Ah, springtime. The time when nature wakes up again. Birds migrate back to the north. Plants burst out of the ground with a profusion of green everywhere. Flowers bloom. Fish spawn. Animals breed. All of nature comes alive. Including us. And the way many of us express that aliveness, stimulated by springtime, is through urges […]
Expressing Love and Appreciation to Your Valentine
When was the last time you told your Valentine how valued s/he was? How special? What you appreciate and how much you appreciate him or her? In honor of Valentine’s Day, here is an exercise if you’d like to correct that oversight—and infuse your relationship with renewed appreciation and gratitude. Select from the following list […]
Valentine Lessons in Being the Best You Can Be
Following is a list of Valentine suggestions for how to be the very best partner, spouse, lover and/or mate you can be. Don’t use lame excuses to avoid doing your very best in your intimate relationship, such as “I don’t have the time or the energy.” If your mate doesn’t rank up there with your […]
Traits of Happy Couples
Creating The Best Relationship You Can What can you do to create the best relationship possible? A close, intimate, happy, heartful, soulful, romantic, connected, affectionate and passionate relationship? I am talking about creating—not simply having—the best relationship possible, because while falling in love just happens, staying in love never happens by itself. We begin our […]
Outrageously Romantic Ideas to Keep Your Relationship Sizzling
What does sizzling romance consist of? Romance is about attempting to connect and stay connected to someone else. If you are a true romantic, you define yourself as a “lover” regardless of other roles; you’re in touch with your feelings; you pursue new and different experiences and you make your intimate relationship a top priority […]
Being Thankful for What Your Relationship Offers You
It’s Thanksgiving again. Time to take notice of things we are truly grateful for. But while it is easy to be grateful in the abstract—for sun and rain and good food—often the place where it is the most difficult to practice is in our most intimate relationships. So many of us are (rightfully) grateful to […]
Bidding for Greater Emotional Connection
Note: This is the first of a two-part series. Do you often find your intimate partner to be too busy to be emotionally available to you? Do you have trouble getting him/her to really listen to you? To open up to you? To trust you? To share his/her true feelings with you? Do you get […]
“Rules” For Women
Dear Neil: Since reading your column concerning rules for male partners that appeared in print awhile back, I would like to know if you could print a set of rules for female partners? HopefulJakarta, Indonesia Dear Hopeful: Actually the list of rules is almost the same for women and for men. But since I have […]
Overcoming Gridlock by Identifying Your Inner Dreams Part 2
You want to have children, he doesn’t. She wants you to attend church with her, you’re an atheist. He’s a homebody, you want to party every night. If you feel hopelessly gridlocked over a problem in your relationship that just doesn’t get resolved, take comfort in knowing that there is a way to get through […]
The Signs of Gridlock Part 1
Note: This is the first of a two-part series. Dear Neil: My girlfriend and I are constantly fighting. Even small things can provoke a huge fight between us, and we seem to fight over the same things again and again. These fights have escalated to the degree that we’re seeing much less of each other […]