I know that this sounds insensitive and politically incorrect.  I know that psychologists and couples counselors such as myself are supposed to push “communication” as the key to a better relationship.  AND, I’m here to tell you the truth or at least MY TRUTH.

This post is specifically for women in heterosexual relationships.  While I’ve worked with many gay and lesbian couples over the last twenty years, I’m not sure if this perspective applies to their relationship dynamics.   I’d love feedback though.

Back to the premise: Don’t talk so much!

Couples enter counseling with the idea that they need to learn better communication skills.  While this is often true and I definitely teach communication skills, COMMUNICATION IS NOT THE PROBLEM!

The problem is NOT about communication.  The problem is about CONNECTION!  Or more accurately, about the LACK of connection.

In general, women connect by talking.  And by “talking” I more specifically mean talking about their feelings and “processing” them.  We’re men.  We can only “tolerate” so much of that.  Talking about our feelings makes us feel young and insecure; it regresses us.

And while regression is good and beneficial in the process of psychotherapy, it’s not so good in a relationship.  Wouldn’t you agree ladies?

You DON’T want a regressed man who feels like a helpless child as your partner in a relationship, do you?  You don’t want to turn into his mommy!  Trust me, it puts a big damper in the romance department and in your sex life.

So women connect through sharing their feelings.  This is a big part of why the majority of psychotherapy patients are women.  Men don’t want to go there.  Do they NEED to go there?  Sometimes they absolutely do.  And with a professional that they aren’t building a life with, the process works!

And as a couple in couples counseling it also works, at least to a limited degree.  Learning to share your inner life in a way that doesn’t become regressive is absolutely a healthy thing.  And while I believe in it, most of my work with couples is about creating CONNECTION, which for me isn’t usually about talking or about being talked TO (or AT, which is how it often feels).  With connection comes intimacy and passion.

We’re men.  We DON’T want to talk about it!  Talking makes us feel weak.  Talking makes us feel vulnerable.  Talking makes us feel anxious.  Talking makes us feel shame.  Talking makes us feel “less then”.  And when we feel like that, we tend to act out our insecurities in our relationships and take it out on YOU!

Yes, we’re babies!  Yes we want it our way in our own time.  Yes, if we don’t get our way we will sulk and withdraw and get passive aggressive or just plain attacking and aggressive.  For most of us, this reaction is primal and is quite challenging to change.

Even with years of therapy, we will only become aware of it and manage it a little bit better.  And most men will never agree to years of therapy.  We’re babies.  So what are the options here?

There IS hope!  Although the majority of men won’t come into couples therapy or will only begrudgingly allow themselves to be dragged there by their partners, there IS hope.

While I prefer working with the couple to improve the relationship, it often doesn’t happen that way.  Most of the relationship improvement work I do is with one partner, not with both.  Most of my relationship coaching is performed with one female partner.  And it works!

The couple is a system.  If we change one component of the system, the entire system will change.  And if it doesn’t change sufficiently, at least the partner knows that they have done everything that they can do.  After you clean up “your side of the street” you have a clear conscience for whatever actions are necessary from there, one way or the other.

So, ladies, back to helping you. If my recommendation is DON’T TALK SO MUCH, what can you do?  First of all, get clear about your priorities.  What is the purpose of your relationship?  What do you need from your partner, that only they can provide?  What can you “delegate” to others in the need department?

My advice is the 80/20 rule: process 80% of what needs to be processed with your girlfriends and your therapists.  Process the 20% that REALLY needs to be processed with your man, with your man.  It might actually be even less than that.  And learn how to do this in a way that they can tolerate (Actually, I have some tricks for you here).

Don’t talk so much!  Instead, SHARE your life with your boyfriends and your partners and your husbands.  Sharing comes from a different place and has a different intention than talking does, at least for men.

Allow men to talk when they are in the mood.  Reward them for it!  Yes we can talk endlessly if we are sharing our vision of the future or bragging about our accomplishments or our prowess.  In fact we can become obnoxious in our verbosity at this point.

But it’s not really a dialogue and we’re not really “processing” in the conventional sense.  We talk to share our fantasies and our hopes and our desires.  If we really are feeling safe, we sometimes share to have a sounding board and to reflect.

And all we really want from you at that point is to be admired and appreciated and valued.  You can relate to this, can’t you ladies?

We are sharing as best we can, most of it being nonverbal.  So share with us as well and as an experiment, share more with us through activities instead of words.  Shared games, shared adventures together, shared romance, shared sex!  After that kind of sharing, a man might surprise you and open up and be vulnerable enough to want to actually talk about feelings!

If you give us what we want (which isn’t very complicated most of the time) we will give you the keys to our kingdom and share our world with you.  And be excited and thrilled to do so.  And give you everything we have and are, with an open heart.

Don’t’ talk so much!  That is the key.  Would you rather be right that talking is what you need or would you rather connect and experience deep intimacy?

Bottom line: men and women are different!  And as the more evolved of the sexes, women can definitely influence the relationship for the better, for the highest good of all involved.

I’m really excited about this new direction my work is taking, working with one partner to improve the relationship and would love to hear your comments about the idea.  In fact, you can COMMENT as much as you’d like!

If you are interested in more of the inner workings of men and how to be successful in a relationship with them, I will be holding a “Don’t Talk So Much” teleseminar course on this in early 2011.  Click here (www.donttalksomuch.com) to be kept updated about this work and specific programs to help women improve their relationships.

Thanks so much,

Dr. Adam Sheck

I’ve written about the mechanics of all-day foreplay before.  It’s really not that complicated. Start in the morning by telling your partner how you feel about them, and what you’d like to be doing with them when you come home from work.  Perhaps leave them a little note with more of your thoughts.

Maybe later, send them a text or even a picture!  Sexting (sexy texting) can be a VERY effective form of foreplay.  Next, maybe an email or a sexy telephone message.  Stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone here, maybe just a little bit.

And when you get home, set the stage even more, whether it’s with the traditional flowers and candy or an erotic gift (or toy) or maybe another card or an original poem.  Building the anticipation and tension is always so nice, especially when you know you’ll be relieving that tension later on.

That’s one possible scenario for all day foreplay.  What I’d like to speak to as well are some of the components of it.  The major component of all day foreplay is the anticipation factor.  The building up of anticipation and expectation is what makes it so extremely powerful.

We’re working to create newness, originality, novelty.  By creating and recreating this freshness in our relationship, we can take advantage of the biological imperative that needs to “spread the gene pool” and still keep it within our own relationship (assuming that you have chosen monogamy as your path of course).

It’s the Zen Buddhist notion of “beginner’s mind” seeing everything as fresh and new as if you are experiencing it for the first time.  This is the attitude to bring to EVERY interaction with your beloved.

Use your imagination to create new worlds to share together.  Make sure you compliment each other and use ALL of the other tools you used when you were courting.  When we first met our partners we certainly practiced all day foreplay.  Most likely you were in a fairly constant state of anticipation, expectation, excitement and arousal.

That’s what you need to do now.  Flirt throughout the day, taking advantage of all the new technologies to connect with each other.  Feel free to tease and LAUGH at yourself AND each other as well.  Laughter pumps up the endorphins, too.

One final tip from one of my couples is a wonderful example of all-day foreplay.  The wife created what I now call a “seduction treasure hunt” for her husband.  She laid out clues attached to erotic objects and toys all through the house.  He had to follow one clue to the next to the next.  Of course, with each clue, he became more turned on.  The final clue gave him the address of a local bar he was to meet her to complete her fantasy and finally consummate the long, all-day foreplay episode!  How creative is that?

So get started, get busy, get imaginative, get passionate.  You can use these ideas and examples or create your own.  If you’re really stuck, I write more about all-day foreplay and related ideas in my eBook “101 Ways To Bring Back The Passion!” which is available on this Passion 101 website (Click here).  Hopefully this article has given you a good start though.  And I hope that it will begin to give you more intimacy!

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback and appreciate you sharing this post on all-day foreplay with your friends.

Thank you so much,

Dr. Adam Sheck

BONUS: If you are truly committed to bringing back the passion in your relationship, I am offering a complimentary “Romance Roadmap” Strategy Call to the first twenty people who respond to this offer.  Click here to contact me expressing your interest and I will be happy to set up the “Romance Roadmap” Strategy Call.

Many of the couples that find their way into my office have become stuck in old, rigid patterns of interaction. Some patterns are cruel and painful, while others are simply tedious and boring.  We start off our relationships being light and fun and loving and then something happens.  While I don’t want to get into the typical process of how we move from the relationship stage of “Romantic Love” into the “Power Struggle” in this post, I do want to suggest an exercise to combat this stuckness.

When we first meet our partners, we are open and laugh and share in very child-like and loving ways.  This is a good thing.  So, let’s get back to doing what works!  Let’s have fun like children do!  The idea of High Energy Fun is to recapture that spirit of fun, of silliness, of spontaneity that children have.  It’s silly, it’s frivolous, it has no extrinsic value.  And yet internally, intrinsically, it is what keeps us alive and vital and connected.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to spend five to ten minutes, twice a week with your partner doing some type of High Energy Fun activity which will cause you not only to smile or giggle, but to burst out into deep belly-laughs!  It may take you some practice and you’re going to have to move through your resistance, yet I encourage you to give it a try.

Some suggestions are:

1. Take turns making silly faces at each other.

2. Play “Simon Says” as fast as you can!

3. Have a conversation in gibberish (a silly pretend language) together.

4. Play “patty-cake” with your eyes closed, as fast as you can!

5. Play “leap-frog” together across the room.

Feel free to add any other old childhood game or something else that will make you burst into deep guffaws.  Maybe it sounds simple or undignified or embarrassing to you, but I guarantee that if you try it for a few weeks, it will shift your relationship and make it so much more fun to be in.

Please write me with your ideas for High Energy Fun and also with your experiences of performing it with your partner.

I wish you the best,

Dr. Adam Sheck

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Well, I’m going to make you wait, just a little bit longer. Anticipation is actually a great practice in creating passion in a relationship, but that’s not the assignment today!  This assignment will help you to connect to each other, feel closer to each other, and be more open and receptive to each other.  Are you ready for it now?

It’s about Appreciation!  Yes, appreciation and gratitude are fundamental qualities of long-term successful relati0nships.  Yet for many, this is so challenging. Perhaps it’s because as children, we were exposed much more to criticism than to compliments by our caregivers.  We knew that our parents loved us, but we didn’t always hear it from them or hear it from them frequently enough.  Perhaps your current relationship is similar?  Perhaps you know that your partner loves you, yet has a hard time letting you know.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is wonderful in others belong to us as well.

-Voltaire

This exercise is your opportunity to begin to heal this issue.  It’s short and simple.  It shouldn’t take you more than 3-5 minutes to complete and I’d recommend that you work up to doing it each and every day with your partner.

What you’ll each do is come up with three things that your partner has done that you appreciate.  You will take turns sharing these three things with your partner, one at a time, ending each time by saying “thank you.”  After you say each item, your partner will “mirror” the appreciation back to you by repeating it word for word and completing with “you’re welcome.”

Example:

Partner 1: “What I appreciate about you is that you made me lunch today.  Thank you.”

Partner 2: “What you appreciate about me is that I made you lunch today.  You’re welcome.”

Then Partner 2 will share one of their appreciations which will be mirrored and you will alternate until you have shared all three of your appreciations.

Warning: Many couples that I treat tell me “Oh we’re pretty good about telling each other what we appreciate already, …”  And yet many of these same couples tell me they are in treatment because they feel taken for granted!  Then they will get lazy about this exercise and wonder why there is no result.  When this Appreciation Exercise is formalized and performed consistently, it can have a major impact on your relationship.

I strongly encourage you to try this simple exercise.  It won’t take long and the results can be amazing!  And please, write me and let me know how it works for you!

I appreciate you all,

Dr. Adam Sheck