62: Dessert First-How to Make Your Relationship Fun Again

Ellen Dorian:00:00:00

Welcome back to Make More Love. In this show, we share real strategies that help high performing business leaders build passionate intimate relationships and live fulfilling lives. I'm your host Ellen Dorian. I'm both a relationship coach and a business coach, so I know how to handle all the crap that comes up when you're working to be the best at everything. If you're serious about transforming your relationship and your life, staying connected here is your first step. Be sure to hit that Follow or Subscribe button right now so you never miss an episode. And, if you find today's conversation helpful, please share it with a friend who could use some new ideas for their own relationship. So let's get into it. I've had my head down for the past few months. I finally came up for air and it's August. Shit that went by fast. And yeah, my husband and I have had some fun. We've taken a couple of trips. We've planned a couple more. We went out for a wonderful anniversary dinner. We bought a new car. Well, that buying part isn't that much fun, but the driving part's been a blast. We even took it to the park and did a photo shoot for my husband's weekly photo challenge. It made me realize something. We need to talk about what it means to enjoy each other. Usually my focus for this podcast uses logical frameworks, systems and strategies to design a better relationship. And I know you guys appreciate those insights because you've told me so. But there is another force behind the most passionate relationships. And that's being able to simply enjoy being with each other. If you remember my relationship hierarchy of needs that I introduced way back in Episode 4, this level in that hierarchy is Affinity. It's Also tied to the intrinsic passion that we talked about last week. So let's start with a question: How much do you actually enjoy just being together with your partner? Not working through the to-do list or handling logistics or any of that stuff, just being in the same space, doing something or doing nothing. What are your favorite things to do together? And even more importantly, how long has it been since you've done those things? If your answer is too long. Or I don't remember. Or even, what are you talking about? That doesn't mean the situation is hopeless. It might just mean that your relationship's been on autopilot for a little too long, and honestly, that's pretty normal. Most of us are managing a staggering number of moving parts, running a business, raising a family, and trying to hold everything together. The pressure you're dealing with can derail your whole day, even before breakfast, which let's be honest, you probably didn't eat anyway. So here we are. It's the first week of August, middle of summer, with September coming at us like a high speed train, I'd say it's a good time to make a change. What do you think? Because here's the thing, if you're not having fun together and you want to, there's only one way to get there. It's like muscle memory. You have to start doing it again, and then you remember how it works. So let's start having some fun, that is. Even if it feels a little awkward or fake at first, and even if it's just a small spark of something playful that you used to have, let's get going and you'll remember how it works. Now if your relationship is in a serious downturn, some of what we're gonna talk about today is gonna feel a little bit outta reach, and I get that. But hang with me 'cause we're gonna talk about that too. Usually I'm a big fan of planning. I recommend it in almost every episode. I just don't believe that good things will happen on their own, if you want something fun to happen, but your schedule is already overpacked, I would generally say that you have to plan it or forget about it. That includes date nights sex, heart to heart conversations, all that stuff, and fun. However, when you've gone too long without having fun, planning it just feels like more work and that's no fun. So why not try something a little bit out of the ordinary? And I've got ideas to help you. But first I wanna share a story. I don't know how much I've talked about this on the show, but I've lost over 120 pounds. It took me a decade. And to say that it was hard as an epic understatement. If you've ever gone through something that intense for that long, you know how much it demands in planning, weighing, tracking, measuring, doing things you don't feel like doing, and sometimes even things that scare you. I did it for my health and to improve my quality of life. So When I wasn't feeling like my life was getting better, I was kind of pissed off. A big part of that was the mindset I had. That pleasure was something that you earn after the hard stuff is done. Fun, rest, indulgence, or rewards, and you don't get the reward until you've done the hard work. The problem was I rarely got around to the reward. I'd either run out of time or I'd talk myself out of it, or I tell myself I hadn't done enough to deserve it. And that pattern didn't just show up in how I handled the weight loss. It really was everywhere in my life, my hobbies, the downtime I was taking, the things I actually enjoyed. They all got shoved into the back of the same closet where I had stuffed all my fat clothes and all my someday this is gonna fit clothes. If you know, you know. One thing I used to do was at every meal I used to save my favorite thing on the plate for last every time, but. Like most of the time I'd get full before I got there and it would end up in the trash. This happened over and over again for years, until I finally realized I had gotten it backwards and I needed to change. That's when I started eating my favorite stuff first, and it wasn't only for meals. I switched that mentality up in the rest of my life too. I learned that joy and pleasure are not rewards that you should have to earn. They are rights that you owe yourself. If that mindset feels familiar. Well, that's probably why we get along so well. So my friends, take to heart what I have learned and apply it to your life too. Stop waiting until everything's done or perfect to connect and have fun. If you keep saving the good stuff for later, you risk that later turns into never. So change the order and prioritize pleasure, whether it's a little thing or a big one, make it happen, now. Sometimes that means going to get ice cream before dinner or instead of dinner with your partner. Take the new car. By the way, have you noticed that i'm pretty excited about that new car. Actually, this philosophy isn't exclusive to life events. There's a lot of that way of thinking in business too. I don't know if you've heard of the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, but he applies this exact approach to managing your finances. I'm gonna be speaking with an expert on Profit First in a future episode, and let me tell you that one could be life changing. Keep an eye out for it. So how do you bring fun into your life without it taking too much work? Because if you have to engineer it too much, that would defeat the purpose. So this next part is gonna be an example, but you're gonna need to create your own version. What I think of as fun might be a total drag for you. Oh, and what you might think of as fun might be a total drag for your partner. Please don't make that mistake. So let's think about this for a minute. Before you had all the responsibilities and obligations that took over your world, what did you used to do for fun? Like when you were a kid? See, one way to step out from under the pressures of adulting is to do something completely childlike, maybe even a little silly, and maybe completely ridiculous. Here's your challenge. Plan a ridiculous date inspired by childhood, summer memories, not for the kids, not as a family activity just for the two of you. It doesn't have to be romantic or sexy or elaborate. It just has to be fun and easy, because remember, this is a low planning kind of episode, I'm gonna share some of my memories like running through the sprinkler. I remember one time we made a fort out of a refrigerator box. We used to fill up the kitty pool and play "Will it Float." I loved building sand castles on the beach. My dad showed me how to make drip sand castles. I don't know if you ever did that, but it's pretty fun. I loved finger painting. My brothers loved water balloon fights. I used to love watching Godzilla movies and doing impressions of the monsters. And there was one time that we all dressed up in silly outfits for dinner. So those are my memories from childhood of things that I loved, and you could take any of these ideas and turn them into a really great, ridiculous date. But you need to come up with your own memories, and you also have to find out your partner's memories. Hopefully you'd know some of these things already, but you might need to do a little bit of reconnaissance, and you can do this by just casually asking them about their favorite summer memories from when they were a kid. Just asking actually could be a great date. Um, make it over coffee or on a walk or take a drive and then raise the subject. Let them tell you the stuff that made them light up when they were kids, and then use that information to surprise them by recreating it in some way. I would truly love to hear what you come up with and how it went. You could send me an email, a DM, share it in our Facebook group. All the coordinates for all that stuff are gonna be in the show notes. Now, I am gonna go into a little bit more detail about how to do all that, but first, let's address the elephant in the room. If you're listening to this and thinking, my relationship is way too far gone for that, there's no way my partner will get into it, You might be right. If your relationship is in a deep, dark hole, This approach certainly isn't gonna fix that, but it can become part of a broader pattern of bids for connection and that actually can make a big impact. You might just find out that the hole isn't quite as deep as you imagined. We're gonna talk more about bids for connection and how to make them work for your relationship no matter how deep that hole feels. But before we get into that, let's just take a minute to understand why it feels like you're in the hole in the first place. Because relationship troubles can be really deceiving. As I mentioned, they might not be as bad as you think, and there's a high likelihood that they aren't about what you think they're about. I created this thing called the Relationship Dynamics Scorecard to help us figure that out. It's a free quiz that will pinpoint the precise areas of your relationship that need attention most urgently. The whole thing should take less than 10 minutes. You'll get your scorecard immediately and it will show you a lot. And then if you'd like to go deeper, we can schedule a private one-on-one call with me where we work on an action plan to address your hottest hot button. There's no pressure, no judgment. Just a couple of steps that you can take to start making your life better. So if you wanna take the quiz, you can find it at makemorelove.show/quiz And at the end of the quiz, there's a link to set up that free one-on-one call for that review that I was telling you about. So I hope you're gonna give that a try. And we're back. So let's talk about bids for connection. Just in case you haven't heard that term before, These are the little gestures that you make toward your partner to bring them closer to you. We all do it all the time, and how we respond to them and react to the ones that we receive is just as important, if not more important than the ones we give out. It can be the simplest thing, like waiting to have your coffee until your partner's ready so that you could sit down and drink it together. Now, if you've been married a while, you probably have a lot of small things like that that you've built into your daily life. They're so built in actually that you don't even think about them anymore. But by putting a tiny bit of thought and intention into those little gestures, you can turn them from old habits into new avenues for relationship repair. So for this challenge, here's one way you can give that a try. If you've been together for at least a little while, you must know something that your partner loved from childhood Favorite candy, something they used to collect their favorite Saturday morning cartoons. You know that stuff, right? It should be specifically from their childhood, not just a favorite in general, because we're gonna try to make a deep connection to a time before all that shit went down. So if you know what those things are, then great. You won't even have to ask. And if you don't know anything, then you and I probably need to have a talk. That's exactly the kind of thing we can handle in a relationship reset call. So once you've got that touch point, just bring that into the present moment. But this is key. Don't mention it. Don't ask if they saw it. Don't look for credit. Just do it. What you're doing is leaving a trail of breadcrumbs back to your love life together. So leave a bag of Raisinettes or some Oreos and milk on their desk. Find the original Fantastic Four or Josie in the Pussycats cartoon on YouTube and watch them in bed on Saturday morning. Or set up the original Jungle Book movie for date night, or play the Monkey's first album in your new car on a road trip. Or get them one of those miniature glass animals that used to be like 35 cents at the five and 10. They're now gonna run you about 35 bucks, and you'll have to go looking for them in an antique shop. But if you find them, that's gonna be a real hit with the right person. Now, you've probably guessed that these things are my childhood favorites. You of course, need to fill in your partner's, and after you've done some of that, which shows them that you remember those things and that you're thinking of them, then you can ask them to watch or do some of your favorite childhood things. Watch your favorite movie, or go to your favorite place to get ice cream. Because it's actually really hard to stay mad at someone when their inner child is peeking out from behind the mask of their grownup self. I know that today I didn't give you as much step by step. It was more examples that you're gonna have to interpret, but honestly, nobody can know these childhood memories, but you and your partner. So you're gonna have to do a little bit of digging on your own. Before we wrap up, there are three key points I hope you'll take away from today's episode. The first one is, stop saving the best for last, whether it's eating dessert first or any other kind of pleasure, put it first at least once in a while later, is just never guaranteed. Number two is play is a direct path to a deeper place in your partner's heart. I know this sounds a little cheesy, but you can't believe how much power is in there. Tapping into childhood pleasures can break down walls that no amount of talking could ever do. and Number three is little things make a big impact. I know I say this a lot, but study after study expert after expert have all confirmed this. An accumulation of consistent small gestures and intentional actions builds a resilient and secure relationship where passion and intimacy are baked in. It's much better to do the small things consistently than to make these grand romantic gestures that feel forced or at least contrived. I'm gonna leave you with these thoughts. Your relationship won't improve on its own. You may have to take the initiative to improve it. I get that it might feel unfair, like you are the only one doing the work, but think of it as an angel investment. You're putting in early energy to get things moving, and once your partner starts to see the value of what you're building, they're gonna start to bring their own equity to the table. And sometimes the smartest thing you can do is stop being so serious. Try something playful, something ridiculous, something that reminds you that you actually do enjoy each other. That feeling is one of the best parts of being together. It's one of the reasons you chose this person in the first place, and it's one of the reasons you chose to get into a committed relationship with them. So it's worth whatever effort it takes to keep that playful, pleasurable part of your relationship healthy for the long haul. Alright. I hope today's episode got you thinking. But you know, we can only do so much in an open forum like this. If you want to look at your specific situation, book in a free Relationship Reset Call. We'll figure out the next best move and set you on a path to a better relationship for both you and your partner. You can just head over to relationshipresetcall.com and pick a time. You can also join our Passionate Partners Insider Community on Facebook. There's exclusive content and resources there. Or, visit our website or our social channels to learn more about our programs, workshops, and private coaching options. All the links to everything I mentioned plus my personal email are in the show notes. I'll be here whenever you're ready. Now I've got a quick request. I'd really appreciate your help spreading the word about Make More Love. First, if you haven't done it already, hit follow or subscribe on your favorite platform. It helps more people find the show and it also keeps you in the loop. Second, leaving a review would mean the world. It helps us grow our community and reach more people. And finally, if you know someone who is struggling in their relationship, then share the show with them. You might just change their life. Thank you so much for spreading the word. I believe Love is not something you find. You have to make it. And that's my mission. To help you Make More Love... With Your Wife and In Your Life. I'm Ellen Dorian and that's what I've got for you today.