"Wasn't Expecting That": Treasuring Your Partner

The poet Mark Nepo speaks about splashing your partner with love. It's a beautiful image. What if we lived every day with the awareness that we need to celebrate and appreciate our partner? What if we were conscious of the passing of time and intentional about savoring the joy available in the little details of life together as a couple or as a family?

Over the last 25 years, I've done grief counseling with many individuals who've lost their life partner. It's made me reflect on all that is to be learned from a strong, long-term marriage. If only we could each take a lesson on love from people who've endured such a loss.

I was touched by this short video clip of English singer/songwriter Jamie Lawson of his song, Wasn't Expecting That. This sweet song sets the right tone for focusing on appreciating your partner while you can. Whether you have 10 years together or 60, the same rules apply. Here are a few of the things I've learned from individuals and couples over the years about making your partnership extraordinary:

1. Don't sweat the small stuff. Most stuff in daily life is the small stuff. Don't be petty. Exercise more restraint instead.

2. Be fun to live with. Dr. Phil asked people on his show, "How much fun are you to live with?" Choose to be a beneficial presence in your relationship and your family, not difficult or cranky.

3. Stay curious about your partner. Don't assume things. Each of you keeps growing and changing, so you will never fully know each other. Enjoy the ever evolving mystery.

4. Express your feelings.

5. Be strong enough to be vulnerable. Own it when you are feeling needy, tired, moody, worried, sad or difficult.

6. Ask for what you really, really want. Don't settle for a mediocre relationship.

7. Follow through. Do what you say you will be doing. Show your partner they can trust you because you live life in an honorable way.

8. Express your gratitude.

9. Treat your partner even better than you do your dearest friends.

10. Make yourself available to spend time together. Enjoy high energy fun together.

11. Freely admit when you mess up.

12. Share in life's work. Don't under-function at home so that your partner feels burdened and overwhelmed. Many tasks are more fun together, like cooking, gardening, or washing dishes.

13. Protect your relationship by setting clear boundaries. Don't confide in friends or family about your relationship concerns. Be brave and go direct, or go together to couples counseling with an emotionally focused therapist if you get stuck. Don't keep secrets that could jeopardize your relationship.

14. See the good in your partner. Shine a light on it. Comment on it. There are numerous studies that show that the happiest couples see each other in a consistently favorable light, even better than they are. Try to see your partner's good intentions when possible. Don't be the critic. Build up and encourage your partner's best self when you see it.

15. Try to see it their way. I'm always encouraged with people in couples counseling when they can demonstrate genuine empathy for how their partner might be feeling.  There are often several right perspectives on things, not just yours. Demonstrating empathy and compassion for your partner is a sign of emotional maturity. It means you can transcend self.

16. Use loving touch and affection. Hug and kiss hello and goodbye each day. These are part of the thousand little threads of connection between you. Cuddle. Hold hands. Give your partner a backrub when they are stressed. Both men and women like to have their partner initiate affection, so don't get stuck in gender roles on this one. Call each other when you are apart. Write love letters.

17. Don't get so wrapped up in raising the children that you forget the sacredness of spending some time focusing on just the two of you.

18. Take responsibility for making yourself interesting and happy and splashing it out on your partner. Don't expect your partner to make you happy. It's an inside job.

19. Learn to disagree respectfully. It's been said that every marriage has a couple unsolvable problems, and what counts is how you discuss it. Fight fairly. You each have your own brain and will see some things differently. This is normal.

20. Embrace your differences. You are different people and we raised in different families with their own patterns and traditions. You will likely have unique interests. This keeps the relationship interesting, especially if you support each other's individual interests. Actor Paul Newman and actress Joanne Woodward were a great example of this. She loved the ballet while he liked to race cars as a hobby. They loved each other deeply for 50 years before Paul's death, but could individuate from each other.

Life goes very quickly. We are each more fragile than we realize. Make it your intention to really focus, breathe and take in the joy of day to day life with your partner and your family. Like in the Jamie Lawson song, it will end one day when you don't expect it. Go for an extraordinary relationship starting today.You want to ensure that you have wonderful, sweet memories left behind. Splash some love and happiness around generously now while you can.

7 Ways to Be Her Hero

Doug Fields has a great new book in which he targets advice for men about stepping up and becoming the man their partner can love and respect. It's called 7 Ways To Be Her Hero: The One Your Wife Has Been Waiting For (W Publishing Group 2014). While Doug has a background in ministry and church leadership, he's an entertaining and approachable writer and speaker whose book has universal truths no matter your background.

Fields encourages each person to develop some depth, as well as slowing down to get out of living life like a NASCAR race. There is more to life than speed. Quality relationships take time, effort and intention. Anyone can fall in love, all it takes is a pulse. It's keeping the connection that is admirable and requires that people dig deeper into understanding themselves and the other person.

So what does Fields recommend that men do to become their partner's hero?

1. Edit. Don't say everything you think. Avoid defensiveness and criticism.

2. Choose your words carefully. Use them to support, encourage and build up your partner. Be sincere and specific. Notice what is loving and right in the other person. Let them know when and how they positively impact your life. Fields recalls Gary Chapman's five love languages, encouraging men to find out whether their partner prefers:

• Words of affirmation
• Quality time
• Receiving gifts
• Acts of service
• Physical touch

When you identify your partner's preferred language, use it.

3. Become a world-class listener. Ask questions to deepen your understanding. Make eye contact. Don't multi-task. This creates emotional intimacy. Try to grow beyond sharing clichés, facts and opinions into the deeper levels of sharing feelings and needs.

4. Go big with small things. Be generous emotionally by noticing her preferences and needs. Pay attention and do small actions that will please her. Doug shares great examples in his book of moving past selfishness to being sensitive to making your partner's day easier or better.

5. Increase non-sexual touch, like holding hands, hugging and kissing hello or goodbye, sitting by her on the couch, or touching her gently when you pass her. It's been said that when it comes to sexuality, men can be like microwave ovens and women are more like crock pots. Gentle, non-sexual, non-demanding, affectionate touch is something that most women want more of.

6. Putting the pride aside. Great guys can apologize and admit mistakes. Humility and confidence are a winning combination.

7. Care for her heart. Help her heal from childhood wounds and past relationship pain through your devotion and steadfastness. Point out her strengths and the things you love about her. Fill her tank. Help her to feel safe by being trustworthy and honest. Inspire her respect by being impeccable with your word.

Doug Fields' insights come partly from many years of facilitating and leading men's groups, speaking with women, and his own marriage. 7 Ways to Be Her Hero is a quick, easy read and has lots of relatable vignettes. It's a gem of a book that just might make a big difference in your own life, or the life of the man you love. Emotional intimacy in relationships is built one day at a time, and this book can give you practical tools to do it.

What's Your Attachment Style?

Attachment is the way you connect with other people. We learn it from our parents and attachment figures while we are growing up. We carry our attachment style into our adult relationships, and it helps to shape who we become as a parent and partner.There are four types: preoccupied, fearful, dismissing and secure. None of the styles is bad, just part of who you are and the life experiences you've had. We may each be able to shift our style of attaching over time and through healing experiences.

If you are securely attached, you can trust others and let them close to support you. In this style, you allow yourself a full range of emotions, knowing that all feelings are okay. Securely attached people feel basically happy and capable, and they tend to view their partner as well-intentioned and trustworthy. If you have an anxious attachment style and choose a securely attached partner you are likely to find that the reliable bond with them helps you to grow more secure over time. You don't overreact to a partner's small mistakes or slights.

What if you have the preoccupied style of attachment? You may feel fearful of rejection. You might overreact to problems, and easy jump to the feeling that you can't cope. This type can drain a partner with a sense of being perpetually overwhelmed, vulnerable and needy. Your sensitivity may cause you to overreact to perceived slights by a romantic partner. It may mean that you pick fights or instigate conflict which may exhaust your partner. The attachment need feels so strong and the fear of not getting needs met is so intense that little things can have huge meaning for you. A slow response to a call or text message may create high levels of anxiety and upset, and cause you to jump to (negative) conclusions. No partner is ever going to intuit your every need perfectly. Preoccupied style of attachers "activate" their strategy to sort of scan for any possible problems in relationships in a hyper-vigilant way, which can cause stress and anxiety.

If you have the dismissing style of attachment, you move away from attachment and fight strongly for your autonomy and independence. You also predict that important people in your life will not be there for you when you need them, so you avoid your own feelings and the feelings of others. You may withhold from expressing affection to a partner and make an insecure partner feel more insecure. You probably feel conflicted about both wanting love, comfort and connection and also wanting to protect yourself from the risk of it. You want to believe you don't need love, but you do.

People with the fearful attachment style feel that they aren't loveable. Attachment figures growing up may have been unavailable, perhaps having their own problems. They deeply desire connection and closeness, but can avoid or send mixed messages to their partner. These individuals can be vulnerable to depression, anxiety and passivity, and need to express their needs directly. Individuals who have the fearful style of attachment often view their partner negatively and can't empathize much with them.

Understanding how your style of attaching creates challenges for you in building a satisfying, secure and joyful relationship gives you a good start. Close relationships give us emotional availability, safe haven and a secure base. Insight for how your early attachments with parents influenced your ability to attach will help you develop self-compassion for why you struggle with certain things. It may also help you build more compassion for your intimate partner as you discuss how your childhoods and past relationships colored your ability to get close.

Leslie Becker-Phelps has an insightful new book on this topic called, "Insecure In Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It" (New Harbinger Publications, 2014). Becker-Phelps offers strategies for becoming a more securely attached person and partner.

We want to both become and look for a partner who can be securely attached, mature, non-defensive, effective at communication, appreciative, and affectionate. All intimate relationships will have some miscommunication at times. The best we can do is to choose wisely, have compassion for ourselves and the beloved, risk our own vulnerability, and try our best not to avoid, distance or act out of insecurity.

Beautiful, Useful, or Sentimental: The Spiritual Practice of Letting Stuff Go

Minimalists proclaim the motto that we shouldn't keep any possessions in our home that aren't either beautiful, useful, or sentimental. Letting things go physically is a good metaphor for letting other things go that should also be released, like resentment, anger, grudges, jealousy, and conflict you can't remember who started. It turns out that letting some things go that we no longer need is really good for our emotional and mental well-being.

I got started thinking about this letting go of stuff process as my husband and I prepare for the big annual garage sale that's held in our community each October. We both had households before we met, so now we have my set of stuff, his set of stuff, the stuff we've accumulated together, and all the memorabilia it took to launch three great children up to college age. Now that's a lot of stuff! Seriously, with the kids all at college or beyond, the blow-up pumpkin on the front lawn for Halloween is a bit over the top. Time to release that to some nice family with little ones.

I've heard organizers say before that we should each go through our closets once a year and donate anything you haven't worn. Chances are that Goodwill, or the charity you like best, needs it more than you or I do. It feels wonderful to easily be able to find what you are looking for in the closet. Some fashion writers recommend taking two items out of our closet to donate for every one we purchase or add. The same thing could be done with household purchases.

From a parenting perspective, what a great lesson to teach our children about the joy of releasing things you no longer need and giving them away or selling them. That's a lesson that can help them learn to be organized, keep track of things, take good care of their possessions, and release things they no longer need. That's a hard lesson to learn if Mom and/or Dad don't role model it for them.

Letting things go----emotionally and physically---is a healthy way to travel lighter through life. Being focused on people, relationships, and the present is a much healthier mindset that holding on to stuff. Travel light, let love and unneeded items flow from you to others, and focus on collecting beautiful moments.

Ruby Sparks: Why Perfect Wouldn't Work

I  saw a really interesting independent film this week called "Ruby Sparks." It's an engaging film,with several important messages to convey about the intricacy of relationships.

Calvin is a writer of a great American novel,as well as several important short stories when he is only 19. The story begins ten years later, as he is 29, and hasn't written anything recently. There is pressure to live up to his early success. He has broken up some time ago with his girlfriend of five years, who left him right after his father died. He seems very alone and isolated.

In a therapy session, Calvin's long-time psychotherapist, played by Elliot Gould, is trying to help free Calvin from writer's block. He suggests a writing assignment where Calvin begins to create a character of a perfect girlfriend. Calvin begins to write her, and she startles his reality by actually coming to life and showing up at his house as if they are really dating.

Amusing things unfold when Calvin tries to determine if others can see her, if she's real, or it's his overactive imagination. It's particularly funny as Calvin's brother arrives to help figure out if she's real and test her, and as Calvin takes Ruby on a weekend trip to Big Sur to meet his eccentric mother (Annette Bening) and warm but odd artist stepfather (Antonio Banderas).

Calvin begins to realize that as he continues to write his book about Ruby that he is truly the author of her character, moods, and traits. He can switch them out by writing about it. He can make her more clingy and less independent. He can make her more joyful. He can make her speak fluent French. He can even write it into her character that she loves him forever, and never leaves him.

What results from this folly is a lovely little meditation on human relationships, true intimacy, control, autonomy, and risk. Perhaps we really wouldn't want to edit out a loved one's eccentricities. Maybe it makes them the unique, separate person that we love. If we controlled the script, it would never let us see the natural storyline that is supposed to evolve between us and the other person.

Finally, it may because there is uncertainty and fragility in close relationships that they mean even more to us. You could lose that other person at any time, and that makes the time together that much more precious. There is no forever guarantee. In the end, maybe it's the differences that keep things interesting, and the fact that no human being is ever completely known to another.