O'Grady Psychology Associates

Psychotherapy, Marriage Counseling, Neuropsychological Assessment

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Passion and Sex in Long-Term Relationships

 

It is not uncommon to have romantic fantasies about people other than your partner. It’s not just normal; it can even enhance your marriage—that is, unless those fantasies cross the line, which is what I’ll talk about in this post.

In a long-term marriage, romance can depart, and sex can follow. From the outside, couples might seem to have perfect or near-perfect relationships, partnering well in work, raising kids, entertaining with other couples, and just plain building a life together that to everyone on the outside looks like a perfect or near-perfect relationship. But I can tell you that in my nearly 30 years of seeing couples, one of the biggest issues that get them into therapy is when they have not been having sex and one or the other of them feels neglected, rejected, and regret about years wasted in not having a sexual marriage.

The lack of sex often happens insidiously. It may start to decline as early as after the wedding, or after the first child is born. Maybe it begins when personal stressors take over a person’s psyche. Or it may start as late as after a woman goes through menopause and experiences dryness and pain with sex.

Life is difficult and often draining, taking a toll on our energy.

Once we get overwhelmed with responsibilities we try to use control to keep things together. What does that control look like? It can devolve into being snarky, snappy, or stingy. But admitting this to ourselves is threatening, so we compensate for those resentments or hurt feelings by making everything look more perfect on the outside so no one will guess how empty we feel on the inside.

Now we’re ripe for an effective distraction from having to think about these feelings of discouragement. Enter stage left a coworker, friend, or neighbor who listens to our feelings with rapt attention. With each interaction, new confidences are shared — just as we used to do with our partners when first falling in love, one of the best feelings in the world.  We feel our vitality is coming alive again from that dormant state, that deep freeze it had been in because romance and vitality are intimately tied together. Meanwhile, our partner is oblivious —  or, if they do suspect that a flirtation has progressed to a full-fledged emotional affair, we gaslight them, saying they’re crazy and have nothing to worry about.

Most relationships require that couples discuss and come to mutual agreements about fidelity issues, such as flirtation, porn, or time spent with the others that a spouse may find threatening. . When one partner strays, it’s often because these difficult discussions haven’t happened. Whether out of denial, fear, or just plain self-centeredness, the affair ends up coming like a bolt from the blue to the betrayed partner.

Of course, it’s never okay to violate the fundamental trust of your relationship by having an emotional or sexual affair or committing other indiscretions like visiting a sex-worker or getting a happy-ending massage. But it is each partner’s responsibility to check in with one another about where you’re both at with regard to your sex life, or lack of sex life.

When I’ve seen couples who come in for therapy to repair the damage from an affair, the betrayed partner will often say “I had no idea,”  “They never mentioned they were unhappy,” or ”I assumed we were on the same page.” Other times, the problem is right out in the open, with years of fighting about sex.  As with secrecy, that takes a toll too.

It’s important to get into counseling early—before the damage is done. There’s no doubt that affairs create deep pain. Even so, after the crisis has died down, infidelity can reignite the love you once had for each other. We are all multi-layered beings with complex feelings and needs, and we’re especially vulnerable when it comes to our sexuality. To protect yourself and your relationship, don’t neglect to have those difficult conversations.

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Using Softened Startup in Conflict Discussions

Dirty Dishes in the Sink, Smelly Socks on the Floor

Sometimes the things that drive us most crazy in a marriage are the most mundane and trivial: dishes piled up in the sink, socks dropped on the floor. We may complain, criticize, and yell, but the end effect is that the dishes don’t get done, the socks eventually migrate back to the floor, and we end up feeling even more distanced and angry toward our partner. If complaining doesn’t work, neither does ignoring what drives us crazy. Over time, a couple can see their relationship with what John Gottman describes as “negative perspective.” We get so focused on the negative that we become unable to recognize even neutral or positive actions from our partners, snowballing our unhappiness.

As a couples therapist for many years, I’ve seen the situations that bring clients to treatment range from catastrophic events like affairs and severe illness to the mundane, like smelly socks and cluttered countertops. A sampling of conflicts:

 

  • An older couple squabbles over the bedcovers: the wife says her husband hogs the blankets, leaving her freezing much of the night; she feels her husband is selfish and inconsiderate, while he thinks she should just tug harder on the covers.
  • A young husband says that his stay-at-home wife leaves dirty dishes in the sink for days on end and he ends up cleaning the kitchen every night, even if he made the meal; he feels his wife is lazy, and she feels he’s ignoring the work she has done.
  • A couple complains that they’ve stopped sleeping together because their child is too afraid to sleep alone and needs to be consoled, even at age eight. The father, now sleeping on the couch, feels left out of the closeness and warmth that mother and child enjoy, and soothes himself through weed, drinking, and internet games or porn; the mother feels she must put her child’s needs first and co-sleeping is best.

 

Without help, such situations can drive a wedge between couples that can go on for years. Research has shown that couples wait an average of six years after becoming aware of problems in their relationship to seek counseling. That’s a lot of water under the bridge, and a lot of built-up hurt, anger, and distance. By the time couples do come to counseling, their relationship has usually crumbled, with deeply entrenched negative thoughts about the marriage. Fighting about the dishes is no longer about the dishes–it’s about a partner’s poor character. “She is so self-centered”; “He is so lazy.”

How does a couples therapist help when each partner blames the other and feels like the victim? Taking sides is not an option: the partner who feels ganged up on will bolt from therapy, and nothing will change. There may occasionally arise a need to confront one partner about issues that are causing harm, such as abuse, but in my practice, that is rarely the case. That said, helping untangle years of accumulated misunderstandings is not an instant fix. Everyone becomes invested in seeing things our own way, so opening our eyes to a partner’s viewpoint is something that takes time and skill. The good news is that these skills can be taught by a therapist who helps change the dialogue.

Softened Start-up Rather than Harsh Start-up

One of the most useful and yet seemingly simple skills to teach is to complain without blame and to begin a conflict discussion with a softened start-up.

How does this look? Well, take the older couple who fights about the blankets. With a harsh start-up, the freezing wife might say “You have no idea how selfish you are! You take all the covers every single night, leaving me with just the sheet—and a thin sliver of a sheet at that!” Her husband becomes defensive: “Well, what a complainer. Just tug on the blankets, and quit blaming me! I’m asleep, I can’t help it.”

It may feel momentarily satisfying, but coming out swinging engenders a harsh reply and an unhelpful one at that. A seemingly small squabble becomes gridlocked. A softened alternative might go like this: “I realize you’re asleep and unaware of my getting cold at night when I have no blankets. It probably happens as you roll over several times during the night, leaving me uncovered. When my sleep is disturbed, I get grouchy the next day, and unfairly blame you for something you’re unaware is happening. I wonder if we can come up with a solution?”

Of course,  her partner might try to laugh it off with  “Why don’t you just sleep in the guest room?”  But, soothed by a soft start-up, he could reply sincerely, without defensiveness: “I know this has been a problem for you for awhile, and I’m sorry. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable and cold at night. Maybe we can devise a way to fix this together. Let’s go to Target and see if there are blanket fasteners or something, and if not, let’s buy a fluffy down comforter and duvet.”

It would be misleading to suggest that this conversation can happen during the first few sessions. To change the way you talk about the blankets, it’s important to realize that the blankets aren’t really the problem. A skilled couples therapist will further the discussion so that each partner feels heard and understood. By uncovering what’s underneath the blankets, so to speak, the couple can see what’s really been covered over.

For the wife in my example, blankets were just one of many ways she felt her partner had been selfish and uncaring. When we discussed some of the feelings that surrounded the blanket-stealing, she was able to see things in a new light. She took ownership for communicating this and her other needs, and responsibility for doing it in a better, less judgmental way. As for her husband, he was able to see that he had in fact been acting with self-interest and ignoring his wife’s needs in many situations. But—and this is equally important—they were also better able to see each other’s good attributes once negative thinking wasn’t squeezing out relationship-enhancing thoughts.

When the concept of a softened startup is introduced in therapy, many partners will exclaim, “But that’s not the way I talk, it isn’t me!” or “Won’t I need a frontal lobotomy to talk this way?”

I chuckle, saying, “No, nothing that drastic.” It takes practice, but eventually, this way of bringing up conflict becomes second nature and feels good. A partner who joins in with a positive response helps to sustain and reinforce this healthier way of handling conflict.

What I love about doing this work with couples is the ripple effect. Not only does the couple change the way they talk to each other, but they model this better communication for their families and children. It’s important to remember that kids pick up both the good and bad things we do in front of them.

The first workshop I took with Dr. John Gottman was in 2000. I began practicing this softened startup with my husband before trying it with couples. We had a CD with practice prompts, and listened to it on a long car ride, with our kids in the back seat. Eventually, our twin daughters began answering the prompts with the softened alternative. We made it a game—yet it became a powerful tool for dealing with conflict. When the girls left home for college, they noticed that most of their dorm-mates were not able to handle conflict so well. The techniques work beyond the family setting.

You don’t have to be a psychologist (or have psychologist parents) to practice these techniques yourself. Take the dirty-dishes example—a frequent conflict for roommates as well as couples. You come home from work and see the dishes stacked high in the sink, overflowing onto the countertops. You think your stay-at-home partner should have done them. A harsh startup would be, ” I can’t believe you still haven’t done those dishes! You’re such a lazy slob.”  To that startup, a defensive comeback would be,  “Well, look at you! You’re not doing them either. So you devalue what I do all day long just because you work outside the home? I work too! You’re so full of yourself!”

You can imagine how the rest of that conversation goes—but it doesn’t have to. Practice coming up with a softened startup for this situation from what you’ve learned so far—try it out!

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I’ll give you one way to do this, but it’s not brain surgery; you’ll find many ways to phrase a soft startup in your own words:

“You know I tend to be a neat freak. When the kitchen counters and sink are dirty, I feel uncomfortable. I know you work hard and having clean counters isn’t as important for you, but I wonder if we can together find a way to stay on top of it, as a team?”

The key to all this is to know yourself, take responsibility for your feelings and reactions, and speak about your needs and feelings without leveling a global character assault on your partner.

Now, imagine one of your ongoing conflicts, and try out in your mind a way to communicate using a softened alternative. It’s a surprisingly powerful technique.

 

 

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Sex and Romance in Long Term Relationships

Harboring fantasies about someone else while happily coupled isn’t unusual. In most relationships, whether of two years, 20, or more, one or both partners will likely experience fleeting moments of imagining how exciting life would be with a different person. This could begin innocently while flirting in the break room, or having coffee with a co-worker, or reconnecting with an old lover. Such moments provide a sweet, brief ego boost. But when short-lived fantasies take hold, moving from transient to obsessive, we should take heed.

When Erotic Fantasies Cross the Line

Fantasies are significant as a precursor to affairs because imagination is a precondition of desire, which awakens our senses. Though we’re pretending, a fantasy can actually feel closer to our authentic selves, or the selves we think we should be. That is why we come alive again when we encounter new love. Risky and exciting, it pushes the boundaries we have established in ourselves.

In such reveries, we imagine how much more fun, sexier, and passionate we would be in this other relationship. The key here is how different we would be. For although partners play a role, it’s usually not the marriage that has grown stale, but how we see ourselves. Although we cherish marriage’s safety, permanence, and predictability, these qualities can also be deadening. In my psychotherapy practice, I have seen time and time again how couples lose their connection by trying to live as a perfect couple, then a perfect family. The struggle to earn a good living, make a good home, and raise a strong family takes priority. Children claim much time, space, and emotion. Sports, band, scouting; daily squabbles about homework, screen time, and chores—all these issues squeeze yet more time from romance.

Because we do long for the continuity and safety of togetherness, the lack of romance feels okay–until one day, we realize it doesn’t. But it’s this gradual erosion of intimacy that can lay the groundwork for fantasies of another partner that then play out in meetings, confidences, and intimate details of mutual marital disenchantment. Soothing support from an attractive other can be intoxicating. In an emotional or physical affair, we feel young. Our old boredom falls away to reveal a passionate, sexy person. We blame the spouse for our dull lives. The new love gives us the illusion that we are different, and we don’t need to look at our well-constructed fortification against insecurity.

If you’ve lost your Self through trying to be a perfect couple or family, addressing this problem is a worthy goal. But running to the novelty of a new partner is a feeble way to do it. It’s true that marriage requires surrendering parts of our Self  in the service of the relationship, and many people feel regret about their choices, often triggered by a crisis or major life shift (such as aging or retirement, giving up their career to raise a family, or the loss of possible adventures in favor of marriage’s security.) But we should remember that surrendering the Self can be tremendously valuable to growth as long as we don’t give up too much– and also that disowning responsibility and projecting our unhappiness onto a partner is a set-up for an emotional or physical affair.

Understanding Your  Role When Romance Leaves the Marriage

If excitement has disappeared from the bedroom, leading to fantasies about someone else, the best next step is to understand our own role in the situation rather than giving up on the marriage in search of novelty.  When we marry, we make vow, implicit or explicit, that issues are to be faced together and worked through, not evaded. James Hollis writes in The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other (1998) that the greatest gift to others is our own best selves. Our marriage may have met our need for grounding—to be known, and to know our partner, with a comfortable predictability. But this devotion to security and familiarity eventually collides with our need for breaking established patterns so that we can encounter something unpredictable and awe-inspiring. Romantic passion can indeed be the chariot to take us there, but not if it is the creation of an affair, no matter how compelling.

And the irony is that if we do take up a new relationship, we are still ourselves, and over time, that relationship will lose its allure. I have seen countless clients on their second or third serious relationship who privately admit that they made a mistake. They realized too late that they, too, had a role to play in what was missing in the relationship. Often, the same issues come up with the new partner. They feel deep regret for breaking up a good thing in favor of an illusion, however intoxicating it is. There are exceptions: sometimes an affair is a stepping stone out of a bad, unfixable marriage and that new relationship can bring happiness and healing.

Averting an Affair

Averting an affair is doable, but it takes work from both partners, because talking about dissatisfaction with our love life is scary. It requires partners to look, unflinchingly and together, at just where we’re most vulnerable—our sexuality.

Couples therapy is often about helping partners understand that what they think are impediments to their sensual pleasure and satisfaction, and out of their control, are in fact, their constructions. Through all the travails of marriage, when we can still embrace and encourage individual growth, and not have to sacrifice the security and safety our relationship provides, our love deepens. And that makes room for romance.

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Remaking Love: When did you stop dancing?

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Amor and Psyche

Taking Down the Walls to Intimacy

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

Sometime during the first episode of BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, I fell in love with Mr. Darcy. So much so that my husband began to suffer in comparison. And why not? Darcy is handsome, rich, and unobtainable, not to mention the British accent and dark brooding eyes. But it was his radical transformation from an arrogant snob to a thoughtful, considerate gentleman who fiercely protects his beloved his sister that sealed the deal. I was smitten.

It’s easy to idealize the other when we fall in love, and it can feel like now, everything will be perfect. In The Symposium, Socrates explains that “Zeus resolved to cut [people] in half to humble them. He declared that they shall walk upright on two legs, but each forever desiring his other half. . . . Each of us when separated is always looking for his other half.” This metaphor describes the compelling nature of romance, where we see—and fall in love with—unacknowledged or unconscious parts of ourselves in another. By reflecting back to us our ideal selves (generous, sensual, strong) lovers seem to complete us. We all contain seeds of our potential selves within, but it’s hard to develop them fully on our own, without that loving reflection.

People spend lifetimes searching for this lost self, even if the longing is barely conscious.

When relationships are new, we’re intoxicated by the experience of being admired and desired. It’s enlivening, surprising, and immensely gratifying when another person helps you discover unexpected or forgotten qualities: confidence, spontaneity, sexiness, fun.

But should you expect the same thrill if you’ve been married for 10, 20, or 30 years? As George Bernard Shaw wrote in the play Getting Married, “When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”

Romances convey a warped view of love because they show only the highlights, from the infatuation to the happy ending. We’re not seeing the in-between—the reality of loss, hurt, and work. As Le Guin writes, love has to be made and remade all the time. The happy ending is only the beginning. No matter how romantic or meant-to-be a relationship seems, couples must endure lots of challenges to stay together in a maturing relationship.

Being someone’s other half—being responsible for them to feel complete—is a lot for a relationship to hold. We find a person who makes a good screen for our projections and feel profound connectedness, hope, enlivened energy, and a feeling of coming home. But these projections are based on ideals, not reality. Real people who are living together on a daily basis are bound to disappoint the fantasy’s huge expectations.  The loss can feel catastrophic if you’re not emotionally pretty healthy. But at the same time, a good marriage is a path to wholeness if we respond well. When we withdraw our projections, and stop seeking unrealistic fantasy partners, we begin to see ourselves.

Recapturing the initial breathless excitement of romance is a fantasy too. It’s a little bit sad—but a long-term relationship does not have to be stale. Like bread, relationships will rise and fall, but by working at it, we will continue to nurture ourselves as individuals and as a couple. Committed relationships may not offer intoxication, but they do provide deeper satisfactions. But we have to take those opportunities when they arise.

I recall the poignancy with which a 50-year-old client—recently separated from her husband—told me that she regretted not continuing dance lessons when her husband asked. At the time she quit dancing, she felt old, unattractive, and preoccupied with things that seemed in hindsight, unimportant. She longed to go back in time and rekindle the fun and creativity she had ignored for too long.

The Importance of Vulnerability

In any long-term marriage, successful interactions over time build a sense of trust and allow for safety and dependency. Just as infants mold their bodies to their mothers, couples surrender to each other’s embrace, allowing them to be vulnerable, supported, and cared for. With many repeated experiences, these habits of trust and intimacy become ingrained.

But in committed relationships, we must acknowledge the reality of imperfection. Some interactions fail—the longed-for empathy and understanding is absent, and we get hurt. Failed interactions that get repeated become habitual. These failures of attachment can take all sorts of shapes: repeated criticisms, loss of sexual intimacy, years of feeling blamed or judged, or difficulty working with conflict. And over time, defenses are erected to protect our soft parts. We become distant, angry, and disengaged. When couples eventually seek therapy, the wall separating them is usually very high and very strong.

There is often a moment in therapy when couples realize, if only barely, that they want to save their relationship. They can acknowledge what they bring to the table and how each has a role to play in constructing their particular wall. In that moment of vulnerability, they ask, ”How do we take down a wall that has been standing for so many years?”

A wrecking ball is not the answer. And it can’t be solved by some simplistic listicle of “10 things to build back intimacy.” It has to be done brick by brick. Almost all of us are naturally oriented toward growth, with healthy needs and desires, but it’s hard to see our own defenses. After years of reinforcing rigidity, it takes an empathic and skilled therapist to help foster a new sense of agency and reprocess experiences to make new meanings. Success lies in compartmentalizing those aspects of the relationship that involve empathic failures while savoring and tending those habits of intimacy that allow for deep experiences of trust and safety.

Knowing the Ruts that Comfort and Confine

Thinking of a relationship in terms of intimacy rather than passionate romance can be helpful. Knowing a partner thoroughly and being known ourselves can be deeply joyful.

When we lower walls that were raised over years of earning a living and raising a family, we gain receptivity to surprise. We become more engaged in living in a way that allows for discovery and growth and brings excitement back into our relationship. We don’t blame our partner for our boredom. We open up to their creativity as well as our own. Relying on our partner to be the source of our excitement when we are unable to generate our own is unfair.

While some of the realities of long-term relationships are painful to face, giving up the fantasy of having something better with a new person is fiction. In contrast, knowing that you can capture and remake some of what drew you together, and hold onto your shared history (good or difficult) will bring depth and intimacy. Facing problems and challenges honestly, realistically, and together, even if there is no immediate or easy fix, is more sustaining than fantasy, just as bread is more sustaining—and to grownups, tastes better—than cotton candy.

 

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Look Into My Eyes: The crucial role of eye contact in relationships

Eye contact is crucial in couple and family relationship. People are innately attracted to faces, especially eyes. The human face is associated with our identity; we are recognized more through our eyes than through any other facial feature. ”Because the eyes offer such rich social information, adults and infants alike show a natural attraction to the whole face,” write contributors to the APA handbook of nonverbal communication (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2016, pp. 335-362). Those who have trouble processing or dealing with social information, such as people with autism, schizophrenia, or social anxiety, tend to avoid eye contact; job seekers are told that good eye contact will make a positive impression.

When a relationship is new, lovers can spend hours gazing into each other’s eyes over dinner or while lying in bed, enjoying all the nuances of thought, feeling, and passion that can be communicated through facial expression. Young parents watch their children intently, searching their faces to read emotional reactions to sad or exciting events.

The Importance of Eye Contact

But at some point, we stop making eye contact. The romantic relationship matures, distractions (kids, work, medical problems, financial troubles) come in; kids attend to their devices, ignoring parents; parents chauffer their kids while talking on their phones; we eat dinner in front of the TV or our tablets, looking down every time a notification pops up. Whole days can go by without really seeing our partner’s or our children’s faces. In fact, in a previous post on non-sexual touch, I admit to a time when our twins were young, we were both working a lot, and I failed to notice that my husband had shaved his mustache three days before! That was a wake-up call for me.

In couples’ therapy, I gather a lot of information about how my clients communicate by watching their non-verbal interactions. Let’s take Amy and Paul as an example. If Amy and Paul never look at each other, or if Amy looks at Paul but Paul doesn’t return the gaze—his eyes darting around the room instead—I learn something of their connection. Paul has trouble making eye contact with me as well, which also tells me something.

They are coming to therapy because Amy feels that Paul is distant and disengaged. The two seldom interact, whether after work or on weekends. On a typical evening, Paul will come home and turn on the sports channel. Amy will call out from the other room with a question. Distracted, Paul doesn’t acknowledge her. Amy feels neglected, Paul feels he can never please her, and divorce looms. It is important to make eye contact to know that your partner is really listening. Trying to communicate from different rooms will lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding.

This scenario is very common in relationships. The partner calling for attention feels innocent of blame, saying “He never listens, he never responds.” When I gently point out that she’s trying to get his attention when he’s otherwise preoccupied, she explains that he must have heard her and is just ignoring her.

Maybe, after going on for years, this is has become the case. But often the simpler reason is that Paul is watching the game and he literally doesn’t hear. Or he half hears, but the question never gets into his long-term memory.

As is often the case with couples by the time they get to counseling, their dynamic has become entrenched after many years of hurt feelings on both sides. Each blames the other, Amy criticizing Paul for his lack of engagement, and Paul keeping all his feelings to himself. This apparent sulking serves to infuriate Amy more, and she in turn harps on him with progressive intensity. Walls go up and prevent the vulnerability that is needed for true intimacy. Neither Amy nor Paul realize what they are doing to prevent connection.

Look at me when I’m talking to you!

When someone makes eye contact with you, they’re signaling that you’re the object of their attention. There are cultural differences regarding gaze and respect, but in general, we look at those who are socially relevant to us. An averted gaze, in contrast, signals disinterest, shyness, or evasion (although research is mixed about whether lying causes less eye contact). That’s why parents demand “Look at me when I’m talking to you!” or someone suspicious of another might say “Look me in the eye and say that.” It is astonishing how often couples, and kids and parents, try to communicate without ever looking at each other.

But getting back to Amy and Paul, it was important for Paul to understand how dismissed Amy felt when he didn’t answer her or make eye contact with her. Of course, it was also important for Amy to have Paul’s attention before speaking to him. By taking the time to really look at each other, Amy and Paul began to feel closer. Each felt they were being heard.

Getting the focus where it belongs

If your family or romantic connection feels cold and distant, consider the role that gaze may play in preventing closeness. Here are some tips for getting the focus where it belongs.

  • Ban screens of any type (TV, computer, phone, or game) and reading at the dinner table so you can all converse face to face.
  • Make a point of turning to look at someone when they speak.
  • If someone isn’t meeting your gaze, don’t assume they don’t care. They may be preoccupied with work stress. Ask if there is a good time to talk and make a point of coming together a bit later.
  • Kids can be big distractions. If your kids continually interrupt your conversations, let them know that they need to respect adult time.
  • Make sure you have your partner’s attention when talking to them. Don’t try to talk from different rooms.
  • Turning toward your partner builds intimacy.