Summer gives us a natural opening for reflection and recalibration. There’s more space, more sun, and more energy to shift the patterns that aren’t working. In our relationships, that means we can use this season as a reset point, to choose something different, more intentional, and more connected.
In this episode, I walk you through the 5 elements of our Successful Relationship Strategy™ and show you how to use each one to up-level your relationship. We look at what’s common in struggling and “just fine” relationships… and what becomes possible when you start doing things differently.
Whether things feel okay or you’re longing for more, this episode will help you identify how to reset your rhythms and invest differently so you can create the love you really want.
In today’s episode, I cover:
The 5 core elements of a thriving relationship
How average habits quietly cap your connection
What an extraordinary relationship actually looks like
Tangible ways to elevate each element this summer
How these elements at the heart of lasting love
At the end of the episode, I also guide you on how to use summer energy to amplify your relationship reset, from playful rituals to meaningful conversations.
You’ll walk away with a clear framework to assess where you’re at, what might need attention, and how to take aligned action to elevate your relationship from ordinary to extraordinary.
The Framework for Your Reset
1. Mindset & Meaning
The way we think about our relationship shapes how we experience it. Our beliefs, assumptions, expectations, and internal narratives can either create connection, or keep us locked in disempowering patterns.
In a Struggling Relationship – There’s blame, criticism, mind-reading, and unrealistic expectations. Partners often operate from old scripts, inherited beliefs, or rigid roles without examining what actually works.
In an Ordinary Relationship – People avoid big issues, tolerate disconnect, and operate from habit. There’s no intentional reframing, just a general “this is how it is.”
In an Extraordinary Relationship – Each partner takes ownership of their perspective, challenges limiting beliefs, and chooses a mindset that empowers them both. They define their own meaning around love, marriage, commitment, partnership, teamwork, roles, and expectations. And do so with clarity and mutual respect.
Reset – Reflect on what beliefs, expectations, or inherited definitions you’re bringing into your relationship. Where are you making assumptions? Where might those need to be updated?t life, be honest:
2. Communication & Alignment
Communication is more than talking, it’s how we connect, understand, and co-create.
In a Struggling Relationship – There’s defensiveness, withdrawal, constant miscommunication, or escalated fights. Repairs don’t happen or happen poorly.
In an Ordinary Relationship – Partners talk mostly about logistics. Emotional depth is rare. They’re not fully attuned or on the same page.
In an Extraordinary Relationship – Communication is intentional and kind. Partners stay curious, validate each other’s experiences, and repair quickly when needed. They speak from a grounded place and know how to collaborate under pressure.
Try this – Notice your communication patterns. Are you interrupting, shutting down, staying surface-level? What small shifts would make your conversations feel safer and more connective?
3. Clarity & Dynamics
Every couple has patterns but without awareness, those patterns run the show.
In a Struggling Relationship – Partners are reactive, constantly triggering each other and looping through unresolved issues. It’s chaotic and painful.
In an Ordinary Relationship – They brush issues aside or address them only at the surface. The same fights or emotional injuries repeat, and nothing truly changes.
In an Extraordinary Relationship – There’s deep personal work. Partners recognize patterns, take responsibility for their part, and stretch to meet each other with compassion. They use conflict as an opportunity for growth.
Try this – Track one pattern that keeps repeating. Is it a specific argument? A trigger point? A shutdown or explosion? Explore what it connects to and how you can tend to it more intentionally in yourself and together.
4. Connection & Intimacy
Real intimacy requires attention and it’s more than just physical. It’s about emotional presence, shared rituals, and co-created joy.
In a Struggling Relationship – There’s disconnection, minimal affection, poor or no sex life, and unresolved emotional distance.
In an Ordinary Relationship – Couples coexist. There may be affection and sex, but it feels routine. Emotional intimacy and closeness fades over time.
In an Extraordinary Relationship – There’s regular affection, meaningful connection, playfulness, flirtation, and physical intimacy that feels safe, satisfying and soul nourishing. Partners prioritize fun and nurturing.
Try this – Have a check-in about how connected you feel. Talk about what feels good, what’s missing, and what you’d each love more of, without blame.
5. Collaboration & Partnership
Love isn’t enough. A shared life needs a shared vision and goals, and a structure and systems for collaboration and co-creation.
In a Struggling Relationship – One person does it all, or everything is a mess. There’s resentment, imbalance, and lack of vision and support.
In an Ordinary Relationship – Roles are assumed but not clear. There’s minimal long-term planning and just enough structure to stay afloat.
In an Extraordinary Relationship – Partners co-create their life with intention. They set shared goals, divide responsibilities consciously, and have systems that reflect their values and strengths. There’s vision, direction, and smooth collaboration.
Try this – Have a “state of the union” talk. Review division of labor, shared visions, goals, routines, and where you each feel supported or not. What would help you feel more like a team?
A relationship reset isn’t about shooting for perfection, it’s about choosing better for a more aligned, joyful, and happy life. Where the partners find better ways of showing up for themselves and each other.
Summer gives us the perfect backdrop for change. We can ride the momentum of this energy into what we long to experience and create.
Let this season be the moment you pause, reflect, and recommit to your relationship. so that you can move into the rest of the year more aligned, connected, and on purpose…
You get to decide what kind of love you want.
Now’s the time to build it.
Listen to the episode for weaving in a summer theme into your reset. Enjoy!
Hope this information serves you and helps you get on the path to your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life.
A Self-love Practice and Setting Effective Boundaries to Change Codependence – We get stuck in pain, disappointment, or stagnation because we operate from patterns and habits. From defenses, scripts, and narratives. In the grind of life, we don’t even notice… We hold ourselves and our relationship back by operating form this small version of ourselves. We create from this limited self… This gives the flavor to our life. But we don’t have to operate from this smaller and stuck version… We can learn to operate from our higher self, more and more… An upleveled self-love practice and embracing setting more effective boundaries, shifts you, empowers you, recharges and nourishes you. Then you are able to create the relationship and life you love.
Become a Strong Partnership, Create a Smooth Shared Life
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What’s Next
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Copyright (c) 2025 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Do you find that you often butt heads with your partner when dealing with the business of life? Or that you operate as if you are lost at sea without any direction, and you end up wherever the tide takes you? This has to do with not being on the same page, or not having a clear joint life vision and plan. It also has to do with each of your own personal development levels and relationship dynamics. The more pronounced the impasses, powerstruggles, drama, chaos, and lack of forward movement experienced by the partners, the more wounding and developmental delay that might be plaguing the couple…
I have been expressly adding another dimension to our personal growth and healing and relationship dynamics work to better assist couples with their relationship transformation. We’ve been playing with owning more our masculine and feminine characteristics… The interplay in their polarity for our personal wellness and for the success and radiance of our relationship just can’t continue to be ignored (as always, this is regardless of gender).
How the differences between the set of characteristics have been played down can no longer be ignored inside or outside the context of our relationship. Continuing to do so seemingly to create equality among the genders, just continues to reinforce the patriarchy… It does no one any good for the feminine characteristics and energy to continue to be oppressed… For everyone to seem more alike, “equal”, and bonded in our more coveted masculine traits and characteristics…
Just like we polarize in a host of other ways in our relationship validating the opposites attract paradigm, this is another layer that is to be taken more seriously for the vitality and success of our relationship.
For not doing so is a complete disregard for ourselves and the experience with our partner. Disowning major parts of ourselves and lopsiding our relationship energetics makes for unhealthy partners and messy relationship dynamics. And, not conducive for creating our epic love affair with our partner and our best life, our grander human experience…
There are 3 levels of development for each set of characteristics, and both apply to both partners…
~ Dormant – This is when we are not even aware that we have a range of characteristics available to us, and that we might be shut down to part of the range… Or that we are not fully owning our more inherent side of the spectrum of characteristics. We shut down part of ourselves…
~ Distorted – This is when we begin to wake up to other aspects of ourselves, but we are wobbly in their use. This is when we show up with our toxic masculinity and toxic femininity. This is when we act out especially with our more inherent energy or in its defense…
~ Divine – This is when we start to master the balance, integration, and polarization interplay of our characteristics, intentionally drawing from all the benefits of our wholeness… This is when we tap into the sacredness of each of our energies, when we use our energies to their full potential and glory. This is when we tap into ourrelationship inherent synergy. When we intentionally polarize with our partner to create our spark, passion, and bliss… This is how we create our sacred union, rejoice in oneness…
There is much to be said for owning all of ourselves, all of our tendencies, quirks, aspects, traits, characteristics, energies, and the like. Regardless of what we label things, there is something to be said for fully owning and honoring ourselves… For fully utilizing the avatar we are living our life through…
~~~
Whatever is not really working as you’d like in your life, put it through this lens and see if you get a different awareness as to what needs shifting, realigning, coming online, and so on…
See where you are developmentally. See where you are lopsided. See where you need to focus more attention. See how to embrace and cultivate your inherent side more. See how to support and give to yourself what your inherent energy needs… See how to fully honor all of yourself…
See how to support your partner in doing this for themselves, or just in supporting all parts of them… See how to give your partner’s inherent energy what it needs more.
See how to polarize to invite your partner’s polarity to come out to play…
As you experiment and tend to this, you’ll automatically start creating changes in your programs, patterns, and dynamics. Pay attention to how you are experiencing yourself and your world differently, and how everything and everyone start to respond differently to you… Enjoy!
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2024 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 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.
There is a reason why our relationship seems to have lost the fizzle, or when we find that we are getting on each other’s nerves, bickering, or fighting more. When we feel stuck. Partners might attribute different reasons to this, and they might be very valid. But there is usually an underlaying reason that when tapped into and addressed, creates massive shifts for the partners, the relationship, AND their lives…
Today’s reason might seem illusive or abstract, but regardless, when partners play with this concept they are rewarded for their investment.
We are talking about fully owning all aspects of ourselves… But specifically to today’s topic, to owning both our masculine and our feminine aspects, characteristics, traits, energies… Because of social conditioning and the current way of things in our still very patriarchal society, we have oppressed our feminine side… Most of us are a lot more comfortable with our masculine traits, embracing and leading with them and judge, put down, or disown our feminine ones…
This leaves us operating with less than our full selves, and for those of us who are inherently more feminine and suppress those aspects end up really operating at a lower capacity. When we don’t own or utilize the greater part of ourselves, we experience mental and physical illness along with creating unnecessary friction and discomfort in our relationship.
If we are showing up with our masculine, what is our masculine partner to do? And I’m not talking about gender… Opposite energies attract, and when the more inherently masculine partner is met with their partner showing up with their own masculine, when the unspoken agreement is that they are to show up more with their inherent feminine, they are at a loss for how to show up. This leaves the inherently more feminine partner desiring their partner to show up more in their masculine, but of course they can’t because the role is already filled. Or they do, and problems arise… As you have two masculine energies trying to have a romantic relationship…
Similarly for the inherently masculine partner, they are limited in using their masculine because their partner might be showing up with it, and their feminine is also oppressed…
A conundrum for the couple indeed and a terribly disempowering situation for partners…
We are not saying that it’s a No No for the more feminine partners to use their masculine traits. For that would mean over compensating the other way and inviting a host of other issues…
Again, we all have both energies to varying degrees and our job is to own them fully so we are whole, enabling us to have our better human experience…
The key is to integrate the traits, energies within ourselves and to learn to intentionally use them in different contexts for better outcomes…
Additionally, in the context of our romantic relationship, when we polarize, we generate the spark we desire as opposites attract…
Playing at integrating the traits within ourselves and at creating a dance with our partner’s allows us to really manifest all we desire and become our most radiant selves.
First things first – recognize what traits you lead with and which you are oppressing…
Secondly – start owning and using all of your traits more…
Thirdly – support your partner in using all of their traits, especially their inherently opposite ones…
As a result of these qualities, each energy has different needs:
~ The Masculine needs appreciation, freedom, purpose
~ The Feminine needs attention, security, nourishing
When we start owning all of our characteristics and finding the balance between them for ourselves, we become whole and more vibrant. We are in our glory.
When the more integrated partners meet and complement in the interaction with their polarities that’s where the magic happens. This is when the union feels sacred…
Give it a shot, start owning and polarizing your traits more, and see how things start shifting immediately in your interactions and overall in your relationship and in your life…
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2024 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 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.
Ah summertime… What is summertime if not a time for repose and realignment? What about a time to heal, evolve, expand? What about a time to reconnect with our partner and reset our relationship? What about a time to uplevel our life through some couple fun?
Anything goes, really, as long as we are intentional and investing in creating the relationship and life we love…
A softer approach to our relationship helps turn things around and enrich our relationship… Are you familiar with the concept of having a softer life? Well, here I extrapolate that concept and apply it to our relationship. A Softer Relationship™ is one that allows for more ease, harmony, joy, connection and love…
In today’s video, I cover the 5 Key Tactics to help us embrace a Softer Relationship™. I talk about Making Assumptions, Assigning Motives, Giving Grace, Giving Appreciations, and Delighting Our Partner… These are tactics that when embraced they remove the layer that creates drama, disturbances, and disconnect in our relationship. They help the partner create more authenticity, vulnerability, availability, safety and so much more. Enjoy!
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2024 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 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.
We’d do anything for our partner and our family, we love them to death… Have you heard yourself say these words in your head or to others? But is that sentiment and approach to our relationship, family and life actually serving us and them?
When we love too much, we get in the way of our love…
Let me explain. When we love too much, we do for others what they can and ought to do for themselves. We let them off the hook. We enable them to underfunction, not be accountable or responsible, not to step up, and to not honor us or show up for us. Everything becomes about what they get, which doesn’t really support them at the end of the day, and at our expense to boot…
This is not love, this is codependence. This eventually leads to disease for one of both partners. To children with behavior and other problems. To large amounts of debt or financial struggle. To risky behaviors with other consequences… To conflict, dissatisfaction, and boredom in the relationship. Life becomes blah, if not hell…
Get our FREE 1-pg downloadable Codependence Quiz to identify if and how you are impacted by codependence in your relationship- do you love too much?
The partners either grow really apart or become so entrenched in their fighting that they can’t see any other way out but actually getting out.
Before things get this dire, it’s imperative that partners get support to heal wounds, change their patterns, address limiting beliefs, stories and scripts, and the rest of it that gets in the way of the partners creating, sustaining, and enjoying a deep, meaningful and beautiful connection with each other…
I know that when couples do too much damage with their stuck patterns and dynamics, that it gets really difficult to come back from that. Of course, it is always a couple’s prerogative not to continue their relationship, but please don’t choose not to continue because you’ve created so much drama that you can’t see a way out. This is totally preventable and even reversible.
Give your relationship a good try!
And if you are at the end of the rope and no longer willing to invest in turning your relationship around, then please pursue conscious uncoupling. There is no need to continue to create drama, headaches, and heartaches…
In today’s episode, I’m glad for the conversation I have with Glenn Dornfeld, Esq. about the different ways couples can pursue getting divorced and how to go about a drama free, expedient, and less expensive process by using mediation. Please check it out.
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2024 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 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.
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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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