Tag Archives: Managing Intimacy

MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIP QUALITY

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Relationship Quality

 

 

 

 

 

“Quality is never achieved by dropping standards…”

If you don’t have the ability to interact with, entice and compel your partner to invest herself with your time, presence and service (what you bring to the table), you’re not in the business of maintaining the quality of that relationship. You’re simply running on borrowed time and built up relationship equity to pay the emotional bills, for your relational insolvency (liabilities that exceed your value). Partnerships at their core are about mutual exchange of value to advance individual interest. If we become complacent, negligent, or destructive about maintaining value or care regarding our partners interests, we should take full accountability for the initiation of that relationship’s deterioration. As a strategic matter people should learn to avoid those people who are unwilling or incapable of providing for our needs prior to a relationship and that goes as well for relationship once they are already initiated. If your needs are not being met, seek to resolve those internally, but be prepared to walk away.

Frame control

Frame or the underlying structural support that makes up a physical composition of a subject, in this case a relationship, was negotiated and accepted early, even long prior to any formal commitment or recognition thereof a relationship. In particular, you being a man, having the social expectation to lead, to be its steward and to have it molded by you. When men relinquish control of the relationship frame devastation occurs. Nowhere is this better reflected and recorded than when viewing divorce statistics… over half of all marriages fail, with women doing 70% of the filings, the primary reason for which was ‘a lack of martial satisfaction’… They simply were ‘unhappy’. This begs an important series of questions; if they were unhappy, who’s responsibility were they expecting to fulfill their needs of satisfaction? Obviously their partner, from whom they are divorcing, but what lead to this? While there will be a myriad of individual responses, a disproportionate number of them will center around the man abdicating his masculine role and responsibilities within the relationship. Because of this we should rid ourselves of any preconception that women want, need, care to share or should have control of the relationship frame if we want our relationships and families survive and thrive. Sorry ladies, your actions speak louder than your words…

Attraction isn’t negotiable

Repeated social studies have demonstrated and reaffirmed the common observation of the consistent erotic appeal of male dominance as sexual cues of attraction and desire for women, whether those are the hypergamous triggers of physical being, social behaviors or status display cues of dominance or ‘alpha’ traits. Please keep in mind that these base traits of desire do not diminish over time. In fact they are terribly consistent. At a woman’s base biological need is a desire to be with an unapologetic masculine male- a Man. Social dominance plays such an important role in feminine attraction that manipulating this single variable socially has repeatedly shown and proven dramatic improvements in a man’s sexual market value- the degree to which he is sexually valued by women. This social dominance begins and ends with a man’s perceived self-worth and is nowhere more clearly reflected in action than by his command of the word ‘No!’. A man of worth has standards and his behaviors and actions reflect those, especially in the face of perceived opposition. It is human nature to value that which is earned, which makes giving women a pass, is a sure way to sell yourself short and display low value. Beyond that it is bad practice as it is a form of rewarding bad behavior, and that which we subsidize we get more of, much to many a men’s ultimate regret.

Branding

It’s the job of the seller to sell the value of a product or service by making a connection with their customer base and extolling the virtues of it… This is called branding. In many ways it’s simply identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors and then hammering those in a visible way. One of the things that attracts people to a certain brand is the power of presence they project known as the halo-effect, which is identified by the strength of the initial idealization, as the greater the initial idealization the greater the reports of satisfaction over the following year. This held true for products, services and amazingly enough relationships too! Another way of looking at this is that people we interact with tell themselves a story of who they perceive us to be. We feed that story by making a series of statements by our presence, actions and words that tell people who we are and what they can expect from us. These studies in short tell us that it is far better to be the Lone Ranger, than it is to be the actor who portrays him. Your story needs to be robust enough to attract their attention and keep it. You need to be prepared to live that story out loud (by actions, as it build credibility), because soft-spoken stories rarely give rise to rapt audiences.

Meeting their emotional needs

The leading indicator for relationship quality is best measured by the degree of relational satisfaction- the degree to which our needs, desires and appetite are being fulfilled within the relationship. When we meet our partner’s needs, it creates the greatest degree of happiness, acceptance and validation in turn, which is emotionally transferred into the context of what we describe as love. Unfortunately not all needs are created equally, nor equally valued by each individual, which make it particularly important to respond to our partner’s needs if we want satisfaction to remain high. Your job is to find out what those are, to what degree are they valued and how to best meet or achieve those. Affection and intimacy are two critical emotional needs that are often seen as the cement of a relationship. With it we’re bonded to each other, without it we are totally alienated by its absence. This is where the value of rituals comes into play. By having consciously established patterns of behaviors focused on intimacy and affection helps safeguards the relationship because they are simply lost in hard times when we need them the most.

Positivity as an essential

One of the most important characteristics of relationship satisfaction is the ability of couples to accentuate the positive in life more than those that choose to revel in the negatives of life. While shit happens to everyone, we command the choice to be miserable or not. It should come as no surprise then that miserable people have miserable relationships…which usually end miserably. The point here is that it pays handsome dividends to have a healthy masculine male leadership who is able to sort out emotional trivialities, to define interpret what is important, by taking issues into perspective, accepting accountability for one’s emotional state and being emotionally secure in the face of adversity (especially her disapproval) to cease negativity where it serves no positive function within the relationship (all these are renown masculine traits not feminine). Simply put that may mean calling your partner out on her negativity and setting the relationship cultural tone for promoting positivity over adversity. Please bear in mind the law of emotional contagion (the unconscious tendency to mimic the emotions of others) that the strongest frame will win out.

Nature of commitment

An inherent feature to relationship satisfaction is powerfully linked to the qualitative nature of commitment. The degree to which our partners identify with and actively reduce our cautionary reactions to fears and insecurity regarding our vulnerabilities of relationship future projection, actively mitigates the degree of distrust we feel based on those natural occurring anxieties. Until we can alleviate our partner’s predominant concerns for self-protection, emotional safety and security they will be reluctant to develop a deep and abiding faith in us or our relationship with them. We need to recognize the importance of promoting trust by clarifying our intentions, validating our partners and highlighting the value we hold of our relationship, through regular assurances which are reinforced by gestures and behavior as demonstrations of commitment and loyalty.

Engaging Social Networks

As social creatures we have a deep need for social approval and acceptance. It is not surprising then to know that studies on depression have routinely placed positive social events on par with the effects gained through medication to remediate the state of low personal mood associated with sadness, emptiness, worthlessness and hurt. In fact, many doctors will actually prescribe social events with friends, family and loved-ones as a course of action to take to limit or reduce the effects of depression. As such social events make incredible tools for improving the quality of relationships. Integrating our relationship within greater social circles has the effect of expanding the degree of affirmation, validation and support we receive, which greatly offsets life’s challenges. Care must be taken though, when our social circles come into conflict with our relationships, because they can be as detrimental as positive. Boundaries in these cases need to be clearly articulated socially, if not physically, depending upon the nature and intensity of the conflicts, as history and literature are replete with examples where relationships are made or broken by the acceptance of a given pair in a social construct.

 

RELATIONSHIP MAINTENANCE- SUSTAINMENT

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woman-playing-chess-with-husband

“A penny saved is a penny earned”

 Proactive Practices

Relationship maintenance sustainment practices and protocols are skills, management ability and efforts directed at keeping a relationship on-going, making sure it stays on-course, continues to be vibrant, flourishing and exciting. They are pro-active by nature, meaning they should be done with a degree of frequency prior to any loss of effectiveness and satisfaction within the relationship (normal wear and tear). Historically relationship maintenance has been the sole domain of the feminine; supporting, caring and nurturing the relationship and its dynamics, but as society and culture have shifted towards a more feminine-centric society, many of these dynamics and their accountable responsibilities are more aptly placed within the masculine prerogative and leadership role. It is important to keep in mind that these tasks and behavioral patterns of proactive relationship sustainment are not typically associated with elements of relationship fault or repair (when there is a malfunction or damaged within the relationship- these will be covered in later blog posts), but are more associated with sustaining emotional energy and health levels within a relationship, such as relationship morale, maintaining relationship value and managing ego depletion, to make sure that the relationship stays on track, is well nourished and alive.

The Big Four

Relationship sustainment efforts should fall under four distinct categories of behavior efforts,(which will all be covered under individual future blog post) but are limitless, as to the specific nature and action elements one can take within each of categories, which include;

 Relationship Stability efforts– which focus on longevity

Relationship Quality efforts– dealing directly with satisfaction, love and intimacy

Maintaining the relationship Status Quo– maintaining specific stages or states within the relationship such as attraction, trust and respect– (opposing Hypergamy).

Maintenance of relational Dialectic Tensions – natural opposing forces or ideals found within relationships, such as connectedness vs autonomy, predictability vs novelty etc…

A Tailored Program

A successful sustainment maintenance protocol or program isn’t just a ‘to do list’ and a process of checking off of the relevant and completed boxes of completed tasks, but an established and tailored program centered specifically on the context of your relationship (because relationships change over time and within one’s life trajectory arch), the objectives you have for the relationship, and the needs, desires and values that each of you want from the relationship. Understanding specifically what you and your partner need and want will help immensely on what to focus on and the frequency it should occur at. Understanding that meeting or exceeding expectations is fundamental to relationship satisfaction, which ultimately determines the relationship heading. Furthermore, the simple reality is that it is human nature to become incredibly enmeshed in routine patterns of behavior, occupied with the rigors of life and to come to expect maintenance behaviors by your partner to occur routinely, which introduces negative behavioral traits into the relationship, namely, taking each other for granted. Keep in mind, there is no such thing as ‘cheating’ at life; either you get it right or you don’t. In this regard, it just makes sense to be organized, diligent and assertive in taking specific timely action to counter our basic instincts and to create a tailored proactive relationship program for ourselves that should include routine elements, tactical application efforts and strategic campaigned efforts to maintain overall relationship satisfaction in the following manner;

Daily Temperature Readings– what’s your partner’s emotional state and morale? How is this affecting them and the relationship? Are you actively listening to you partners body language, tone, attitude and demeanor when they speak? What is she really communicating and are you letting them know you care in return?

Weekly Gas Ups- We only have a limited degree of emotional energy (ego) and managing ego depletion is critical. Weekly emotional/ego refueling is essential for satisfaction in life. Often the best fuel isn’t having fun, but simply de-stressing and increasing intimacy. Know what works best for both you and your partner and be generous in the refueling. Never run a relationship on an empty emotional tank.

Monthly Tune-Ups- noting what’s impeding relationship satisfaction and taking steps to remove or remediate it, as removing a negative is 4x-8x more effective than adding a positive (actually negatives are just simply that much more destructive than positives, so we should first focus on those first). One of the most important is a self check; what’s your branding status? Are you being the guy you lead her to believe you to be?

Annual Check-Ups- noting the relationship direction in relation to the relationship’s objectives. If the relationship were a ship, does it need to be righted? Are you on the right course despite the relationship tack (alignment in relationship to the wind)? What isn’t happening and what needs to be done? Like ships, relationships rarely sail in straight lines to their objectives and doing so may actually be less than optimal. Understanding the forces that surround your relationship and sailing appropriately is always a better course of action.

Great, healthy relationships just don’t happen. They take a considerable amount of work, empathy and foresight to get right the first time. We naturally get better at those tasks and functions we repeat often and with thought. Our actions define who we are and the quality of the relationships we are in. Often it’s as simple as knowing what needs to improve and taking the necessary steps to act on what we know to be necessary. Understanding the framework that governs that surely helps considerably.

 

Managing Conflict

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AngryCouple

“Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional”

The Nature of Relationship Conflict

Real conflicts in relationships are more than just elements associated with let downs, frustrations, incivility or broached boundaries. They’re deeper and more powerful than arguments and disagreements would at first appear. Relationship conflicts are situations where you or your partner perceive an emotional menace, whether that menace is real or imagined. What’s worse is that they tend to repeat and don’t go away from one relationship to another—that is, these menaces will travel with you into your next relationship and with a new partner. These are highly visceral reactions to situations that rationality will not clear away unless the phantoms that are driving this behavior are identified and addressed. It is important to realize that conflicts more central to issues of attachment and commitment will evoke not only a greater threat response from you or your partner, but are more likely to be the structural fault within your relationship and will be a leading candidate for that relationship failure. That is, unresolved emotional issues have a markedly disproportional negative effect on the health and viability of your relationships and as leaders and managers of our relationships we have a responsibility to lead and manage these.

The Nature of Conflict Avoidance

Much like the real issues driving emotional conflicts, conflict avoidance hides several significant motivators to avoid conflict interactions and serves as a good analogy to the hidden emotional issues behind conflicts. Most people can relate to a very basic element of conflict avoidance just because of the very nature of conflict itself; that it is absorbing, energy-consuming and honestly we want to believe that we have better things to do… but is that truly why we avoid conflict, or are there other issues that are really motivating us from venturing there? Would it be more true to recognize that we may be lacking conflict skills and have had a history of poor utilization of those skills and almost no recognizable ability to manage conflict in a healthy and productive way? Are we too afraid, feel too vulnerable or unsure how to bring to the light of day deeply guarded emotional issues with our partner? Are we honestly too insecure about the nature and true character of our relationship to test it in the crucible of conflict and are afraid to find out the reality of where it stands? Understanding these and any other motivator you may have to avoid conflict will be the first step you take to managing conflict within any relationship.

A Lack of Social Fluency

As children we go through the process of learning and developing a large number of social skills facilitating our interactions with others. One of the most important, but seldom taught or developed is conflict skills. And like all skills, unless as adults we continue to develop, nurture and hone our abilities, we’re slaves to the maturity skill level of our abilities of when we initially learned them, regardless of our actual age. It’s why you’ll see fully grown adults resorting to acting like children, because they honestly have no real ability to do otherwise. Their skill set is limited to that of a child’s. On a fundamental level the ability to hold constructive and healthy conflict sessions is a mark of maturity and one relegated to a fully developed adult. Children need to be taught the critical skills of collaborating with others, restraining anger escalation, rejecting shutting down and emotional withdrawal as a viable conflict management strategy and avoiding or changing destructive behavioral patterns of aggression, to resolve or manage conflict. If as an adult you have not developed those, have positive experience utilizing them and have confidence in your ability to enact these abilities, it’s time you sat down with your inner-child and have a heart-to-heart about developing them.

Emotional Gateway

In an emotional conflict people rarely convey the needs at the heart of the problem; the words being said isn’t what your partner is trying to communicate, the issue being addressed, isn’t really the true issue, as there is often a bigger issue behind a closed emotional door, that contains a very large emotional elephant. If we really listen to our partners, not only in what they are saying to us, but in the patterns of behaviors that bring us back to this same very place, time after time, we may come to realize that they are in fact bringing us to an emotional gateway. We ourselves may not even be aware of how deeply a particular issue from our past affected us, until a situation involving conflict has occurred to uncover it. Partners that don’t trust themselves, have the ability or established an operating pattern and history to discuss pertinent, at-risk issues appropriately will often utilize inappropriate methods to advance an issue into the forefront. They will start a minor conflict to segway the discussion into a larger and more important issue, that they feel inadequate discussing, often called a lead-in. A partner who fears holding a particular discussion due to fears of evoking abandonment issues, relationship flight (you leaving her) or heightened emotional insecurities, may in fact deny the presence of hidden issues, even when directly asked (she may not actually be even aware of it herself). We should be cognizant of this possibility and book mark emotional conflicts, so that if we keep returning to them, we can realize that there truly is something else there, even if our partner is unwilling to openly address it, or the fact we can’t see it. In such a case, finding and knocking on these emotional doors may not be enough. Our partners may continue to deny their existence. In such cases, it is not our responsibility to open those doors, it is our partner’s. If they choose to keep them shut and us out, we can only identify that we were aware, willing and offering a safe environment for them to share with us, but they are ultimately accountable for not doing so. Regrettably these issues tend to be the leading cause for relationship failures, known or otherwise and that is of their making, not ours.

The Crucible- a Test of Character

Emotional conflicts within relationships test the character of the relationship itself and can tell us as much about the relationship, as it does the individuals within the conflict. Just as we can deduce an individual’s social fluency by observing their social skill mastery, we can evaluate a relationship’s strength, health and vibrancy by observing how conflict is handled, regarded and managed within the relationship. Is the conflict not only addressed in a manner which seeks resolution by both partners, but do the partners separate the individual from the issue with tact and respect and do the partners utilize the source of conflict for greater understanding and comprehension of their partner? When done so, conflict can be a tremendous opportunity to lead to deeper respect, trust and intimacy. Conflict tests relationships and individuals more rigorously than other forms of interactions and can be very frightening because of it, but by developing our and our partner’s ability to handle, manage and constructively resolve conflict can we gain honest confidence in our relationship’s true strength and character, by having navigated through it.

Conflict Cost

We must learn to manage conflict because the risks involved in not doing so are very real and very, very costly. Appropriate conflict management prevents physical and psychological aggression within intimate relationships. We are vastly less likely to lash out with physical violence, in releasing engulfed rage and anger that has built up rapidly within a spiraling and unrestrained conflict setting. We are less likely to be physically domineering and physically aggressive, in an attempt to control or manage a situation where our skill sets have failed us. We are less likely to commit emotional and psychological harm in delivering vicious and insidious personal verbal attacks in moments of lost self-regulation. We are less likely to lose relationships that we have invested heavily in emotionally, physically, sexually, socially and financially. Beyond the total sum cost of any failed relationship, the cost of not developing conflict management skills is that this lack of ability will likely be handed down from Father to child. Parents that manage conflict appropriately are less likely to neglect or abuse their children and are more than likely to pass those positive behavior skill sets down to their children. The same hand that guides the Mother will be the same hand that guides his children.