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.
We are energy. We look like solid entities in our human form only because of our limited human faculties. We are energetic beings with vibrational frequencies. Imagine us as energy waves, reaching further than apparent by the illusion of our human form. We are all interconnected… We all feel and impact each other… It is our human duty to clean our energy, to make sure we raise our vibrational frequency.
The higher the frequency the closer we are in our Being to our Authentic Self (Soul). The higher the frequency the better we feel and the better we Love…
This might be a foreign concept to some of you. If this is the case for you, I ask that you stay open minded and keep reading from a place of curiosity.
Ok, so how do we raise our vibrational frequency? It is actually much easier than it sounds! First, you need to assess what kind of energy you have in the moment.
If you are feeling down, blue, sad, hopeless, powerless, scared (fear), insecure, guilty, unworthy, worried, discouraged, disappointed, angry, frustrated, overwhelmed and the like, then you know your frequency is very low – what I usually call “dirty”. This is not in alignment with your Authentic, Loving, Self.
It is your responsibility to make yourself feel better. You DO have control over how you feel. At any moment in time, you can make a conscious decision to change your mood and emotions. This does not mean you are living in la la land or that you are being delusional.
This means you are in charge of your Self! Stopping your negative and limiting script, changing your dirty lens and owning your self, and choosing what you focus on and what pictures you put in your mind are ways of immediately changing how you feel. Go back to prior issues for a refresher on these if needed.
Sometimes it is a little challenging to take charge of our Self in this way… So, while you are getting used to this idea, getting good at taking charge of your internal world and making it work for you, there is another approach to add to your tool kit. Now this might sound really basic, but know that when applied strategically it can make a world of difference in your life and relationship.
The trick is to literally remove yourself from your immediate moment: You can stop a discussion or task and schedule it for later, and instead engage in a different activity to get your resourcefulness juices going again. These can be any proven feel good activity in your book… The key is to shift the moment, engage in an activity that makes you feel good.
When we feel good, we raise our vibrational frequency – it’s this simple! Feeling contentment, optimism, hopefulness, belief / positive expectation, freedom, enthusiasm, eagerness, passion, happiness, joy, compassion, appreciation, Love is in alignment with our Authentic Self…
The closer we get ourselves to these feelings, by whatever clean means, the closer we are to Being our Authentic Self… Please take a moment to digest and take this in. This is the moment of truth…
When we Are our Authentic Selves (Soul-ful…), have a high vibrational frequency, we create other high vibrational frequency experiences feeding a “healthy” reciprocal loop… Can you imagine hanging in this range consistently? What this means for the experiences in your life?
What this means for the type of relationship you can create, experience – immediately? It’s time to clean your energy and start enjoying the blossoms of your higher vibrational Self. Feel better, love better!
Complete the MetroRelationship ™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start experiencing the relationship you want.
Happy Cleaning!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Pick 3 feel good activities, rituals, and treats to integrate into your week – book, schedule, and calendar them. Get any related materials or prepare spaces involved ahead of time. Make this a weekly ritual in and of itself!
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.
Couple relationships experiencing difficulties can be categorized into two broad styles of relating: temperamental or tenuous, and can fluctuate between these extremes. These relationships are not satisfying, and not likely to succeed – enjoy couples’ inherent synergy, as the partners are spent in their constant efforts to address the impact of their relational style.
The partners might feel overwhelmed and exhausted by the level of reactivity in the temperamental relating and/or sad and alone by the distance in the tenuous relating.
The temperamental relationship might appear chaotic, volatile, reactive, the partners are all over each other. The tenuous relationship might appear rigid, cold, boring, polite, a lot of rules are in place, the partners lead parallel lives. Some relationships might fluctuate between these or have traits of both.
Regardless of the relational style polarity the partners tend to create, one of the common denominators between the styles is their ineffective system structure. The couple system consists of two individual subsystems, the partners. How these are aligned within the couple system determines in part the effectiveness of information and energy flow between the partners required for building intimacy and connection.
When this flow is disrupted by an inappropriate systemic structure, the partners can not be their authentic selves in their interactions nor be fully alive in their relationship.
Imagine the partners as circles. In the temperamental relationship, the partners are enmeshed with one another. Their individual circles might significantly overlap one another or one might engulf the other. In the tenuous relationship the partners are disengaged where their individual circles might be very separate, might have an obstruction in between them, or are above one another.
Combination of these are possible creating more complex interactional patterns.
Imagine the couple system itself represented by a circle that contains the individual circles structure. The success of this system depends also on how the individual circles are positioned in relation to it. In some troubled couples, one or both of the individual circles might be outside the couple circle, or the couple circle is barely discernible.
In these cases, the energy is leaked out of the couple system giving the partners a double whammy to deal with – funky relational structure and views.
It makes sense then that couples would struggle… And, a little mis-alignment is probably present in most couples, not just the ones screaming for help… How can couples possibly experience and enjoy synergy!? We haven’t been taught how to do relationship health and maintenance. If anything, most of us have grown up with mediocre relational role models at best.
Not to worry, good intention and an open heart is a good beginning. Then, restructure your system to its proper healthy functional order! How?
1) Mind your interactions to see if you are doing any engulfing, owning, dismissing, rejecting or other disruptive relating with your partner. Correct any tendencies to do this.
2) Accept your partner fully – you don’t have to love everything about them or agree with everything they say and do, but try to understand, get and accept them for who they are.
3) Treat your partner as an equal and invite their authentic Self to come out and play.
4) Address gender and other roles, expectations, cultural influences and differences.
5) Cooperate with each other. Set up clear responsibilities and opportunities to shine.
6) Have functional and efficient routines for taking care of the business of life. Schedule staying current discussions.
7) Have a united front, work as a team, address any obstacles standing in between you or pulling you apart.
8) Build in couple fun and intimate time. Dialogue about what it takes for you to feel special in your relationship and how to sprinkle that into your relating.
9) Re-introduce old rituals and create new ones. Intentionally interact with one another. Regularly share what you appreciate about each other.
10) Set out to create the relationship you want with your partner. Mark your calendars with your next “Relationship Check-up Chat”.
The current state and structure of your relationship is a manifestation of your and your partner’s growth opportunity. You are co-creating exactly what you each need right now in your journey to continue to grow and heal your Selves. What a beautiful and humbling treat! Don’t let the moment pass you by, savor its richness. Appreciate the way of things.
Happy Restructuring!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™Assignment
Discuss with your partner ways in which you can each bring more equality, respect and intention into the relationship. Share with each other one new behavior you each intend to implement to foster effective information and energy flow between you for greater connectedness and intimacy, healing and growth.
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.
One characteristic satisfied and successful couples have in common is that they are part of each other’s lives.Duh-ah! I’m sure this does not come as a surprise. The trick though is how the partners are part of each other’s lives.
Partners have difficulties negotiating what this means to them and integrating a healthy approach to togetherness and couplehood. Their relating ranges from partners leading parallel lives where each barely knows what the other is up to and is minimally involved in the other’s activities, pursuits and processes to being completely enmeshed in each other’s world where there is little space for uniqueness, originality, and authentic selfhood.
The extent the relationship is characterized by these interactions impacts the resiliency of the partnership. This relating poses a danger to the couple as it extinguishes the sparks between the partners rendering them passionless.
Couples with no passion express dissatisfaction, lack of intimacy and connection and tend to feel dead in their relationship [Disengaged relational style], have a very conflictual relationship (misguided passion!) [Conflictual relational style], and/or become great friends (friendship is nice but not enough…) [Enmeshed relational style].
In any case, they are at risk. These couples usually do not fare well. The space between them is too great to bare, the conflict is too painful, and/or their interactions are too tedious and boring!
Continuing with such dynamics leads to inertia in the relationship, while it lasts…, and in the partners’ lives. This is how people get stuck and are generally unhappy.
The opposite is also true. When partners find a balance between togetherness and separateness, of being a couple while holding on to their individuality, when they create a true partnership where they get to explore, integrate and express their whole self, they are then able to engender passion and tap into the synergy intrinsic to couples.
Thus the couple is able to have a satisfying and successful relationship, create and contribute to our universe, live their life and be truly alive. The goal of our humanness…
Happy Balancing!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™Assignment
Identify what is your style [or combination of styles] of relating: Disengaged, Conflictual or Enmeshed. Discuss with your partner the impact your style is having on your relationship and your lives.
Examine the contribution of your behaviors, activities and commitment to your style and their overall value in your life. Brainstorm and explore ideas of what to add to your repertoire that addresses your level of togetherness and individuality. Pick two ideas to integrate into your lives and do it now!
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.
You might not have a chance if you keep this up: A tendency to look for weaknesses, gaps, holes, things to improve, deficiencies and the like, and miss the boat on capitalizing on strengths in your relationship. We bring this tendency to how we view our partner and how we relate with them. We look for their shortcomings, what they forget to do, what they could do better, and what else they can do for us. We use a lack and negative expectations lens. We filter our experience to prove our negative expectations. We expect our partner to fail before they even try.
It is imperative that we stop using this destructive lens and reprogram our thinking. When partners struggle in their relationship, they usually have a proclivity for assuming the worst about their partner’s motives and how they feel. They sell themselves short believing their partner does not like them or care about them, then go about relating from this perspective…
Can you imagine how differently you’d relate if you believed you are cherished as opposed to hated? You’d be a lot more open and giving, and a lot less defensive and mean.
It is imperative that we give our partner the benefit of the doubt, the opportunity to show us their greatness, and take a risk letting them show us their love and care. I know it is challenging to do this, especially when our partner has been operating with defense mechanisms, which are usually hurtful to us. But they can’t give us something different if we don’t give them the chance.
I encourage partners to do Appreciations to start reprogramming this undermining habit. This forces them to focus on the positives in their partner, interactions and relationship. They get to search, find and acknowledge their partner’s good qualities, efforts and investments. This shift in focus assists in rewiring the brain, creating a different brain circuitry, which allows a different experience to emerge…
Learning to focus on the positive and things we is an essential skill. It engages the gratitude center of the brain, which cannot be in a state of gratitude and a state of fear at the same time. We usually operate from a fear state that is driven by egotistical thoughts… It is time to make a concerted effort at operating from a gratitude state. This means operating from an appreciation and abundant position that is driven by Loving and accepting thoughts…
We are not our mind… We do have control over our thoughts… We get into trouble when we overly identify with our mind. We don’t realize that our mind is just a tool for Self expression, that we don’t use well at that. We create incessant noise with our negative thinking, ugly pictures and low or unrealistic expectations. We end up creating an unsatisfying self-fulfilling prophecy and prevent our self from Being! It is time to properly engage your mind.
Take charge of what you think, what scripts you run, how you interpret things, what meaning you assign, and what pictures you conjure.
Remember that what we focus on perseveres, what we imagine we create, and what we expect we get. Create the most outrageous vision of your most fabulous relationship, and then carry on as if it already is… The more adept you get at engaging your mind the more wonderful your life and relationship are.
Happy Conjuring!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™Assignment
Let’s do better with focusing on the good and new…
Pay attention to the things you like throughout the day
Focus on the qualities you are attracted to in your partner
Identify your partner’s strengths and how they make your life better
Notice anything new your partner is trying to implement, any efforts put forth and any nurturing gestures (focus ONLY on what is, NOT what is not!)
Observe how you allow the good to come to you and how you are able to receive the good that is given…
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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