The point of the holidays is to share love and connection! It's also a great time to spur meaningful conversations!
Set aside time to ask each other questions like:
What’s your earliest Christmas memory?
What is your favorite part of Christmas?
What was your favorite gift?
What was your worst Christmas and why?
What was your best Christmas and why?
The simplest of questions can lead to a deeper conversation. Sharing memories and stories can be a great tradition to start!
What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?
The holidays are busy for everyone! But you can't forget to make time for your partner... Let's talk about the 5 love languages and ways to express your love during the holiday season.
Gary Chapman's five love languages describe how we receive and give love:
-Acts of Service
-Receiving Gifts
-Quality Time
-Words of Affirmation
-Physical/Sexual Touch
Do you know your love language? What about your partner's? We all want to feel loved and appreciated, but in different ways. We may be more responsive to certain love languages than others.
But, we need all five! If you put them all together, it gives room for major growth in your relationship. Little reminders can go a long way- simple things like helping wrap presents, taking over chores, sitting by the fire together and watching a romantic movie, telling your partner how much you appreciate them, mistletoe kisses or a massage! Listen to hear our suggestions on how to speak your partner's love language during the holidays.
Originally identified by Freud, the “madonna/whore complex” is the inability to maintain sexual arousal in committed, long-term relationships. It is the split between the softhearted and sexual currents in male desire. Freud wrote “where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love.” Men want to keep the two separate- they desire a sexual partner who is sexy and promiscuous, while they cannot sexually desire the respected partner. Women in particular split themselves- whether it’s the all-giving, loving mother madonna or the fun, sexy party girl. It can be hard to merge the two! The difficulty when you're in a committed monogamous relationship, is this how do we let both parts of ourselves out? And how do we see both parts in our partner. The same applies to women and their conflicting desire for the “caveman/co-partner!”
Don’t settle for either/or! How can you have both? Sometimes this requires re-eroticizing your partner, taking risks, and rekindling the lustful side of yourselves. What Freud was missing was...you need secure attachment to make it work! In order to bridge the divide of how to feel safe while also bringing out that lustful side, you need clean ways of communicating that create safety in your relationship. That integration is the key!!
Women who have felt or seen their partner’s anger will not be able to feel his erotic vibe. Sexual pursuers can become demanding when their partner isn’t responding to their attempts at intimacy. Their frustration can keep increasing and eventually boil over and become anger (COVID definitely hasn’t helped with impatience!) While anger can sometimes provide quick change in the short-term, it is not sustainable in the relationship long-term. In the long-term, anger can slowly disintegrate the relationship and feeling of safety.
Men and women can both be hot-tempered! However, an angry man can unconsciously frighten a woman by his intensity, strength and size. For a man, moving out of a place of silence into a place of speaking and expressing your feelings is important - the manner in which you do this is more important. Even if you have no intention of physically acting on your anger, it may shut down your partner’s sexy feelings. Hear what Laurie does to respond to a roleplay of George’s anger by 1) not responding in kind 2) being firm and 3) removing herself when the anger reaches the point of abuse.