Tips & Tricks For Intimacy
3 Tips To Renew Love
Tips & Tricks That Enhance Friendship & Intimacy
The Belly Hug
A ritual that has helped a lot of couples is something known as the ‘Belly Hug.’ Dr. Dan Siegel, a psychiatrist at UCLA shared this ritual with about 300 therapists at a couples conference I attended in 2007. It’s very simple. You do this ritual whenever you’ve been separated from your partner for more than several hours. The first thing you do upon seeing each other is to embrace the other in a ‘belly hug.’ A belly hug is a hug in which the stomachs of the two people are touching. Make eye contact just before hugging the other, and hold the other with your bellies touching for 10 seconds, or more. It’s pretty simple. Eye contact and a 10 second hug with your stomachs touching. There is a connecting and calming influence of this contact. This ritual can set a baseline of connection that actually prevents more intense levels of conflict from developing. There is also a connecting and calming influence of talking with one another once a week in a structured way, as we are about to learn about in the ‘Couples Time’ agreement.
It Takes Three Seconds Four Times A Day
Four Important Times To Say, “I love you.” are: 1) Waking up. 2) When you part in the morning. 3) When you reconnect in the evening and 4) when you go to bed. Make the first experience of someone in the day a loving one. What is it that most people think about if their loved one dies unexpectedly? It is often remembering the last thing we said to each other. So the last thing you say as you leave for work and the last thing you say as you go to bed is pretty important. Secondly, when the first thing you experience with your partner as you reconnect is a loving smile and affectionate words, then this tends to color the way in which the rest of the time feels. So the morning greeting and the evening reconnecting words and ‘belly hug’ go a long way to shaping how the rest of your time together feels. This a simple ritual packs some great results!
If You Say No To Someone, Immediately Say When You Can Give Them What They Want
Many conflicts get worse simply because one person said, “I don’t want to keep talking now.” and the partner would not let that person leave the room. The majority of the stories I hear from men just entering our group reveal that the bad behavior began when either he or his partner would not let the other one leave in the middle of an argument. Well, there is a logical reason why someone won’t let their partner leave in the middle of a beg argument. The experience is often that the person leaving is taking control by leaving abruptly. The person left behind is left to wonder about when their partner will come back or IF the partner is coming back. And, the one left behind does not know what mood the other will be in. The one left behind is left alone to his or her anxiety. It can feel punishing and uncaring to be left like that.
I’ve taken to doing a pantomime with couples I work with about stopping an imflammatory interaction involving an abrupt departure, from getting worse. I’ll put my left hand up in the air about a foot in front of me in a stop fashion. Like the way a crossing guard puts her hand up to tell drivers to stop. Then, I’ll immediately follow that by putting my open cupped right hand up next to the stop hand. The extended palm up open cupped hand is akin to offering a gift held in this hand. The idea is that whenever you take something away from your partner, you offer something the other needs. What those left behind need is to know that the partner is leaving repectfully, though abruptly; that the reason is to calm down so that the conversation can continue. No one likes to be walked out on, or told to shut up.
Immediately after saying ‘I need a Time Out, you are offering up something. That something is saying what time you will return. Using the phrase Time Out lets the partner know that there is plan for a return to the subject in a better state of mind.
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Loving couples argue too!
