After the infatuation and dating stage, fun and romance doesn’t just happen in relationships. Great committed relationships don’t just happen. We have to put in conscious effort to create the relationship we want. Here are some tips for creating and enhancing your intimacy, romance, passion and fun with your partner:
1) Make time for each other and for having quality time together. Pick a time of day that is just for the two of you.
2) Stay connected through out the day by sending each other inspiring, funny, cute, loving or sexy emails, cartoons, cards, notes, etc.
3) Schedule consistent dates, couple outings, events and plans that excite, stimulate and enrich you as a couple. (Attend our Couple Events!)
4) Expand your repertoire of activities you do for fun. Add Gaming to your couple time – play board games for some warm and cozy indoor fun!
5) Surprise each other with little gifts, nice gestures, or different ways of responding.
6) Do romantic and sexy gestures at a frequency chosen by both of you: go on a hot air balloon ride, go to a famous romantic restaurant, have a midnight interlude that includes chocolate, strawberries and champagne, give a bouquet of exotic flowers, play hooky from work and go to the movies for a matinee or home for some intimate time, play footsy under the table at your-in-laws..
7) Integrate more physical activities into your joint activities: Garden (start preparing now by planning and designing your garden together), workout (join a gym or create an exercise program to do together), join a co-ed sports team, have outdoor fun by skiing, hiking, rollerblading, horseback riding etc., paint your house, have sex…
8) Fill a drawer in your room with fun and sexy toys and games, lotions, candles, lingerie and other goodies to have handy for when you are ready for them!
9) Get a Spa Treatment together!
10) Touch: hold hands, sit next to each other with bodies touching, cuddle, hug, embrace, hold, squeeze, pat, stroke, caress, massage, rub, fondle, pet…
BONUS:
1) Invite your partner to be silly and LAUGH: have tickle sessions, pillow fights, chase each other around the house, have water or food fights, listen to your favorite music really loud and dance around…
2) Have exhilarating experiences: bungee jump, parachute, hang-glide, scuba-dive, ride roller coasters, go on a safari trip, visit a haunted house, watch scary movies…
Start connecting more intimately today. Make sure you keep the fun and romance alive! Re-ignite the passion!!
Happy Romanticizing!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Have a brainstorming session with your partner about fun things you’d like to do together. Think outside the box and get creative. Pick 3 items form the list and schedule them into your calendars!
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Fun is important in our relationship. Having fun releases different chemicals in the brain that engender good feelings which get then associated with our partner. This is a good thing. Having fun with our partner should be a priority in our relationship. We can get huge returns on this investment!
It is difficult at times to remember to have fun a sad state of affairs but very common. Couples get stuck in their routines and getting through their days managing their responsibilities as best they can that they consume all their energy and resources leaving little for the couple itself.
Top on most people’s list is having a great relationship. People are consumed with thoughts of how is it going and what else they’d like from it. It is a wonder they are not Minding their relationship 24/7 and having a blast. A lot of people think they are working on their relationship and can’t understand why it is not more satisfying.
The problem is, as I’ve written before, that they are putting in the wrong efforts. They are misusing even more resources and energy leaving the couple in a dire state and the partners hopeless and frustrated.
But couples are resilient and partners stick it out for a while before calling it quits. It is during this time, when partners are sticking it out, that it is paramount to refocus and re-channel the efforts made to connect with our partner, enliven the relationship, get our needs met and create the relationship and life we want.
One of the ingredients for accomplishing this is having fun with our partner. There are different kinds of fun to be had: being playful and getting physical, creating and working on projects, going on outings and trips, sharing dreams and goals and working together on accomplishing them, learning new skills together, and identifying different ways to play.
Integrating fun into our relating promotes good feelings, receptiveness and cooperation creating an ally and a teammate of our partner! With an ally we can win any game we set ourselves out to play!!
Happy Playing!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Make a list of 5 fun things you would like to do within the next month and have your partner do the same. Now pick and choose from your lists creating a joint list of 5 items you and your partner agree do together to have FUN. ENJOY!
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
The majority of the couples that want to improve their relationship identify that communication is an issue for them. They share how they can’t see eye-to-eye, convey their feelings and perspective, or understand each other. They report they end up fighting every time they try to address something not being able to resolve disagreements or being delayed in making decisions because they can’t get on the same page with their partner.
The lack of communication means struggling day in and day out in their relationship. Some partners choose to go it alone when making decisions or addressing needs to avoid disagreements and disappointment. Partners that avoid conflict end up having a very distant and lonely relationship.
On the other hand, partners that are not avoidant are at risk of escalating disagreements that threaten their emotional, and even their physical, safety or the relationship itself. Either way, this lack of skill is detrimental to their well-being, their relationship and their quality of life.
The goal of good communication is to show your partner you “get them” so you can connect, get on the same page and smoothly go about running your life. This includes three key elements:
Reflection – Show your partner you hear what they are saying by repeating what you hear without interpreting the meaning, reading between the lines, assigning motivation, or adding your own perspective or information to it.
Validation – Show your partner you understand their perspective and how their experience makes sense giving who they are.
Empathy – Show your partner you understand their feelings, their emotional state around their perspective.
Note, that within the relationship one partner tends to be the distancer (aka, the underfunctioner) and the other the pursuer (aka, the overfunctioner) even though the relationship itself picked up a pattern or theme (avoidant or conflictual).
Regardless of the relationship theme, it is important that each partner stretches their own style to reduce the polarization that maintains the status quo. Identify your style below and implement the approach described to address what you contribute to the patterns that are keeping you stuck.
Distancer (passive) – Take a Risk. Make a commitment to mindfully share your thoughts, preferences, and wishes. Express yourself in a non-threatening or challenging way. Share your internal world (remember, your partner does not need to know everything, but do open up!).
Share developments, actions and decisions made in the recent past. Share dreams, goals, and plans. Share from a place of sharing and having a voice, not from a place of rebelling or punishing…
Pursuer (aggressive) – Take it Easy. Make a commitment to give it a rest and to give your partner a break. Learn when to stop before things go to far. Invite your partner into discussions instead of blindsiding them.
Prepare yourself for your chat so you are grounded and patient, less reactive. Learn to wait until you’ve calmed down to address things that bother you, or to resume a discussion that went array. Address your needs by speaking about yourself, not about your partner, and not to control, manipulate or convince…
Therefore to crack the communication and connection impasse immediately, approach your partner byTaking a Risk or Taking it Easy depending on your identified needed stretch, and by responding to them using the Three Key Communication Elements. Be magnificent this way! When you stick to these parameters miraculous things happen in your relationship. Implement this without reservation.
Make a full commitment to making this your default setting in your relating. Take a no excuses approach to making this your new way of being in your relationship. When you are magnificent, your relationship is magnificent!
Happy Getting Each Other!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Choose a weekly time slot with your partner where you each get to responsibly, positively, mindfully, and lovingly open up about your experiences with each other in the relationship, and in your individual worlds.
Make this is safe and enjoyable appointment. Discuss the rules of engagement when you choose the time, and add a special touch to make this a positive relationship ritual: take turns bringing a treat, set up the space with nice ambiance, choose a relaxing regular spot, etc.
Gift your relationship with special dedicated time each week!
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
There is a tendency towards passiveness in our relationship as time passes.
Couples get comfortable in their routine, whether it is an efficient and satisfying routine or not, and lax in their relating, whether they are on the same page or not. They settle into whatever relating they have developed and stick with it, becoming more and more passive in their efforts to keep passion, interest, mystery, and seduction alive.
This passiveness comes as a result of couples settling into and getting caught up in the everyday grind, being reactive because of their unprocessed and unaddressed wounds, and their just going through the motions in their relating. They come to not be in touch with one another. As this passiveness continues, the partners feel more and more disconnected.
The Rx for this is joint fun. Having fun together creates pleasure and safety intensifying the couple’s emotional bond.
So what is fun and how can you have more of it? Fun is any activity that requires high energy interaction and no skills, has no rules, can be done wrong, produces deep pleasure in the form of an orgasm, laughter or both, and is done in a short period of time.
This kind of fun, high energy, deeper breathing, blood and endorphins pumping kind of fun, creates a feeling of being alive, energized, charged. It is proactive. It adds life to the relationship.
Playfulness is one way of having fun and it’s a natural form of expressing our innate drive toward full aliveness. Playfulness can include singing songs with added funny wording, splashing in the pool or bath, drenching each other with water balloons, wrestling, racing up the steps or to the car, having food or pillow fights, or tickling each other.
Add fun into your relationship, enjoy new pleasures and a renewed sense of being alive. Allow passion and connectedness to resurface in your relating and savor a stronger emotional bond. Get playing!
Happy Bonding!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Create a Fun List: Sit together and brainstorm for Fun Activities that follow the definition of fun described above. Make it long. Get silly and have fun with the process. When you have a nice list, pick one making a date for when to carry it out. HAVE FUN!
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
There is no better way to create wonderful memories and meaning in one’s relationship than with rituals. Rituals are a special way to show love, appreciation and importance for the partners throughout time in the life of the relationship.
Relationships are made up of interactions between two partners which can be negative or positive. Their repetition provide the overall feel of the relationship. Rituals collaborate with this process.
Couple rituals play a central role in giving color, substance, and style to the relationship and mark off one couple from another, giving each a special character. They make a major contribution to the stability and continuity of the life of the relationship. They assist in creating and maintaining a couple’s identity (unique values, standards, role prescription, and perceptions).
Rituals encapsulate the essence of who partners are within their relationship through the reenactment of specified behaviors. This is a tool that can help change that overall feeling and enhance the meaning of the relationship and its satisfaction quotient.
There are specific characteristics to positive couple rituals. They are symbolic, consistent, respectful and meaningful. They have a sense of specialness and importance. They provide a sense of “weness” and organize partners’ behaviors. Partners feel a void when they are skipped or absent.
Rituals can be creative and exclusive to celebrate anniversaries of events and holidays, or repetitive woven into our routines. There are actually three categories of rituals:
1) Celebrations. These specific to the couple such as engagements, weddings, anniversaries and Valentine’s Day; and family celebrations in which couples partake. Family celebrations can be religious holidays such as Christmas, Easter, The Passover Seder or secular holiday observances such as Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, or the Fourth of July, within the American culture anyway.
2) Traditions. These are less culture-specific and more idiosyncratic to the couple and their family and recur with regularity. These might include: Summer vacations, dates, birthdays, parties of various kinds, special meals.
3) Ritualized routines. These are the ones most frequently enacted and the ones least consciously planed. To this category belong rituals such as a dinnertime, bedtime routines, leisure time activities on weekends or evenings, everyday greetings and good-byes, contact during the day, ways of staying current, etc. These interactions help to define partners’ roles and responsibilities and are a way of organizing daily interactions.
When rituals play out over time their richness reaffirm symbolism of values, affects, and perspectives hence their power to be conduits of change.
Which couple rituals in your relationship capture the essence of who you are as partners in your relationship? Which rituals promote positive feelings in your relationship? Which rituals promote meaningful and satisfying interactions? Which rituals allow your relating to create the relationship you want?
Use Positive Couple Rituals to change and enhance your relationship today!
Happy Ritualizing!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Create robust rituals to celebrate your coupleness. Revisit your rituals and see which ones you want to do away with, which ones you want to keep and why, and which ones need tweaking. Make sure your rituals help you create your relationship vision.
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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