I think romance is underrated… I hear couples express they want romance and to be romanced, but they state it with a sense of shame, wishful thinking and as an unattainable outcome. They off-handedly claim their wish in the same sentence that dismisses it with the practicality of everyday life. Yuck! Why can’t we own our desire to be seduced, swept-off our feet, pampered and nurtured, and catered to? I think this is related to our sense of deservingness…
On the surface we don’t like the attention and the fuzz. We don’t know how to be in the face of it. On a deeper level, we reject all this because it doesn’t match our subconscious beliefs about our self worth… Ouch! Well, how about we commit to upleveling these believes and choose to live life to the fullest? How about we choose to Be with our partner, and all our loved ones, fully present, available and engaged? How about we choose to Give Love, and Receive Love…? How about we go all out in showing how we care? How about we totally invest in increasing our ability to do all this!? How about we choose Life and Love? How about we make that commitment right now, and decide that going forward we are going for it!?!? Yeah, let’s go!
Ok, so how do we do this and start getting our toes wet? Very simple. I don’t want you to freak out and quit before you start! I’m here to hold your hand and help you put this in place. Ready? Here we go:
1) Decide to take a break from your Ego Self for a day… Obviously we want this to be an ongoing thing, but for this exercise and to enjoy this process, let’s do baby steps. Deal? What this means, is that for a day you will connect with a part of you that resonates with romance, fun, excitement, exhilaration and allow that part to come out and play. Invite it to take over for the day.
2) Empower your Romantic and Exciting Part to be fully in charge… For the day, make decisions, set plans, dress, eat, behave and interact with others from this part. This is soooo fun! Really embrace this and be surprised at what you’ve been hiding!
3) While your usually dormant part is activated, soothe the other parts that are more logical, reserved, timid, serious, etc… They would probably have a s*** fit! Reassure them that this is just for kicks…
4) While you are in this state, put two things on your calendar that honor and make this new persona proud… This is the mechanism built-in to ground this experience and ensure you continue to embrace your fuller Self…
5) Also, have a contingency plan, or “painful consequence”…, should you decide to let your Ego take over and abort this Mission…
Make this exercise worth your while, it can achieve multiple results: synchronicity, fun, excitement, connection, intimacy, romance, passion, nurturing, pampering, and whatever makes your heart sing! Make a commitment right now. Choose your Exciting Part’s Appearance Day and make a commitment to your self to honor your Self… Bam! Complete the MetroRelationship™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start experiencing your awesome relationship, and Authentic Life… Happy Appearing!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment Get grounded with deep breath, meditation, exercise or a tickle fight… Get into your body… Feel your Self. Get in touch with your awesome energy… Call to your “Exciting Part” to come out and play… Call to the part of you that defies Self-limiting believes and that is Alive…! Embrace the Part. Embrace your Self… Feel, Be this part in your mind’s eye… What does this Part want to do? How does this Part want to enjoy your Partner…? Sit with that… Take a deep breath, and take an immediate action to implement what came up! Enjoy! Add this to your Tool Kit…
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.
In my recent reading I have come across a piece of writing that has made me think of sexuality and physical intimacy from a different angle. I love when that happens! Give me material that sparks my creative juices and that I can integrate into my work for greater impact, and I’m a very happy camper. This is what tickles me!
Sexuality is commonly seen as physical love and a physical act with some recognition of its spiritual component. Usually we do not look at sex as a coming together of energies. But that is exactly what is happening. Our sexuality colors our energy and influences how we show up in the world. It impacts our style, what we radiate, and what we attract… It fuels our way of Being in the world, and our Aliveness.
When couples struggle with feeling attraction and having an active sex life, they are usually tired, out of sync, hang up on roles, responsibilities, and the mundane. They are stuck on looks and surface appearances. A lot of times work around physical intimacy revolves around addressing the above and getting partners out of their head… We create a lot of noise that impedes us from letting go, being vulnerable and able to connect and enjoy…
We might be able to get ourselves to enjoy a constructed mechanical moment where we might reach orgasm and feel close to our partner. But is this it? I’ve had plenty of conversations with clients around intimacy, attraction, passion, and having a real rewarding sexual relationship.
Partners not only get in their own way with the surface and practical side of their everyday life, but they are also missing the boat entirely around being sexual partners…
Yes, we use enriching sensuality through the senses as well to get things going… But this is not enough either. What is usually missing is the energetic showing up of the partners, the partners showing up with their Soul. Lovemaking is a spiritual experience… When our energies, our Souls connect, that’s where the Bam!, the OMG!, happens… This is the real definition of Intimacy.
Knowing and feeling your partner in a most vulnerable and available state… This is where the protections, defenses, walls come down and partners can Be with each other. This encounter is transcendent, pure bliss. As Dr. Judith Orloff writes, “Passion of the body is ignited by the passion of Heaven”…
I encounter all the time in my work with couples, how partners are not feeling sexual because of whatever their partner is or isn’t, is doing or isn’t doing… Can you imaging putting somebody else in charge of your sexuality, of your sex life? Yet, this is what we do. We do not need another person, a partner to be or feel sexual… This notion is extremely disempowering… We can be sexual beings and come to the party ready to party…
Get in touch with your own unique allure… Get in touch with and connect with your energy. Detach and observe your Self. Witness your Self. Feel your Self. Feel your energy. Feel your Soul. Embrace all of you. Accept all of you past the Surface and looks… Own and nourish your physicality (nutrition, hydration, rest, exercise and pampering) keeping yourself healthy and energized. Nourishment feeds passion…
Sexuality is a holy force of healing of mind, body and spirit… Embrace more fully this part of being human and integrate it with gusto into your life, and into your relationship! Feel sexual, be sexual, be passionate! Share your Passion with your Partner!
Complete the MetroRelationship™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start experiencing your awesome relationship, and Authentic Life… Happy Sharing!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment –
Has your sex life been on pause? Do you feel stuck sexually with your partner? Do you find having sexual relations to be a chore? Do you find that when you finally sync-up to be physically intimate that it is not all that? Take a moment to ponder these questions.
Sit in quiet and turn inward. Take a deep breath… Once grounded, ask your most vulnerable part of yourself, what is holding you back from an exciting, passionate, truly intimate, and unifying sexual relationship with your partner. Don’t judge the answer. This is a gift… This is your healing and growth place…
Translate your answer into an action you can take immediately to start addressing your healing and growth…
Add this to your Tool Kit…
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 more to us than meets the eyes… We have an internal world operating at all times that we are vaguely aware of. Some people are totally out of touch with theirs… The more we become acquainted with our own Self and all it’s aspects, needs and desires the more we can be our Authentic Self and create our Authentic Life and Awesome Relationship.
Because we might not be very aware or proactive about the health and wellbeing of our internal world, we might not be in the best shape to actually create the Life we desire. When we are clueless or in the know but not proactive, we neglect aspects of our care, maintenance and sustenance that eventually lead to breakdown.
Just like we clean house, go to the dentist, and do oil changes our inner world also needs routine care and attention. When we don’t invest in learning about our Self and our inner world, upkeeping and upleveling its functioning, and implementing best ways to show up in the outside world, we are leaving things to chance, bad habits and mishaps.
Lack of intention, attention, planning and implementation leads to malfunctioning cars, cavities, dirty houses, toxin laden bodies prone to illness and poor aging, and relationship dissatisfaction and break-ups. This is what living an unintentional and winging-it style to life gives you.
This is actually not living life, life is happening to you… You are not its Master and Designer. This is the way to go through life struggling because you are not in charge. If you are not the driver, you will never get to your desired destination. Being the driver includes choosing the destination, acquiring a well functioning mode of transportation and a road map. Now, that’s the Trip!
In this case the vehicle is our body and mind… It is our absolute responsibility to make sure that both are in optimal shape!!! It is up to us to ensure our Trip is awesome and that we make our destination. Now is the time to detox both your mind and your body of any unwanted toxicity lingering from foods and other ingested substances, poor mindset and mental hygiene, and unaddressed emotional pain.
Detox Your Body: Most things we ingest are not good for us. We are killing ourselves with food… Unless of course you are really mindful and intentional of what you eat and otherwise consume. But even still the body develops a deposit of toxins that get more and more sludgy and burden the body.
The more burdened the body is the less optimal it’s digestion, cleansing, rejuvenation and other functions. This is how we become ill and age poorly. If you don’t already have a cleansing regimen, now is the time to look into this. Explore your options. Decide to clean your body and make it beautiful from the inside out. Here is a book, philosophy, approach I live by:Clean.
Detox Your Mind: When left to its own devices, our mind is our worst enemy! Its conscious, subconscious and unconscious mechanisms can wreck havoc in our life if we don’t take charge of them. It is our job to mind our internal mental world, upgrade its programs, and rewire its functioning.
Our triggers, wounds and emotional baggage clog our unconscious mind with unresolved emotional issues, our belief system litters our subconscious mind with unintentional debilitating programming, and our Ego, negative thoughts, and poor mindset undermine our conscious approach to life and our relationship. If you want to be the Master of your Universe you need to align your 3 minds, actively manage them and put them on course to serve you.
Here is work by a colleague that is amazing at rewiring the brain…: Dan Siegel – Brain Lesson on YouTube. When you are “clean” you ensure your most optimal performance level and ability to create to your Heart’s content. Make a Commitment to having an awesome Trip and reaching your Destination.
Set the intention to lead a Clean life. Decide what you need to do to make sure you get and stay Clean. Invest on this now, invest in your Self now, to make sure this happens!
Complete the MetroRelationship™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start experiencing your awesome relationship, and Authentic Life…
Happy Cleaning!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment Establish a Cleansing Practice™. Body: Select times of year when you want to do a “cleanse / detox” program. Schedule them into your calendar. After Holidays it’s a good time… Select two foods / substances that are not clean that you will eliminate from your diet. Keep eliminating bad things until you are ingesting primarily clean substances most of the time.
Mind: Select a new tool to implement to help you declutter, clean and rewire your brain: meditation, affirmations, vision board, prayer, visualization, self-hypnosis, appreciations, stop-thought-technique, rewriting dirty thoughts, sending others loving vibes, etc. Integrate this tool into your daily routine. Integrate others over time for a full on amazing brain. Add this to your Tool Kit…
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.
Ok, so you’ve been together for a long time, or maybe not so long, and are feeling time just passing you by and your relationship not moving or progressing with it.
You find that you still have a lot of the same issues, unresolved concerns, repeating arguments, don’t feel connected, are living parallel lives, can’t seem to have fun together or enjoy each other’s company, are bored, and feel empty. You are just going through the motions and question your commitment to your relationship and your partner.
Unfortunately, this is a very common scenario. Couples get sucked in and chewed up in the power struggle and seem to be unable to get out of it. They go around and around in their cycle for what could be ever if nothing is done about it. Relationships don’t just get better or become enjoyable again on their own. The partners need to do something different to make this happen.
I know this is easier said than done when you are stuck in the cycle and your behavior and reactions appear to be on autopilot! This is the more reason to make a conscious effort to address your situation.
The hint to getting unstuck is to take a step back and do a perspective change. Look at your situation from your partner’s perspective: put yourself in their shoes with their mindset. How are they looking at the situation? How do their history, wounds, personality, wishes, expectations, etc. influence their view? From this place, what do they want and need? How do they see you? How are they experiencing you?
You might not like what you see. Our behavior, reactions and expectations make perfect sense from our perspective, but when looked at from another angle they are flawed, or better said, they don’t flow or make sense from that point of view. Not for nothing you and your partner are not seeing eye-to-eye and are disconnected.
When you look at your interactions from both your perspectives and the chasm between you is apparent but the views clearer, you have a chance to start closing the rift.
The usual inherent difficulty here is that it is very difficult to see our situation from our partner’s perspective and a tough pill to swallow at that. But once this is achieved, following the simple guidelines above, the reconnecting, and healing, can begin.
The first and most important part of this is to actually tell your partner how you see the situation from their perspective. You are hence validating their experience and bringing them back to life. They are no longer absent, invisible, detached, gone. You don’t have to agree with how they see things, but the mere fact that you are able to see how they see things allows them to come back into existence. They have a voice.
This is necessary to even the playing field and to be able to have a conversation. A partner without a voice can’t conversate and be present in a relationship.
Resurrecting your partner gives you a chance to give life to the relationship you want. With a live partner you can create a joint perspective from which change can flow. This perspective is created by mutually and consistently sharing each of your perspectives while validating the other.
From this place it is a lot easier to meat each other’s needs. It is a lot easier to tailor our behavior or reaction when we know how it hurts our partner than when we are feeling attacked, criticized, taken for granted and ignored!
Go ahead – give it a try. Put yourself in your partner’s shoes and start dancing to a new tune!!
Happy Dancing!!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Next time you feel getting sucked into your usual arguing listen for your partner’s hurts and disappointments hear their perspective. Put your reactions on hold and don’t listen for how this affects you, how you are hurt, what you need, etc. Put your stuff on HOLD!
Just listen to your partner and tell them what you are hearing them say (without making assumptions, interpretations or mind reading) and tell them how you understand their perspective and how they could be feeling as they do as a result (you don’t have to agree with it or see it the same way).
Now ask your partner what behavior change you can make to fix their complaint. Here you might need to coach them a bit on giving you very specific behavior change requests. For example, just be nicer to me, is too general, but, when I come home give me a kiss hello, and when I got to bed a goodnight kiss, is a lot more doable.
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.
With the hustle and bustle of the year end activities and holiday preparations and festivities, it is no wonder that we might feel a little over extended and perhaps have been neglecting our selves and loved ones. With the New Year just around the corner, it is time to shift gears and change our focus. It is time for fresh starts and new beginnings.
If your relationship has been feeling deprived, stuck, troubled, or just needs a little pick me up, now is the time to infuse it with new life!Think on what you want your relationship to be like. Close your eyes and see it in your mind’s eyes. Take a moment to really see what your dream relationship with your partner would look like. Take a deep breath and take in positive energy, hope, wisdom and love. Exhale out any reservations, resentments and negative thoughts.
Try to see the ins and outs of your relationship: How do you relate? How do you make decisions? How do you resolve conflict? How do you have fun? How is your sex life? How are you otherwise intimate? How do you enjoy personal time? How do you enjoy couple time? How do you manage dual careers, jobs? How are your finances? How do you share responsibilities? Do you have children? How do you relate with them? What does your home look like? What are your couple and family rituals? How do you feel as a couple? How do others see you as a couple? How do you deal with your family-of-origin, in-laws, and friends? Really see your relationship. Feel it. Once you have a sense of it. Open your eyes. Put a smile on your face.
With the beginning of a new year comes the promise and hope for new, different, and better. The opportunity to start anew and fresh is here. In the New Year we usually feel recharged, hopeful, open minded, motivated, and open. Now is the time to tackle your Relationship Vision. Make a commitment to making your relationship vision a reality, and pour your refreshed and ready self into your Relationship Enhancement Journey! Make relating more intimately and connecting more deeply a priority. Start creating your relationship vision today!!
Happy Fresh Starts & New Beginnings, and Happy New Year!!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Share your relationship vision with your partner, invite them to visualize their own, and then integrate the two to create a Joint Relationship Vision! Here is how to make your joint relationship vision a reality: Pick one of the items in your joint vision that you want to work on and make a reality right away (you can schedule in your calendars a session / date to review your vision and create more goals to keep the momentum going!).
Once you chose your target item create a concrete goal around it and get to it!! Your goal needs to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time limited.
It needs to include who will do what, when, where, and how. Also, it is very important that you attach the sensory effect and emotions of your item to your goal (how will achieving the goal taste, feel to the touch, smell, sound, look like, and feel emotionally?).
For example, let’s say that your joint dream relationship includes having fun together but you are currently lacking in that department and want to enhance this part of your relationship first.
Your goal could look something like this: We will take turns scheduling weekly couple outings that are no farther than two (2) hours away, last three (3) hours in length, take place on Saturdays, for the next three (3) months.
Having accomplished our goal will taste sweet and bubbly, feel smooth and velvety, smell like pink and peach roses, sound like a running brook, and feel exciting, alive, connected, safe, and loved.
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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