Relationship Enrichment Archives

We can fill our tank by being in connection

Sometimes we might get cranky, moody, impatient, and easily annoyed, and want to bite someone’s head off. Have you ever stopped to consider what is happening for you when you feel this way? You can probably guess that you are not well resourced, that you are running on empty. Therefore, you don’t have much bandwidth to be tolerant, patient, understanding, flexible, compassionate, giving, nurturing, and loving. But did you know that we can fill our tank by being in Connection?

At my last yoga class, the instructor was so tuned in… She actually made reference to this concept. She said something to the effect of, We get cranky when we need connection. 🤯 I was so excited to hear this and other beautiful golden nuggets she had to offer. Inspiration and affirmation come in all shapes and when least expect it.

I teach this concept to our couples:

We don’t get annoyed with our partner’s imperfections when we feel connected.

When partners report their partner is really getting on their nerves, or that becomes apparent simply by how they share about how they are doing, it becomes obvious how disconnected they might be feeling…

Partners that are feeling connected get along much better. The little things don’t annoy them, they are more able to give grace, to focus on the positive, and to be more compassionate and generous.

But it is challenging to feel connected to our partner when we choose to look at them in a negative light, when we get in their circle (and become codependent), and our focus is “what about me?”

It is challenging to connect with our partner when we are being messy in how we show up to our interactions, and the rest of our lives…

So, this might seem like a Catch22. We need to feel connected to let go of annoyances, but we can’t connect because there are annoyances… Putting this concept together in this way, or having this logic or mindset, doesn’t serve us.

There is a better way of putting this together. We have the power to choose how we interpret things, what meaning we assign things, how we respond, how we show up, how we feel, what we focus on, and so on…

The empowered state allows us to see our partner with imperfections and all, and still think they are awesome. And still want to be with them. And still feel connected…

I get that this is difficult to do when we are running on empty… The littlest of things can grate on us. Some partners expect to get all their needs met through their partner. This is really a toll order and an unrealistic expectation… Something to be revisited immediately…

Therefore, it’s super important to replenish ourselves, to fill our tank, outside of our partner…

When we are resourced, we have more bandwidth that allow us the ability to choose to look at our partner in a much more positive light. When we choose our focus better, we are better able to overlook imperfections and see the Essence of our partner.

It is then much easier to connect with our partner when we don’t focus on their faults but focus on their awesomeness instead… AND, when we are connected it becomes easier to ignore their imperfections and not get annoyed. A beautiful Catch22 after all.

Connection to Ourselves

How do we resource ourselves to be able to do this? The answer still lies in being in Connection… But being in Connection with ourselves, with our Higher Self… The part of us that is one with the Universe, or our Higher Power.

This is the easiest and simplest way to recharge ourselves and fill up our tank! When we are in Connection with our Higher Self, we are plugged in, we are Charged. And, then we can easily connect with our Partner. Voila!

Mindfulness Practice

Our Mindfulness Practice can take on any flavor we desire. Mindfulness is a moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience without judgement.

The key is to go within and be still. To quiet our mind. To not engage with our usual thoughts and scripts, but just notice them and let them go.

To focus on Being with ourselves – to hear surrounding noises, to feel body sensations, to notice our breathing, to go further within.

To connect with our Core, our Self. To connect with our Essence…

This can be done through meditation and movement like yoga, tai chi, qi gong, walking, cleaning, coloring, knitting, and other repetitive activities where we can transcend our thinking, ego, fear…

APPLICATION: Connect with your Self, connect with your Partner, note a deeper Connection…

Make a commitment to Connect with yourself daily…
Embrace a Mindfulness Practice that fits your lifestyle and integrate it into your daily routine.
Take note of how differently you feel when you practice
Take note of how differently you show up when you practice
Take note of how much easier it is to let go of annoyances when you practice
Take note of how much easier it is to connect with your partner when you practice
Take note of how you don’t even notice annoyances when you feel connected with your partner…

Connection is a goal to strive for daily…

Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…

With Much Love & Light!

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 the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com

Not addressing relationship dynamics can break a couple…

by Emma Viglucci

It is not uncommon for couples to have the same recurring issues and arguments… If partners are not intentional and proactive about addressing the underlying reasons for these, they will continue to have them… Not addressing relationship dynamics can break a couple… Banging around unconscious as to who you really are, what really is driving you, what you really want and how this impacts interactions with your partner, is a sure way to create a dissatisfying relationship and mediocre life. Ouch!

Is this how you want to live your life?

Unless we’ve done personal development work, we all walk around with most of ourselves unknown to ourselves. Isn’t that something?

We have unconscious and subconscious mechanisms at work that inform most of who we are and influence most of what we do… A minuscule of our experience actually happens in our conscious mind…

The subconscious mechanism has to do with how our mind works… We can identify our unsupportive scripts, negative narratives, biases, fears, and limiting believes and address them. We can focus on reducing our Negativity Bias.

The unconscious mechanism has to do with how our embodied-brain works… We can identify/infer our wounds, emotional programming, and physiological responses and address them.

How we were raised and what we experienced growing up influenced our embodied-brain development, our sense of self and our impression and experience of the world…

Left unexplored, we are only aware of and know a small percentage of ourselves and how we experience the world…

The world, our reality, is not a static knowable objective truth to boot… If we are ignorant about our Reality, and take everything we think and experience at face value, we are in for a rude awakening…

Our thoughts are not who we are and what the word is… We can’t believe everything we think!

This is where partners get into trouble. Partners sensitivities might get poked by the mere being of the other person and their imperfections.

They make assumptions and assign motives as to what they are perceiving.
Their interpretations are influenced by their limited and unexplored knowledge of themselves.
They rely on their senses and their logic to interpret an interaction and experience their partner and their relationship.
And, their senses and logic as limited as they are, they are usually additionally compromised for whatever reason.

When understanding interactions and relationships from this concept, it is really a marvel that people are able to have any sort of good relationships… The whole thing is a constant moving target!

Luckily our brain doesn’t like open loops, questions, and the unknown. I say luckily because then it looks for patterns and responds accordingly, this is useful. Otherwise, it is not great that the brain fills in the blanks with whatever it needs to reassure itself or prove itself right… This continues the virtual reality and veil we live with…

But, working with patterns allows us to plant the flag somewhere, address the experience we are having, and give us the ability to do something about it…

Working with the Unconscious Mind

I usually tackle this topic from the unconscious perspective, as this is where a lot of our programming happened growing up. This is when we literally wired our embodied-brain that’s now used to sense and perceive the world around us… (Element3 of The Strategy, of course addressing our conscious mindset and subconscious, is super important and a priority as well – Element1 of The Strategy)

In interactions with our caregivers we formulated our neuropathways and developed and integrated the structures of our brain. When our interactions were less-than-perfect (because no caregiver person is perfect), we wired ourselves according to the experience that now informs our sensitivities…

We have a filter that is on the lookout for preventing the same pain… The brain is amazing at this. Put the brain on something and it’ll find it, it’ll look for an answer to whatever question, and work on closing any open loops.

Therefore, if we have a theme of a certain kind of parenting growing up that scarred us in some way, the brain will latch on to that pattern…

It is imperative that we are aware of how our brain works so it doesn’t trip us up!

Changing the Patterns

It is our job to discover what is the pattern we keep playing out. What is our brain looking for? What keeps triggering us? How do we respond in the face of this experience that perpetuates the cycle? And in turn, how does this interact with our partner’s sensitivities? How are we co-creating our reality…?

Once we identify what is triggering us ongoingly, we can translate that pain, feeling, wound, into a need. What is the message of the feeling we are feeling? What do we need to give to ourselves to meet the need? What mindful and respectful requests can we make of our partner to help us meet our needs?

And of course, we reciprocate. When they get triggered, we try to understand what might be happening for them. We check if we are understanding them (we don’t run with assumptions!). We ask what we can offer to help them meet their needs. We can have conversations about patterns, needs, and meeting them… It just requires intentionally.

Note, I set this up from the perspective of one partner. These interactions are much easier if our partner has similar awareness and motivation to work on themselves and the relationship. But note that they don’t have to, partners get stuck on this. When we focus on what we do and how we show up, we can create change… We are not at their mercy!

APPLICATION: Take inventory of the theme of your recurring issues, arguments and fights…

What keeps coming up for you?
What keeps getting triggered?
What are the feelings/emotions?
What are your feelings telling you?
What are the driving needs behind the feelings?
How can you go about self-agenting to meet your needs while remaining mindful of your partner and their need and respectful in your approach?

We have to take responsibility of our own experience and how we co-create our reality… This self-agency allows us to create the relationship and life we desire…

Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…

With Much Love & Light!

Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?

Excellent communication also helps increase our bonding

by Emma Viglucci

Communication skills and tools are not just necessary for getting on the same page, making joint decisions and problem solving effectively. They are also indispensable for more deeply understanding each other and warmly flowing in our interactions with our partner. Excellent communication also helps increase our bonding.

Feeling understood is an existential human need… In feeling that the other “gets” us, we feel Known and that we exist… Feeling understood engenders feelings of belonging, being accepted, and safety. This is pretty much at the core of things! This is why it’s super important to use our skills and tools to make sure we get our partner, and others, when we are in our interactions with them.

And, with that it goes without saying how super important it is to show them that we got them… This is where the validation step in the Intentional Dialogue comes in. This is the step that partners forget in interactions that crashes the conversation and possibly even leads to a fight.

Equally important is to communicate so our partner can understand us, and to seek confirmation that we were understood.

Interactions don’t have to go south… Most of the time when couples refer to communication problems, they are actually referring to emotionally charged issues and conversations. They can’t communicate well when they are triggered… Which makes complete sense! Employing communication tools and skills has a lot to do with managing ourselves and being mindful to not trigger our partner… Removing roadblocks to communication goes a long way.

And most importantly, when we are mindful of how we show up and how we communicate we are investing in protecting, nurturing, and strengthening our bond…

Strengthening Our Bond

Therefore, it is imperative that we are very intentional and mindful about how we communicate with our partner and what the focus of our conversations are. For who doesn’t want a lovely and strong bond with their Lovey? Right?

I invite you to add having Meaningful Conversations to your Couple Time… Let’s not use couple time for just more binging on Netflix.

Awareness and consciousness about yourself

Do you know what triggers you and why? Do you know what core wound and defense mechanisms you keep playing out, what you contribute to your repeating patterns? Do you know what your needs are and how to meet them? Do you know your Love Language? Getting a deeper understanding of yourself in this way is enlightening and a great investment in your personal development…

Then, sharing this with your partner and integrating your new awareness into your interactions is truly transformative…

Awesomeness and uniqueness about yourself

How well do you know yourself? Your personal strengths and characteristics, values, and dreams? Exploring these for a fuller awareness and knowing of yourself is a beautiful undertaking to enrich your personal experience.

Then, you can share your understandings, discoveries, and what you make of them with your partner. Isn’t this a gorgeous conversation?

Aspirations and passions about yourself

Have you identified your Purpose, what drives you? Are you focused on that purpose daily? Do you have a vision of your future and your life? Do you have clear goals and milestones? What are you working on? Are your projects, tasks and routines in alignment with your Vision? Getting some clarity around these and aligning your life accordingly makes life so much easier and pleasurable…

Then, share what you are up to, your desires, fears, and possible roadblocks with your partner for additional alignment and meaning…

Aren’t these delicious? Imaging these are the topics of your conversations most of the time… This is what gives our interactions depth and meaning. These interactions are what strengthen our bond, bring us closer and guide our relationship and life. This is how we create radiance and meaning in our relationship.

APPLICATION: Select the area about you that you want to explore, gain a deeper understand, more clarity and direction to play with… Set some time aside to indulge in this exploration, and then bring your discoveries, insights, and desires to your Couple Time

Awareness and consciousness about yourself
Awesomeness and uniqueness about yourself
Aspirations and passions about yourself

In developing ourselves and owning our sparkle, with bring more radiance to our relationship…

Be curious, be playful, be vulnerable, be available…

Share yourself more in your interactions and communication, strengthen you bond!

Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…

With Much Love & Light!

Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?

Does it feel like you Love TOO Much?

by Emma Viglucci

Do you think that you love your partner more than they love you? That you care more? That you do more for the home, the family, and the relationship? That if it weren’t for you, things would fall apart? You are not alone in this. It is very common for one partner to do more nurturing, caring, and making sure everything is ok. Does this sound like you? Do you do the caretaking for the family and the relationship? Does it feel like you Love TOO Much?

If we care more and love too much, then by implication it feels like the other cares less… Nobody wants to feel like their loved one doesn’t care as much… It doesn’t feel good to feel less cared about… It doesn’t feel good to love too much…

When we love too much, we lose ourselves in the caring and caretaking… Everything we do is for the other/s, with the other/s in mind, and we don’t even think about our needs, preferences, and wishes. We don’t even figure in the equation.

What happens next is that our whole routine revolves around our loved one/s, our whole week and lifestyle revolve around our loved one/s, our whole life revolves around our loved one/s… We lose sight of who we are, what we are meant to do, of our growth, of where we want to go and who we want to become, and of our actual Journey…

We become myopic, we miss the forest for the tree. We focus on the minutiae of the everyday. We get distracted by others’ whims and agendas and by bright shiny objects. We bang around without purpose.

We fill our days with crap – a bunch of meaningless tasks and a lot of running around. Our tasks are not related to projects. Our projects are not related to goals. Our goals are not related to our vision. We are just wasting are precious time, our precious limited Life Energy…

Some don’t even have outlined tasks, clear projects, established goals or a driving vision… So, you see how easy it is to get lost in the everyday. To focus on what our partner is doing or not doing. To micromanage our home and our loved one/s. To get overly involved in other people’s business. To care about the concern of others. To take over other people’s responsibilities. To take it all on because it’s easier to fill in our void with others’ stuff…

Then we wonder why we feel overwhelmed, anxious, lost, blah, bored, resentful, exhausted, taken for granted, lonely, alone and the like.

It’s easy to distract ourselves from ourselves by loving too much… This is easy to do when we don’t fully own ourselves, for what else are we supposed to do… If we don’t have ourselves, at least we have others…

We have nothing else to care about so we put all our care on them… But then we feel bad because we care more than they do… Then we don’t feel cared about enough…

We create a super hurtful and harmful cycle… We neglect ourselves and our lives. We feel stuck, empty and unhappy. We wonder what’s the meaning of it all… We are missing the forest for the tree!

If we were to just stand still, be present, and look inside ourselves, we would find the answers. We would feel safe, connected, inspired, abundant and see the purpose of our life…

So…

- Stop doing for your loved one/s what they can do for themselves.
- Stop micromanaging.
- Stop obsessively checking in and on everything.
- Stop redundantly tracking everything.
- Stop doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff.
- Stop filling your life with junk.
- Stop doing stuff that doesn’t serve you.
- Stop saying yes to other people’s agendas.
- Stop __________________.

Stop wasting your precious Life Energy on pursuits that don’t enhance your Journey in some way… Minimize the chaos, the mundane, the minutia, the redundant, the excess, the spinning, the grind…

Stop loving too much, for when you do you also enable others to not do for themselves… This is actually not helpful, you cheat them of the possibility of them figuring it out… Being too helpful is not helpful… Just stop.

Focus on what brings you joy and helps you create your Best Relationship and Life. On what moves the needle forward in your Journey. What enriches your life and the life of the people you love… Not by fishing for them but by teaching them how to fish and by collaborating…

Loving TOO Much is not a great quality, it’s not a character strength… It is actually a sign of codependence, a quality that holds back the people involved…

When we love too much, we become codependent where the members of the relationship/s are held back from their full potential by the dynamics they create. The helped person can’t learn and have self-agency. The helper becomes obsessed with the other at their expense. Neither side wins. This contributes to stuckness in relationships…

APPLICATION: Find three behaviors/tasks you do on a daily basis that are Life Energy sucking and Signs that You Love TOO Much… Figure out how to stop engaging in those behaviors by replacing them with healthy, effective and productive ones, for example:

- Have a system for doing food and other shopping so you don’t run out of things
- Prep food and snacks
- Teach children how to make their bed and make it their responsibility
- Teach children / discuss with partner how to pick up their stuff and put dirty clothes in hampers
- Agree on who puts the dishes in the dish washer and who empties it
- Design lunchboxes duty and agree on who is responsible for putting them together
- Create a morning routine where everyone is responsible for getting themselves ready and ready to go
- Have a place for backpacks, lunchboxes, school papers, school activities supplies/equipment, etc. (to have been packed up or prepped the day before!)
- Have a place for coats, gloves, scarves, shoes and such
- Don’t run stuff your children forget to school
- Prioritize money producing tasks at work or completing your important project’s tasks
- Block off time to do focus work
- Don’t have a million errands to run after work
- Have a streamlined afterschool, evening and bedtime routine
- Block off selfcare time, couple time, social media engagement time, etc.
- Have a system for doing laundry a couple of times a week only
- Select a recurring time to do home admin tasks and synchronize with your partner

Loving too much is not the way to go. To create a radiant and successful relationship, and meaningful life, we are to fully own ourselves and empower others to do the same… We are to shoot for Interdependence in our relationship/s with extreme personal ownership, reciprocity and collaboration.

We want to love compassionately and passionately and give our relationship/s our best, not our worst by loving too much…

Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…

Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?

Overwhelmed, how is your support and collaboration? (PT5)

by Emma Viglucci

It is not easy to live a successful and meaningful life. It takes intentionality, focus and dedication to stay the course. Our life Journey has ups and downs, and at times it can feel like an obstacle course. With the many demands of today’s modern life and specially recently as we’ve weathered a global pandemic, things can be challenging. It can be overwhelming to manage all the demands and responsibilities. This is why it’s so important to uplevel your support and collaboration.

Imagine having world-class support and collaboration protocol to help create your Best Life. Then the Universe becomes the limit…

It is no fun going it alone. And most importantly when we don’t have the proper support, we hold ourselves back from creating the life (and relationship!) we desire… For you see, when we try to do everything by ourselves in a vacuum, it shows in our results…

When we go it alone:

We are limited by how much we can do, by our knowledge base and by our skill set
We are focused on doing and forget Being
We elude our creativity and our knowing
We are flooded by the minutiae of life and miss the forest for the tree
We miss savoring life experiences, the simple pleasures and amazing people
We cheat ourselves of connection and intimacy
We hold ourselves back from the potential that leveraging and connectivity can afford us…

These limitations have a massive impact:

We hold ourselves back from our true potential and from living our full Human Experience
We settle for less and can’t even imagine having something special to contribute
We erode our connection and bond and jeopardize the essence of our relationship
We subscribe to subpar parenting tactics
We neglect, abandon and even abuse ourselves

We end up:

Settling for a job we hate and merely getting a paycheck to live from month to month
Creating a mediocre relationship, tolerating our partner, missing out on our epic love
Missing out on the synergy inherent in our partnership
Misparenting our children to the point that they become ill, symptomatic, misbehaved, maladjusted
Damaging our body, mind, and spirit

For those that are still carrying the badge of honor for: Sacrificing themselves, exploiting their every ounce of living, and running themselves into the ground – I implore you to reconsider your approach!

It behooves partners to crack the code on how to better support each other and implement a Collaboration Protocol into their lifestyle to create the life of their dreams. They can easily accomplish this through the Relationship Enrichment Lifestyle™.

What does support and collaboration look like in a relationship? Every relationship has their own flavor of this, but the essence is to have a divide and conquer approach. Where one partner picks up where the other leaves off. And, where both partners are in the loop and current on everything that’s going on in their joint lives. But, most importantly where the partners are working together to achieve a common goal.

The partners designing and working together towards a Joint Life Vision is the key towards creating your Best Life and having your fullest Human Experience…

Check out this super inspiring video: Taking Visioning to the next level!

Create a Strong Partnership

Ok, so how do we create a fabulous life and epic love relationship when we are already stretched thin and overwhelmed? You set yourself up for having better support and collaboration, you create a Strong Partnership.

Setting Up for Success

Success and creating awesomeness doesn’t happen by accident. We have to be intentional and proactive about it.

FIRST – Clear: Decommit, eliminate distractions, outsource, declutter, streamline, simplify, automate

SECOND – Envision: Design your Joint Life Vision that flows from your values and has clear goals

THIRD – Structure: Create your Ideal Day (daily routine) that you’ll follow as a template

FOURTH – Systematize: Set up systems for sharing responsibilities, completing tasks, building Habits

FIFTH – Flow: Include buffers and transitions into your routines

This formula helps reduce the overwhelm and set yourself up for a productive, meaningful and joyful life. It:

1. Creates space to operate differently
2. Identifies your North Star to guide your aspirations
3. Provides a structure to contain your endeavors
4. Promotes an effortless approach to managing your days and the business of life
5. Supports operating with ease and joy

What’s important to note here is that our ability to implement this depends heavily on: Our mindset, communication skills, how we meet needs, and bond with our partner. Partners who jump into problem solving and changing up their lives have a hard go of it if the other relationship Elements are not robust

FEELING STUCK, HOW IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP MINDSET? (PT1)

BICKERING AND FIGHTING, HOW ARE YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS? (PT2)

REPEATING ARGUMENTS, HOW ARE YOUR RELATIONSHIP DYNAMICS? (PT3)

MISSING LOVE, HOW IS YOUR CONNECTION AND INTIMACY? (PT4)

If it was easy to create a fabulous life and epic love relationship, then everybody would have these things. Our job is to invest in ourselves and our relationship so that we are in good shape to create our Best Life. And so that we have an amazing Human Experience.

ASSIGNMENT: Identify where the weak link is in your life and relationship right now. It can be within one of the Elements, or in one of the steps in the Success Formula.

Decide how you will go about addressing your weak link… Take an immediate action to get the ball rolling in creating your radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life…

As with anything, when you bring consciousness, focus and attention to something, Awesomeness happens. I wish this for you in your life and your relationship.

Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…

With Much Love & Light!

Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?

Missing love, how is your connection and intimacy? (PT4)

by Emma Viglucci

Nobody likes to feel disconnected from their partner. Partners might like to have time to themselves and do their own thing. But they like to have that while still feeling connected. Feeling disconnected, not in a good place, not on the same page, not in alignment, not together or not close, intimate and special – doesn’t feel good. Missing love, how is your connection and intimacy?

We’ve already established that we have not only been in a Pandemic but also undergoing, and this is not just during the pandemic, a low desire and lack of intimacy Epidemic…

After the Infatuation and honeymoon period of a relationship, couples then enter a Power Struggle. While in the honeymoon period the partners are all about pleasing and wooing their partner. In the Power Struggle stage, the partners are all about making sure they themselves are pleased, their needs are met, and they get what they want.

As you can imagine as partners are usually opposite in their relationship, their needs are usually also opposite… This leads to a power struggle as to who gets what they need and want… The partners get stuck in trying to meet their opposing needs…

This is exhausting as this is the nature of their dynamics and they keep looping in this never-ending cycle. Unless of course they bring intentionality into their relating…

As if this is not challenging enough, during this time the relationship is usually also a bit more mature where the demands just keep piling up. A home needs tending. Children come along. Jobs become more demanding. Community and other commitments are added to the mix. There is a lot going on.

This state of affairs is so draining and stressful that it takes a toll on the partners’ mood, energy, desire, libido, intimacy, and fun. The couples start to run on empty.

It behooves partners to become more intentional in their relationship and their lives to minimize the impact of stress and demands on their connection and intimacy. They can easily accomplish this through the Relationship Enrichment Lifestyle™.

The key to having a rich, loving, caring, connected and loving relationship is focusing on minimizing the culprits impacting desire and intimacy, and embracing a Relationship Nurturing approach in their relationship.

Relationship Nurturing

A Relationship Nurturing approach to your relationship means you prioritize your relationship and your partner. It means you are super intentional at safeguarding and strengthening your bond. And it means you are proactive about caring, connecting, having fun, and being intimate.

We don’t leave feeling good in our relationship and with our partner up to chance!

Safeguarding and Strengthening Your Bond

Regardless of how strong our love is for our partner, the bond between us is still delicate. It is vulnerable, sensitive and susceptible. Our job is to protect this bond at all costs and to foster it if we are to create the relationship we want.

We are to safeguard our bond in our:

1- Thoughts and how we choose to see our partner – minding to keep a Relationship Enrichment Mindset activated to keep our Partner in our highest regard in our mind.

2- Communication and interactions – minding to avoid the Dirty Dozen of Communication and using enriching communication skills and tools

3- Approach to meeting needs – minding sensitivities and triggers and appropriately addressing them to meet needs

4- Balance between togetherness and separateness – minding how we pursue our individuality while remaining a solid unit

5- Choices for doing our lives – minding how we set up our Ideal Day, routines, habits and collaboration systems to fully support each other and our dreams

We are to strengthen our bond by:

Cherishing our Partner for who they are
Being present, being vulnerable, and Being with our partner
Sharing our internal world and our experience
Holding a safe space for our partner to share their internal world and their experience
Having dedicated and protected time for our partner

Proactively Cultivating Love

Love doesn’t last if it’s not cultivated… It can actually be eroded by how we tend to do our lives and how we approach our partner and our relationship. It requires mindfulness, intentionality and caring for it to thrive.

A garden gets overrun if it is not tended. A plant dies if it is not watered.

We are to be proactive about caring, connecting, having fun, and being intimate in our relationship:

Caring – Sprinkling TLC, loving gestures, courtesies, little gifts, thoughtfulness and giving love in our partner’s love language.

Connecting – Building in Connection Habits into your daily routine. Implementing a Delight Partner Habit.

Having Fun – Planning fun of all kinds – couple time, outings, trips, experiences and such and embrace Dating Your Partner.

Enhancing Intimacy – Planning and embracing Sexy Time & 3Gs: Grace-full, Grateful and Generous… Seduce your partner. Be open, explore, expand your repertoire.

Nurturing your relationship is a huge part of creating a radiant and successful relationship. You can do a lot of other work on yourself and your relationship but if you don’t cultivate your love, it gets stagnant, it shrivels and it dies… Make this a top priority in your relationship!

ASSIGNMENT: If you are feeling like you would like to feel and enjoy your Love more, decide if you first need to address the 5 Culprits to Low Desire, and then dive into Nurturing Your Relationship!

Safeguard & Strengthen Your Bond – Create and protect couple time. Attune to your partner, be present…
Cultivate Your Love – Whole heartedly embrace one of these at a time: Caring, Connecting, Having Fun, Enhancing Intimacy. Play full out!

As with anything, when you bring consciousness, focus and attention to something, Awesomeness happens. I wish this for you in your life and your relationship.

Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…

With Much Love & Light!

Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?

« Older Entries

Search Blog!

Now also categorized by Elements!

About Emma

Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health field 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. We help couples create a radiant and authentic 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 Couple Strategy™.