Category:

Sex, Intimacy and Love - Part One

5/3/2014

When we first meet and fall in love it is exciting, wonderful and all consuming. Our partner is magic and fantastic and so are we. Life is great we think.

Sex with our new partner/lover is exploration, fun, feelings, explosions, intense, involving and wonderful too. Much of life around us is screened out and we two exist only with our romance and each other. It is great to fall in love and lust.

Romantic Movies or Films

12/2/2014

I recently read an article that said if your partner and you sat down together to watch a truly great romantic movie that it was one of the best things you could do for your relationship/marriage. In fact, the article said that some research had been done which showed this to be the case.

It could be very cool, yes? Is it true?

I do not know the quality or veracity of the research so I cannot really say how valid it is. It is great to see some films but if this is all you do together is watch romantic films then your relationship can be a little shallow. Agreed?

Develop some other interests that you can share too. Pack a lunch and go for a hike, take a course, invest in yourselves and your relationship. Be a tourist in your own town. Join a club. Eat a romatic candlelight breakfast together. Share time with friends. Live, love and laugh!

With Valentines Day coming up I have prepared a list of Romantic Movies for you to choose from. Here are 14 good Romantic Movies to keep the flame burning and your heart pumping. Enjoy!

When in Rome (2010)
Slum Dog Millionaire (2008)
Original Sin (2001)
True Romance (1993)
Bride and Predjudice (2004)
Love, Actually (2003)
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Days of Summer (2009)
Walk the Line (2005)
About a Boy (2002)
Titanic (1997)
Seems Like Old Times (1980)
The Amazing Spider Man (2012)
Shrek (2001)

Happy Valentines Day. Please Like Us or Tweet Us below.

Live, Love and Laugh, Marianne and Bob

The Five Languages of Love

6/2/2014

What are the "languages of love" ? Sounds interesting, yes. Are there really five different languages of love that one can speak? And what does that mean for a relationship? Is it complicated? Does it work to improve a relationship?

Most of us believe marriage should be based on love. But some days it seems as though you and your partner are speaking two different languages? New York Times bestselling author Dr. Gary Chapman teaches couples to identify, understand, and speak their partner's primary love language. These love languages he calls quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, or physical touch.

By learning the five love languages, you and your partner will discover your own unique love languages and find practical steps to real love. Chapters are organized by love language for easy reference, and each one ends with specific, simple steps showing how to express a specific language to your partner and guide your marriage in the right direction. A newly designed love languages assessment will help you understand and strengthen your relationship. You can begin to build a lasting, loving marriage together or get back the love you buried somewhere.

Gary Chapman hosts a US nationally syndicated daily radio program called A Love Language Minute that can be heard on more than 150 radio stations as well as the weekly syndicated program Building Relationships with Gary Chapman, which can both be heard on fivelovelanguages.com.

I recommend The Five Love Languages as a very good starting point. It can improve your relationship in a matter of months. Buy it, read it and practice it.

This is not the only thing you can do. Next time we will talk about the essential communication skills you must learn and use to have a truly loving relationship. Remember, to be heard and understood is to be loved.

Have a mindfully loving week.

Live, love and laugh, Marianne and Bob.

Please remember to Like Us or Tweet Us below. Thank you all dear readers.
And do you have any comments?

Love, Marriage and Divorce, Part 6, The Facts

31/1/2014

It never ceases to amaze me what kind of ridiculous statements some people make that put themselves out as so called relationship and marriage experts.

Perhaps they have never been in a concious relationship or don't know the difference between a man and a woman! Or maybe that comes from the old fashioned belief that men are superior to women. Or that women are victims.

Seriously, you know what I mean. You do not need stupidity which leads you in the wrong direction, which promises, but can't possibly deliver.

If you want to save your relationship, build a better relationship or go from a relationship with some important knowledge you can use another place and time, listen up! There are a few key things to understand before you go further.

What goes wrong in a relationship or marriage is generally not all your partner´s fault. So blaming them and putting on your Victim T shirt really doesn't work very well. You are a team. There are two of you and you both go into a relationship with very little experience or skills, and often bad roll models behind you. It is this lack of skills and techniques, or a lack of willingness to learn, plus some bad old habits and beliefs which cause your relationship problems and will continue to do so unless you are willing to change them.

So the facts are: first, you are responsible for your own thoughts and behaviours and you cannot blame your partner for this. It simply does not create a good and happy relationship. It is time to learn new techniques and see how you think and act and how to change it. It is not about criticizing yourself, rather it is about learning by watching yourself and taking feedback as information not criticism. You can learn from the mistakes you make by seeing them. It´s the right information you are looking for.

Second, you need to learn how to communicate with your partner. Many, many of you do not know how to speak so your partner will listen and to listen so that they will speak. This is not about I am right and you are wrong. It is not about I know it all and you can listen to me. Nor is it about not listening to your opposite while you prepare your answer or counter attack. You need a system where safe and open communication take place and the right problems get solved. It works miracles, absolute miracles. Yes, it requires learning and practice.

Third, you must have a method for solving your problems. Do you have one? Does it work? I can't hear you as you are shouting too loudly. Honestly, you must have a method for solving your problems. Both of you must learn and agree to use the same method.

Fourth, now is the time to learn your partner´s languages of love. It is very often not the same for both partners. This can lead to lots of misunderstandings, hurt feelings, anger and disappointments. The language of love your partner understands best must be understood and used. And yours by them. You are a team and succeed by learning how to play well together.

Last point for now. The relationship you had with all the magic, romance, intensity and sex and newness will disappear and needs to be replaced by a different form of relationship. The new relationship will contain elements of the old, but will not be the romantic love relationship which cools down after just 9 months to 2 years. Here is where Real Love starts.

Our plan over the next four posts is to talk about the above four points so that you have some new information to think about and grow with.

Have a Real Loving weekend, Live, Love and Laugh, Marianne and Bob

Marriage Divorce and Love #3- Support Love

28/9/2013

So here is the big one in relationships.

To keep love, love has to grow and change over time. Love has to keep growing to get to be Real Love instead of a bandaged and bleeding version of romantic love, which was never love, just infatuation that was never built upon.

What do you need more than anything to make this Real Love happen? Could it be that you and your partner need to really understand and respect each other? Research says a Big yes! And how might that come about?

Good communication is the way. Without that it is an uphill battle all the way. And what is good communication? It is the sharing of information, in such a way that it is understood by the listener.

Using a model called the Speaker - Listener technique, life can quickly change for the better with some practice and a little coaching.Good communication skills are at the very heart of all good relationships, personal, romantic, social and business.

Here is success in a nutshell. Listen to the person speaking, no interruptions. In order to insure both of you have understood, summarize back to them your understanding of what they have said. Assume your partner follows the same process. Things will go much better.

Note that this is a powerhouse of a technique and requires a little practice like all good things. We shall teach this technique, coach you and much more at our PREP Course , October 26.

Other important points to good communication in couples follows. Pay attention! Be in the Now, it is the only time you will have. Do not drift into the past or be lost in the future. Stay with what your partner is saying and understand. If you do not understand, ask.

Now it is your turn to speak. Be as clear as you can and to the point. Do not create a lecture out of something that can be expressed simply and directly. You partner will also know this process and together you will experience success and get the love back in your relationship.

Do not give up. Never. It takes practice to get it right and making mistakes is perfectly OK. That is how we learn. As well, keep your sense of humour. It is something to laugh about. Go communicate now!

Live, Love and Laugh, Marianne and Bob.

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Marriage Divorce & Love - What Happened to the Love?

20/9/2013

So what happens to the love after those first wonderful two years together? Is it still there hiding someplace? How do we coax it to come out again?

There are many who say that the period of euphoria we experience when we fall in love is not really love. Rather it is intense infatuation which draws us together. In this time our lover is absolutely wonderful, fulfills us, does no wrong and makes us feel like a king or queen. Then, of course there is the intensity, uniqueness and frequency of our sexual relationship. Everything gets blended in together. It must be love and that rush, that great feeling is mistaken for love.

But Real Love starts when falling in love ends. When things have cooled down and criticism, our own desires and the reality of life creeps in we have a choice to make. Will we choose Real Love or a romantic idea of love based on infatuation? Those who choose Real Love will have some work to do and will be rewarded deeply for that choice. But it isn't free. There is no free lunch in marriage. You must do the work to learn the tools and techniques of solid self affirming love.

So bring it on friends. What are those tools? And can anybody learn to practice and have real love?

The answer to the second question is; anybody who wants Real Love can learn how to have it. Anybody! And it means re-focusing and doing some work to learn and then ongoing practice.

What are the skills you can learn to have Real Love and a fulfilling relationship? The core skills you need to have a loving relationship are good communication skills, problem solving techniques and to understand the language of love. You must put all of these into practice and the relationship will go well.

Here is a very hard fact. If you do not learn and use these skills then you are likely doomed to a journey into disappointment, frustration and feeling out of love. That is where the love has gone. Maybe you will then join the ranks of the divorced or you will tough it out regardless of the pain. The learning and practicing of proven relationship skills will likely give you a better and more loving relationship. You will be rewarded for your work, rewarded with Real Love.

In the next three posts we shall talk about good communication skills, problem solving techniques and learning to speak the language of love and how to find your partners and your language of love.

Another reminder that we shall be holding a one days course at the end of October, max six couples, on how to have Real Love in your relationship. Be fufilled in your relationship, be happy, be in love again.®

Have a great weekend, Marianne and Bob.

This is number 2 of a 5 part series on Love and Relationships.

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Marriage, Divorce and Love

15/9/2013

Divorce rates in countries are measured in different ways. An often used measure is how many divorces there are per 1000 citizens. This statistic doesn't tell you very much other than the trends over a period of time. What does 8 divorces per 1000 people per year really mean? Not much. It conceals more than it reveals.

A more interesting number is the percent of marriages which end in divorce. It is commonly accepted by researchers that in the USA and Norway, for example, the rate lies between 41 to 51% in first time marriages and around 60% in second marriages.

One thing is certain. Divorce rates are very high and the personal and societal costs and pain involved is enormous. It is for me, doubly sad when you think that most of us start off in marriage "in love." We have fallen in love. What a rush. What a wonderful thing, being in love. But what is love? And what is falling in love?

Take a minute now and answer those two questions for yourself. Go ahead do it, nobody has to see your answers, right? Oh, by the way, why do we fall out of love? What happens?

Well, here is what researchers and marriage and relationship counsellors have found out. Falling in love is a state of heightened arousal and euphoria created by the relationship you have with another person. Research shows that this period usually does not last longer than between nine months and two years.

During this period we are not always as practical and logical as we could be. Our feet are often not touching the ground. We live in this fantastic dream world. We see our partners as perfect and wonderful. Nothing could go wrong. But it does. Why? And how can we keep the love in a relationship?

After two years or less we start to see our feet touch the ground. We become more realistic, critical and demanding. Usually falling out of love is not the same lightning strike experience as falling in love was. In fact it takes some years before that seemingly perfect relationship you had is not at all perfect. It has become stressful, unsatisfying and unhappy.

At this point, people often ask, "What happened to the love?"

In the past there were two ways of dealing with this. To stay or to leave the relationship. Fifty years and more back in time people toughed it out. It was a commitment and they stayed to the bitter end. Looking at some of the results of this approach we see it wasn't always positive. The other way was to walk away, to get divorced. People did not divorce so easily back then. That has changed as todays statistics show.

This does not mean that those who stuck it out and stayed with it until the end were better or smarter than you. But researchers and experienced marriage counsellors have found there is a third way. That third way is to learn some relationship skills and techniques and do the work to put them in practice. This builds Real Love.

Next post we will talk about Real Love. What happened to the love? What are the skills and techniques you need to learn and practice to personally grow and create a wonderful and lasting relationship? Also, a heads up. We will be holding a super one day course with lunch for max 5 couples on October 26th. Details to be forthcoming.

Hey, please remember to comment, Like Us or Tweet us below. Thanks and have a wonderful week, Bob and Marianne. ®

Authors

Bob and Marianne own SteppingStoneLifeCoaching.
Marianne, a Norwegian, is a Certified Life Coach, former Conflict Resolution Counsellor. She has also studied five years at the University of Stavanger.

Bob has over 12 years experience as a life coach, career and business counsellor. Bob also worked for some years as a strategic policy analyst. He has a Masters in Public Administration and also worked as Business Consulting Services Manager in Canada.

Please note that all the written material in this blog is Copyright, but can be used or quoted if the source www.steppingstonelifecoaching.com is quoted. Concerns or questions, contact us please.
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