Greetings from Washington, D.C.! To our regular readers, we apologize for the extended gap between postings. We spent last week in Tampa, Florida training over 300 wonderful therapists and we will be here in DC until Saturday. If you are in the DC area, we would love for you to join us on Thursday evening for an evening with Drs. John and Julie Gottman. You can find more information about the speaking engagement here.
We hope that by now you’ve had a chance to listen to Esther Perel's lecture, “The Secret to Desire in a Long-Term Relationship,” which we posted last week with a brief summary of her main talking points. We shared it with you because we find her perspective thought provoking - we hope that your thought has been provoked. With that said, we did not intend for it to stand on its own! We’d like to use Esther’s presentation as a jumping off point for further investigation.
We’d like to give you a chance this week to take some time to reflect upon your own love life: What do you feel could be improved? What is going right? What kinds of things does your partner do that make you feel great? What makes you feel not so great? How have you tried to change things in the past? How have you felt about those attempts afterwards? Do you feel that you have been successful?
Today, we'd like you to consider these additional questions: What feelings and thoughts did Esther's talk leave you with? Are there any that you would like to share with your partner? Do you feel comfortable bringing them up?
Talking about intimacy and sex is not always easy. Most of us have that friend, the one who loves their bedroom adventures and wants to hear all about yours. Think Samantha in "Sex and the City," the lovable bachelorette who spends seemingly all of her time meeting for drinks with her girlfriends, with the aim of talking about every intimate detail of their love lives. Some of us ARE that friend! We feel happy connecting with our inner Samantha. While many of us enjoy sharing stories of our exploits, some of us feel uncomfortable - that these topics are too personal, that this is “too much information.”
You don’t need to be a Samantha to have a healthy sexual relationship – or a healthy relationship to sex in general. But if conversation about intimacy with your partner doesn’t come easily to you, learning to communicate about it can make your sex life (and general existence) much, much better! After all, it is intimate conversation that builds emotional connection between couples.
Sex is an important (and often confusing) part of romantic relationships. Having great sex can add fire to your shared passion, allowing you to express love, tenderness, and desire for each other. It can create room for playfulness, and strengthen other areas of your relationship as well. Cherishing each other, giving each other pleasure, and continuing your courtship throughout the years can bring the two of you to a whole new level of closeness.
While our blog has touched on sexuality in relationships at times, we’d like to remind you of our Gott Sex? video series, The Gottman Institute’s primary resource for building intimacy and closeness in relationships. To read more about the steps you can take towards making the sex in your relationship more meaningful, intimate, and loving, we encourage you to take a look around!
All for now,
Ellie Lisitsa
TGI Staff
Talking about intimacy and sex is not always easy. Most of us have that friend, the one who loves their bedroom adventures and wants to hear all about yours. Think Samantha in "Sex and the City," the lovable bachelorette who spends seemingly all of her time meeting for drinks with her girlfriends, with the aim of talking about every intimate detail of their love lives. Some of us ARE that friend! We feel happy connecting with our inner Samantha. While many of us enjoy sharing stories of our exploits, some of us feel uncomfortable - that these topics are too personal, that this is “too much information.”
You don’t need to be a Samantha to have a healthy sexual relationship – or a healthy relationship to sex in general. But if conversation about intimacy with your partner doesn’t come easily to you, learning to communicate about it can make your sex life (and general existence) much, much better! After all, it is intimate conversation that builds emotional connection between couples.
Sex is an important (and often confusing) part of romantic relationships. Having great sex can add fire to your shared passion, allowing you to express love, tenderness, and desire for each other. It can create room for playfulness, and strengthen other areas of your relationship as well. Cherishing each other, giving each other pleasure, and continuing your courtship throughout the years can bring the two of you to a whole new level of closeness.
While our blog has touched on sexuality in relationships at times, we’d like to remind you of our Gott Sex? video series, The Gottman Institute’s primary resource for building intimacy and closeness in relationships. To read more about the steps you can take towards making the sex in your relationship more meaningful, intimate, and loving, we encourage you to take a look around!
All for now,
Ellie Lisitsa
TGI Staff