Our relationship is one of the biggest, most powerful asset and gift we have in our life! It is a true treasure chest worth a fortune. It can deliver unimaginable heights of satisfaction, peace, joy, love, happiness and success!!
To cash-in on this fortune we have to polish the gems on the rough, the hidden treasures.
Hidden Treasure #1 – Potential to Heal:
One of the unconscious reasons we are attracted to our partner is their ability to trigger us, get under our skin, believe it or not! They trigger us because the way they treat us and relate to us makes us feel at a deep level the same way we did growing up when our parents behaved in ways that bother (hurt) us. History is repeating itself. We replicate patterns in our lives.
To heal we have to break this pattern and get from our partner a different outcome than usual to our disagreements and treatment that meets our needs. This mends our wounds.
When we operate from a place of being healed, we are no longer as reactionary, triggerable, and raw. This allows us to relate with our partner from a more conscious and available place creating satisfying encounters. Also, we have our emotional and mental resources ready for use in more productive and fruitful endeavors!
Hidden Treasure #2 – Potential to Grow:
The other unconscious reason we are attracted to our partner is their appearing to be similar to us but also very different. They may seem down right opposite us!! They are messy, we are neat freaks. They are social butterflies, we like isolation. We need to talk about everything, they don’t want to talk about anything. Etc.
We are unconsciously attracted to this seemingly opposite person and their characteristics and coping mechanisms because these constitute parts of ourselves and ways that we are not aware of and in touch with and thus in our partnership we become whole and complete.
To actually become whole and complete, we have to grow, we have to learn from our partner’s oppositeness and start getting in touch with and owning the different parts of ourselves that we have denied, lost, and hidden.
When we operate from a more complete and integrated self, we have access to different characteristics, coping mechanisms and parts of ourselves that bring forth a full and aware self to engage in relating, thus eliminating friction and tension idiosyncratic to operating from a fragmented self. An aware and integrated self make us more resilient and adept in our relationship and life!
Hidden Treasure #3 – Potential to Create:
Borrowing from evolutionary theory, we partner up to procreate and ensure survival of our species. In our more advanced times, where our lives do not just revolve around ensuring basic survival, this concept can be taken a step further to include how well we procreate and what do we do in our lifetime to ensure the survival of future generations.
This includes first creating a healthy, nurturing and happy family where children can be raised into differentiated, happy, healthy, well-functioning, and contributing members of our society. And, second, tapping into our partnership synergy so that we can be real contributing members of our society.
Our partnership’ inherent synergy is a fabulous resource to assist in these processes. When tapped and focused it generates energy, flow and momentum for the couple that assists and promotes the achievement of anything the partners set their mind to! The sky is their limit!!
Our relationship is a gift that usually goes unwrapped! It is a wasted and essential resource necessary for our wellbeing and success. We need our relationship to heal, grow and create successfully, and we have it right there for our capitalizing! All we have to do is polish those gems!
Happy Polishing!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Figure out how your partner makes you feel the negative feels you had growing up. You might have to go deep to figure out these feelings and the connection. Go easy on yourself, this is difficult stuff. Then share this new found insight with your partner from a non-blaming position asking them to just hear you out.
Finally, give your partner two specific behavior changes they can choose one from to do providing you with a different outcome than the usual and thus healing you. Make sure the choices you give meet your needs.
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.
Couples struggle the most when they have poor boundaries. When they tell each other, whether to the other’s face or in their own mind, how to be, how to feel, how to behave, what to think, etc. They are imposing themselves on their partner not allowing their partner to be themselves.
This causes the other to be cautious, unavailable, reactive, rageful, passive aggressive, flaky, and all kinds of ways that are not conducive to intimacy, togetherness, respect, peace and love.
How can they feel close, intimate, accepted, appreciated and loved if they are told not to be themselves? How can two people know each other and be intimate if they can’t show up in their relationship? The trick is to allow the other to Be themselves, to accept them as they are, as scary as that might be …
Contrary to popular belief, this is not what will hurt you in the relationship … What hurts is what partners do to protect themselves from being told not be themselves! Talk about ironic.
Take a risk, let your partner be themselves, and allow for intimacy to happen. The video below guides you in safely taking this plunge.
5 Tips for More Intimacy:
1) Create opportunities for connecting
2) Ensure emotional safety
3) Appropriately set up interactions
4) Share from the heart, share your “mind”
5) Purpose is to “get” and accept each other These guarantee a deeper connection and more intimacy! Start applying these steps now.
Complete the MetroRelationship™ Assignment below to assist you effortlessly make changes and immediately start experiencing the relationship you want! Make this Valentine Season a meaningful one. Create more connection and intimacy! Happy Connecting!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Take a moment to think about a side of you that you don’t usually share with your partner. Think about why you usually don’t share it. What are you afraid of? What feedback, message, have you gotten from your partner (and your past…) that has created this for you? What do you imagine their fear is that does not allowed for this part of you to show up?
Share your thought process around this with your partner – check if what you imagine is their fear fits for them, approach this from a curiosity place and not a judgmental, accusatory, shaming or blaming place, pad the discussion with reassurance and safety for your partner, advise your partner that you will be taking a risk and showing more of you.
Make the request that they support you and share with you what’s happening for them as you show up more… Accept what comes up for them, don’t try to fix it… The circularity, respect and honoring of this creates healing and growth, and allows for deepening the intimacy and enriching your connection.
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.
Couples share one of the main issues in their relationship is their inability to properly communicate. They feel out of sync, not on the same page, disconnected, and not understood. To top it off their planning, getting things done, resolving conflict, making decisions and such are jeopardized by their lack of communication skill.
Their inept attempt at communicating makes things worse as they hurt each other’s feelings, widen the gulf between them, and feel further misunderstood and alone. Add to this all the other “funny” things partners do in their relationship that make it challenging to get along, and it makes sense they might feel in a slump …
Fear not, start getting out of the slump, addressing issues or simply creating a better relationship with improved communication. The video below gives you instructions on exactly how to do just that!
5 Tips for Better Communication:
1) Make sure you heard the message correctly
2) Show your partner you understand where they are coming from
3) Show your partner you understand how they “feel”
4) Make time to “chat” (dialogue)
5) Deal with your selves while you wait to talk…
Watch the video to learn about these steps and start applying them now. Complete the MetroRelationship (sm) Assignment below to assist you effortlessly make changes and immediately start experiencing the relationship you want.
Go for it, start the year right with new communication skills and nurturing your relationship!
Happy Communicating!!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Identify an item that you want to discuss or address with your partner. Invite them to dialogue about it following the instructions in the video above (share the video with them so you are on the same page!).
Before the “talk”, think about what it is you want to discuss and wrap your mind around your “story” or “point” so you speak your truth in a “clean”, respectful, and mindful manner: share how your emotions, how you are impacted by their behavior, your needs, etc. without beating up your partner. Speak about you, not how much your partner “sucks”…
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.
It’s interesting that we seek “togetherness” in our relationship, but this is exactly what brings about its demise and our general unhappiness … As a culture, we are experiencing numbness, a lack of Desire in our Relationship … Monogamy, exclusivity, our partner-meeting-all-our-needs, marriage for love is a fairly new phenomenon in our society, a conundrum actually.
We set up the institution of marriage to fail by bringing our archaic Being into it. Our un-evolved, wounded, low frequency, disowned Self has the prime directive to feel safe through attachment, and therefore approaches “togetherness” with a reactive balancing act of clinging and distancing for self preservation …
This is an Ego approach to togetherness, relationship, and marriage which creates physical and energetic space, distance and disconnect.
All while remaining psychically fused, enmeshed, symbiotic, codependent, “together” … The death of actual intimacy, excitement and Aliveness …
Our culture’s obsession with individualism, independence and autonomy creates attachment rupture early in life and then tops this injury with inadequate launching of its young breeding the Ego approach to life and relationships and preserving the underdeveloped psyche, Self.
As a result, we buy into the illusion of being “separate” (individual) and attempting to be “together” (close) when the opposite is true. We are fused and distant perpetuating disconnect, detachment, indifference, paralyses, dissatisfaction, stuckness, ambivalence, and apathy. Definitely not Desire and Aliveness …
We mean well. We have the right idea, to pursue togetherness (intimacy, closeness) while remaining separate (individual) but we are going about this all wrong. Our unmet emotional needs prompt us to seek “togetherness” through the clinging and distancing pattern we all know too well eternalizing the status quo with its continuous recreation of rapture and disregulation.
Our psychic investment in getting our emotional needs met tromps our ability to be effectively separate creating a missing the forest for the tree syndrome …
This proximity prevents us from seeing our Partner, from knowing them for who they truly are and vise versa. This proximity prevents us from genuinely showing up, from being who we are … It robs us of the opportunity to see the Man or Woman behind the label (boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, mother, father); to be the Man or Woman behind the label …
There is no faster way to kill Desire than by playing our everyday roles … They are familial, domestic, routine and restrictive. They are not sexy!
Further more, this level of “proximity,” trying to get our emotional intimacy needs met and following societal definitions of our prescribed roles, thwarts curiosity, mystery, and longing elemental to Desire. So, not only do we not get to see our partner, we also don’t get to miss our partner… And, we don’t even know what we might be missing! We just stew stubbornly in our unhappiness …
The key is to ride the uncomfortable edge, to straddle the line between closeness and space, with mindfulness, respectfulness, receptiveness, acceptance, openness, flexibility, compassion, forgiveness, humanity, responsiveness and progressiveness …
No longer be me- or other-focused, just Be. Bring your Self to the in-between … Expand the in-between, Play there … Now this is sexy! This unleashes Attraction, Desire, Passion, Aliveness … And, in this space you are One … Remember to look for the MetroRelationship ™ Assignment below to assist you effortlessly make changes and immediately start experiencing the relationship you want!
Happy Playing!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
What makes you You? What is unique and beautiful about you? What are your interests? What grabs your attention? What’s your philosophy in life? How is your lens different? How does this manifest in your surroundings, opportunities, relationships and how you carry your Self? How do you show this to your partner? Do you show this to your partner? Does your partner get to see you? Make two “moves” that will allow your partner to see you …
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.
How hot are you in your relationship? Do you allow your Self to be hot? Are you in touch with your hotness? Does your hotness come out and play? If you are like most partners in a long-term committed relationship, the answer to these questions might not very positive which does not bear well for the passion quotient in your relationship.
What is passion? Do you need it in your relationship? Do you want it? You might be thinking that you can do without it and what’s the big deal anyway.
For some of you this is obvious and the answers are something like, I have a hard time being hot and yes, I want the, or more, passion in my relationship. But, for others this might be a foreign concept to even consider …
The fact is we all want to be Hot and have Passion – however you want to define these for your Self. For in being “hot” we Are ourselves and for in being “passionate” we are Alive … And, what better place is there than our intimate relationship for this playground of life?
But, hotness and passion go out the window, or can’t even enter it, when partners start adopting the socially prescribed notions of being androgynous, egalitarian and independent (worse, become codependent!) in their committed relationship.
These make everything a blur, muted, dull. The relationship becomes an undifferentiated energy mass of sameness, neutrality, PC attitude, and “togetherness” … Yet, partners don’t feel intimacy or connection, never mind passion, Aliveness, as in fact they are choosing not to exist, not to fully show up …
Now, don’t misunderstand me. There is nothing wrong with partners embracing stereotypically non-gender specific behaviors, roles, expectations, and attitudes; and, for partners to be equal in their relationship. This is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about pursuing egalitarianism to the point where we lose ourselves, we become something unrecognizable in the pursuit of fairness, equality and justice.
We mute ourselves to squelch stereotypes, disowning what might make us unique and special. And, in our pursuit for independence, to avoid dependence and being “needy”, we live parallel lives not showing up in our relationship and for our partner. Yet, this breeds codependence, stuckness and dissatisfaction.
Let’s get back to the basics. We are Energy. We have a unique vibrational frequency and “flavor”. This uniqueness comes in part from how we balance our male and female energies and own the different aspects of our Selves. The more out of balance, disintegrated and disowning we are, the lower our vibrational frequency and therefore the more muted and dead we are … This is obviously not attractive, never mind Hot!
So, an initial prescription is to own your inherent predominant femininity or masculinity for in this oppositeness is where the magnetism, the attraction, happens. And, own your uniqueness, the characteristics that define you, not your characterological defenses or defense mechanisms, but the Authentic you. This is what makes you Hot.
Explore your energy identity. What does it mean to be masculine or feminine? What does that look like? What does that feel like? How might that come out? How can you expand, enrich, how that shows up? How can you invite your partner’s opposite energy to come out and play? What would be Attractive to your partner? What would draw your partner out? What would excite your partner?
But, before you go focusing on your partner, remember that you are energetically as Attractive and Hot as you feel … Hence, focus on your Self …
Feel your femininity or masculinity. Feel your Self in your body. Feel your body. Take care of your body, and appearance. Pamper your senses. Connect with Nature. Enliven and enrich your environment. Surround your Self with beauty. See the beauty around you.
Connect with your uniqueness, gifts, talents, magic. Let the Light shine through. Honor, gift, your partner with your Presence. Share of your Self – your experience, observations, learnings, dreams, vision, mission.
Welcome your partner witnessing your journey … Allow their influence and support … Let them show up for you … They are your cosmic partner. There is a reason for their being in your life. Revel in the partnership. Let it flourish and fulfill its purpose …
This is where you become Alive. This is where your Partner becomes Alive. This is where Passion resides. This is where there is Meaning and All makes sense … Remember to look for the MetroRelationship ™ Assignment below to assist you effortlessly make changes and immediately start experiencing the relationship you want!
Happy Passioning!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Shine. Sparkle. Nurture your inherent predominant Feminine or Masculine Energy … Own it, live it: Sway or sturdy your body, undulate or embolden your voice, soften or invigorate your approach. Enliven your presence: Amplify your mannerisms, embellish your language, bolster your appearance and wardrobe, expand your repertoire of behaviors, broaden your preferences, tantalize the senses. Embrace the moment, flirt with it …
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.
Search Blog!
STAY CONNECTED WITH US, SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
And, Get a FREE Relationship Enrichment Mini Course!
You CAN create the relationship you desire!
With this Mini Course learn how to immediately Break your Impasse, Improve your Communication, Increase your Intimacy, Connection and Fun, & Create a Strong Partnership...
And with Emma’s weekly Love rich with Personal Development & Relationship Enrichment know-how, announcements, resources and more straight into your inbox.
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™.
Pin It on Pinterest
We track visits and User's visit information to analyze our performance and trends in order to create targeted messaging and programs to best serve you. We use cookies to provide a personalized and smoother browsing experience. Refer to our Privacy Policy for additional details.
You consent to our tracking and cookies when using our Websites.OK
