient with each other and remove common frustrations within most relationships.
A.E.O.D: Accept Each Other’s Differences
You may not know me, but I’m a bit of a klutz.
I stumble over my own feet, run into walls, and step on my husband’s toes often. For the first few years of our marriage, it got so bad that he’d brace himself whenever I came near. I also pace in front of the television and yell at the players on my favorite team. I’m not a fan of the word no or the phrase “you’re wrong” and can list many instances in which I did not respond well to either.
What I just described about myself is the polar opposite of my husband.
He’s calm, collected, rational, reasonable, well-spoken, and never, ever says anything without thinking about it first. He’s a diplomat who weighs all sides of an issue prior to addressing it. He has great poise (doesn’t ever run into walls) and enjoys sports but is never fully invested in the outcome of the game. He loves feedback and can accept positive or negative types. And he doesn’t mind being proven wrong.
However, he can sit in front of a television for hours watching back-to-back episodes of Mecum Auto Auction or Landscapers’ Challenge.
“Really?” I’ve asked. “Are you kidding me? Didn’t you just see a garden that looked just like that in the last episode?”
He unwinds by doing random internet searches on topics like, “What happened to Ralph Macchio?” or “Where’s Tutti from Facts of Life?” He’d also rather spend Sunday morning waxing his car or pulling weeds than relaxing on the couch.
When my husband and I first married, we couldn’t have been more different. But through the years we have morphed into one another’s likeness.
The transformation is amazing to watch.
We still have a lot of differences, but we have found ourselves sharing more similarities with each passing day.
And because we’ve chosen to accept each other’s differences, our differences don’t annoy me as much since I understand they are a part of who he is. They are part of what makes him uniquely him.
Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that the qualities that make our spouses different – are also what make them great.
So the next time your spouse does something different from the way you would, rather than stewing, try considering how the action makes them special.
Marvel in the unique characteristics of your husband or wife and accept them.
And remember … marriage is not a sprint, it’s a well-run marathon.
Today, I run into fewer walls, step on my husband’s toes less frequently, can stomach the word no and the phrase “you’re wrong,” and only yell at the Spurs when they are in the NBA playoffs or finals—giving up the game!
It’s not perfect, but for me, it’s growth.
You can read more from Fawn on her site, Happy Wives Club.
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