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.
Have a discussion with your partner about how to make the Holidays meaningful for you as a couple. Create a couple ritual that captures the essence of your partnership. Have fun!
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.
The Holiday season is taxing. It is difficult to incorporate all the demands of the Holidays into our already jammed packed calendar: all those parties, the shopping, decorating, cooking and just all the extra details. And it is even harder when we are emotionally and physically exhausted. This is why I want to specifically target how you can make sure you are up to the part.
The first thing to do is to stream line your operation. Create room for the additional demands you’ll be putting on yourself and your calendar. So, put on hold, quit, or delegate certain projects, tasks and commitments. Don’t try to do it all!!
The second thing to do is to make sure that you stock up on energy and enthusiasm. You do this by making sure you are nurturing yourself (time for this is built-in in step one above): have a pampering session, take your vitamins, take catnaps, maintain your workout routine, stay away from sugar, caffeine and the like, eat nutritiously, maintain your spiritual exercises.
Use your support system to help you accomplish tasks and to lend you a listening ear, and have a focused action plan so you don’t spin your wheels and waste energy.
And, finally, and most importantly, put on your pink colored glasses. How you choose to look at things, people, actions and reactions, gifts, demands and expectations, etc. will greatly impact your experience of the season.
Your partner is an important part of this equation. How you communicate expectations, share tasks, nurture each other, and stay connected could mean the difference between surviving the Holidays or thoroughly enjoying them!
One way to make sure you and your partner are on the same team and operate as a well-oiled machine, is to invite your partner to dance. By this I mean to be aware of their triggers so that you are not unknowingly pushing them away and creating friction.
Being aware of what turns them off and makes them uncooperative, and staying clear of these, welcomes them to dance with you. When you choose to see your partner as trying to take care of themselves and their wishes as opposed to trying to make life difficult for you, life just gets more negotiable and easier.
How do you know what are your partner’s triggers? You know! Being overbooked, long drives in traffic, endless shopping trips to crowded malls, all work and no fun, being bossed around, not giving suggestions or ideas, not being consulted when plans are made, not helping out, you know.
Your partner has been telling you forever what things they don’t like, just listen and compromise. Make deals and reward each other. And throw them a bone! A happy partner means a happy you!!
Happy Holiday Planning!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Seduce your partner into having a marvelous Holiday Season. Tease, promise, dream, compromise, share, and throw each other a bone. Share your vision of what you would like the Holidays to be like and meld them into a couple holiday vision. Operating from a joint vision makes for an effortless experience creating room for merriment, romance, sensuality, pleasure, satisfaction, indulgence and – you name it!
Copyright (c) 2006-2014 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 is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couples ™ programs and products that assist couples succeed at their relationship and life. To get your downloadable relationship enrichment insights and receive her weekly successful couples articles, nurturing nuggets (sm) and other resources visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
To get your downloadable relationship enrichment insights and receive our weekly successful couples articles, nurturing nuggets (sm) and other resources visit: www.metrorelationship.com
That’s right. It is not easy to Receive. Some of you might question this statement and might be thinking: “Hey, bring on that diamond necklace or that new set of golf clubs!” – but just sit with it and see how it does make sense… As always, as presented by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt in Receiving Love, it all goes back to back then…
Once upon a time, we were born whole human beings, but because of our caregivers’ imperfect parenting, disapproval and messages that it is not OK to be needy (because they couldn’t possibly meet all of our needs!), we learned not to use and show certain parts of ourselves including our needs.
We learned self-rejection early on. We started then identifying what gets approval and support and what doesn’t, and the parts of us that didn’t meet the criteria got scrapped (lost to the unconscious). This is bad news because we chopped our self up and are now functioning with a partial conscious self, a self that is limited and also denies its needs.
We are going through life with a limited source of skills, resources, characteristics, and emotional and behavioral options. As a result we created defenses to assist us cope with life.
These are reactive and dysfunctional (self-indulgent or denying in nature) and include things like becoming disconnected, controlling and micromanaging, guarded, self-absorbed, addicted, symbiotic, and/or abusive. These defenses indicate self-rejection. They show how we do not own parts of ourselves and how we need to compensate.
Part of this survival mechanism, is that unconsciously we strive to become whole and the safest way we know how is to project our scrapped parts onto our partner. Therefore, in relationship we feel whole. But, when we see these parts in our partner, we reject them there as well – it is too painful to become aware of our missing parts.
We reject not only those parts but anything positive, accepting and loving coming our way. We can not accept gifts because they do not fit the picture we have created of our Self. We made ourselves be less-than and non-deserving! We made us have no needs, so we don’t need…
The degree of self-rejection is the degree to which we can not Receive. Not Receiving from our partner comes in different forms such as:
Deflecting anything positive
Refusing gifts or help, and being dissatisfied or finding fault with what is given
Not listening
Criticizing, dismissing, discounting and devaluing
Depriving yourself and your partner of things that make life joyful such as sex, creativity, laughter, and fun
Hearing criticism and not praise, or hearing praise as criticism
There are many gifts floating Between you waiting to be accepted and Received. Don’t make your Relationship the “island of misfit gifts“!
Happy Receiving!!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Here is your RX for daily wellbeing, peace and happiness: Appreciation Dose 3x / Day. Identify what characteristics in your partner irk you the most. Ask yourself how you are like the traits you dislike in your partner… How can you start to reclaim this lost / rejected part of your Self? How can you start to constructively integrate this part back into your life?
Copyright (c) 2007-2014 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.
The Holidays do all kinds of things to people. They provide a year-in-review, showcase our progress and success, spotlight our communion and belongingness, highlight our relationship dynamics, and nudge our very Soul for wakefulness. Add to this all the demands, expectations and hassle and bustle, and it is no wonder that the Holidays are rough for some.
The Holidays create stress, anxiety, depression, paralysis, withdrawal, mania, shame, overindulgence, overwhelm, crashing, loneliness, and other goodies. How do the Holidays affect you? If you generally fair well, still take note however minor the impact.
The Holidays can be treated as an opportunity for growth and healing… This is definitely fertile ground to work with! Why not take advantage of the opportunity available for the taking? When anything is framed as opportunity, its energy, meaning, impact and potential change. Now the situation is a gift and not a nuisance.
There is positivity built-in the reframe bearing optimism, strength, courage, hope, compassion, love, understanding, ownership, authenticity and awesomeness… Let’s shoot for getting more than just presents this Holiday Season!
Let’s go back to how the Holidays highlight our relationship dynamics. Whatever our dynamics they get amplified during this time. It’s as if our dynamics are on steroids. What you see, witness, experience is your usual dynamics to a heightened level.
This gives you an opportunity to better understand what usually bothers you and what doesn’t work that might have been difficult to pinpoint before. Before we knew interactions annoyed or hurt us. We knew are needs were not met. We complained, fought or sucked it up in hopelessness.
But now we have the chance at a magnified experience where we can see the crack. We have the chance to look at the crack up close and personal, and study it. We get the chance to see how it needs mending. The trick is to know what to look for: The theme, the broken record, and your script. What keeps replaying?
What is the lesson you are to learn? What is the code you need to crack? How are you to stretch to grow and heal, to break the impasse? This is the driver behind the dissatisfaction. Your call to action is to do something different for that in and of itself is Change…
It’s time to shake things up. It’s time to take a risk.It’s time to have better expectations. It’s time to raise the bar. It’s time to honor your Self, to Be your Authentic Self, and to bring it to your interactions. It’s time to be courageous and not be afraid of what could be. It’s time to go for it. It’s time for the next book in the series.
What does this look like? How do you go about it? It’s actually quite marvelous and simple. All you have to do is have a different response than your usual in your interaction. And, to do this for your Self without any outcome, expectation or intention of changing your partner in mind… So if you usually complain, call things out, whine or other some such in your interactions, your different response could be not say anything or to focus on the positive.
If your usual way is to suck it up, keep the peace, avoid conflict, and cave in, then your difference response could be standing up for your Self, speaking up, sharing what you are experiencing, or setting a limit or consequence.
The point here is not to go about changing your whole relationship, getting better results, inviting your partner to respond differently, and the rest of our usual intentions. This one is the mother load. This one goes for the jugular. This approach is for Us. Can you imagine? For Us… It is to build the muscle that has been dormant and which upon awakening saves the day…
Give it a try. Be gentle. Be courageous. Bring out the part of your Self that has been screaming to come out. Make space for it. Create safety for it. Nurture it. And take a leap of Faith, use it in your interactions. Go for it. Give it a try. The pay off is unimaginable…
Complete the MetroRelationship™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start experiencing your awesome relationship, and Authentic Life…
Happy Awakening!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Take a look at the weeks ahead. What significant events or plans are coming up? How will you be celebrating? What traditions will you follow? What rituals will you enjoy? Sit with the plans and the answers above… Hold them in your heart. Suspend judgment.
Are your plans in alignment with your core beliefs? Does your celebrating honor your Authentic Self? Do your traditions transmit your values? Do your rituals strengthen your identity, sense of Self, connections and bonds. Do they impart love, acceptance and adoration? Do they embrace our Human Experience…?
Connect with what comes up for you as you explore this. Where do you need to show up differently? What concrete change will you make for your next event or plans? Put it in action now… 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.
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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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