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Improving Your Relationship

Are You Wanting More Support From Your Partner?

Do you think you are a supportive spouse or intimate partner?  Would your significant other agree with your answer?

Or maybe you want more support from your partner? 

Of course, both answers could be true.  But what exactly does it mean when you say that you want your partner do be more supportive?  Supportive of what?  How often?  For how long?   What exactly would you like your partner to do in order for you feel a greater level of support?

Improving The Connection With Your Valentine

This Valentine’s week, perhaps it is time to concentrate on how to strengthen the connection and improve the intimacy in your relationship.  How well connected are you with your intimate partner?  Answer the following questions, taken from Pat Love’s book The Truth About Love (Fireside).  How often do you:

Clearing The Air in Your Relationship

The following questions, taken from John Gottman in “The Seven Principals for Making Marriage Work” (Three Rivers Press), may help you decide whether you and your partner need to have a “clearing of the air” conversation: 

Can You Affair-Proof Your Relationship?

Let’s face it:  it’s pretty easy to be tempted.  Attractive strangers, hot co-workers, charming business associates, sexy acquaintances.  We have lots of possibilities to have multiply affairs all around us if we wish to be tempted.

So why do some stray when others don’t?  Take this quiz, courtesy of Pepper Schwartz  in The Lifetime Love and Sex Quiz Book (Hyperion).

Respond true or false.

These Are My Needs

What are your needs in an intimate relationship?  This is an exercise in self-discovery, adapted from Philip McGraw’s “The Relationship Rescue Workbook” (Hyperion).  As you recognize and acknowledge your needs, you create a path toward getting those needs met.

For every need that applies to you, put X on the line to the left of it.  I have the need:

____   To feel, and be told, that I am loved.

____    To feel a sense of belonging to and with my partner.

Rate Your Sexual IQ

How much do you really know about sex?  Sure, you know the basics about the birds and the bees, but how savvy are you about all the rest of the stuff that goes on between the sheets?   Answer these questions, taken from Pepper Schwartz’s “The Lifetime Love and Sex Quiz Book” (Hyperion)—and see how much you really know.

Talking to Each Other

Couples Communication

Couples Communication

These are more couple communication exercises taken from Bonnie Sose's book "Talk to Me." To get the most out this exercise, allow each person to answer the same question before you go on to the next question.

Communicating

Talking to Each Other

Talking to Each Other

So frequently do marriage therapists--including myself--hear couples complain that they don't communicate well, that I thought I would offer an exercise for those couples who would like to improve the quality of communication in their relationship. These questions are taken from Bonnie Sose's book "Talk to Me".

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