Let’s say you are the owner of a small shop somewhere where most of the people still know each other personally. A valued, long-time customer steps in.
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What do you do?
Thousands of years ago, some people in the tribe would go hunting for food while relying on someone else to watch over and protect their families.
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They had to trust another human being while they were away. Without this they would all be hungry.
Personally, I agree with Mauricio Abadi, author of the book Reality and/or Realities, and his definition of being in love:
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“When we fall in love, we don’t see our partner as he or she really is. Instead, the person of our desire serves as a screen onto which we project an idealized image of our perfect partner.”
If you’re upset and your heart is pumping like crazy, you won’t hear anything your spouse is saying, no matter how hard your spouse tries. It’s impossible to have good conversations like this.
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That’s because once the amygdala—the unconscious part of your brain responsible for the fight or flight response—is set off, there can’t be any meaningful conversation until you calm down.
If you are bickering with your spouse a lot, odds are that you get on edge fairly frequently.
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Traffic is horrible, and you’re yelling in your car at the jerk who pulled right in front of you. You hate your f#$&%@$ job, and your boss is such a jerk. Then you get home, hoping to find some peace and rest. Not today. Here we go again and the fight starts, usually for some utterly unimportant reason.
Then your son comes with a request.
But the poor kid isn’t aware what’s going on. So he feels your wrath too as you snap at him.
So what do you do?
Most people think that if you do a poor job, you get poor results. You do a good job, you get good results. If you do an excellent job, well, then you get excellent results.
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To me, this is plain wrong. This is not how the world spins, though I wish it did.
The Gottman Institute did a study that shows that many marriages end due to a loss of intimacy and connection, especially 10 to 12 years into the relationship. Well, that’s not surprising.
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But what’s interesting is that a “silent drift apart” typically starts much earlier.
Did you know that the determining factor in whether couples feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is 70% determined by the quality of their friendship with each other?
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But how do you know if your spouse is actually your friend?
What do you think when you see a senior couple walking and holding hands? I think about love, connection, that invisible force that’s still holding them together. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to have that too, even when my wife and I are sitting in our rocking chairs together.
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In this post, we’re going to talk about an often overlooked kind of physical affection. Many couples have almost dropped it out of their repertoire even though it’s one of the easiest ways to increase intimacy and help you feel safe, accepted, and appreciated.
Most of us are convinced that we are reasonably good listeners. However, when asked, many partners are unable to give an coherent summary of what their partner just said without missing half of the story.
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That’s because many of us are not even consciously aware that we have a tendency to plan what we are going to say next without actually listening to what is being said.
