During the holidays, there is a significant increase in invitations and expectations from friends and family. It becomes even more important than usual to check in with yourself and your partner on how you’re feeling, what you want, and what you need.

Without this check in, you’re likely to end up feeling overwhelmed, overbooked, and resentful. Your physical and emotional energy may become depleted and you’ll look back on this time of year with relief that it’s finally over. (Not the type of holiday experience we’d want to have).

This is where the boundaries come into play.

There are a few different factors to consider when deciding where and how to spend your time this holiday season. We’ve identified three types of boundaries:

Physical Boundaries | These are boundaries around where you will and won’t go and how you will or will not accept physical touch (for yourself and your children).

Emotional Boundaries | These are boundaries around the ways in which you will connect with others. For example, what topics you will and will not discuss, how long you’ll spend connecting with particular people, and the types of emotional experiences you’re open to having.

Energetic Boundaries | These are boundaries around your physical, emotional, and mental energy. They involve taking into account how tired you are, how emotionally drained or energized you feel when interacting with certain people, and how much mental bandwidth you have for supporting others.

In this week’s episode, we’re going deeper into each of these three types of boundaries, what they look like, how to evaluate which ones you need to enact, and how we apply these in our lives.

Would you describe you and your partner as friends?

Are you friendly to one another on a daily basis? Do you look out for each other and offer help when needed? Do you laugh together?

We’ve talked about the three arenas of healthy relationships - physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, and friendship - many times and we find friendship often takes a back seat to the others. The existence of a strong friendship can be more subtle than the other two.

Here’s what it looks like:

You find each other funny. The jokes you tell, the way you do and say certain things, and attempts to be playful are humorous.

You let there be lightness in your day-to-day. You create a culture of ease in your relationship by initiating and being receptive to friendly chats, silly moments, and things feeling “okay,” even if there’s been a recent disagreement.

You truly enjoy spending time together. You look forward to seeing your partner at the end of the day, whether it’s for a date night or watching TV at home. You run errands together when you can and turn that into a good time, too.

In this week’s episode, we’re talking about all of this plus giving you strategies on how to cultivate a stronger friendship in your relationship. If you’re feeling like you need an uplevel in this area, be sure to check it out.

Thanksgiving is just a few days away... are you ready?

This holiday is a great opportunity to pause and consider what you’re thankful for, both as individuals and a couple. We’ve touched on gratitude many times in that past, so you know it’s a powerful way to cultivate more positivity in your life and relationship.

The holidays can be really difficult. Each one brings a slew of expectations, stressors, past experiences (both good and bad), and more. Thanksgiving is no different. Both you and your partner will have perspectives on how the holiday “should” go, “should” be celebrated, and how time “should” be spent with your families.

It’s crucial to feel like a team as you and your partner walk into Thanksgiving dinner. You need to feel supported and like you have each other’s back. Check out this week’s episode where we’ll be covering all of this and more. We’re talking about:

- What makes Thanksgiving so emotionally charged

- How to prioritize your relationship during the holiday

- How to get along “good enough” with everyone

- Cultivating an attitude of gratitude

We’ve also created a helpful bonus - The Thanksgiving Survival Worksheet - that’s going to take you through what each of you needs to get through the holiday, the best ways to be there for one another, and how to come out united at the end of the day. Click the link above to get your copy!

Well, today we’re being really open and honest with you.

We want you to know:

- We argue with our partners.

- We use the 4 Horsemen at times.

- We get emotionally flooded and overreact.

- We get triggered and lash out at our partners because of past experiences in our relationship or childhood.

We do these things because we’re human beings having an imperfect experience of life.

However, we have mastered a critical skill:

Repair.

When a disagreement goes south, the fallout does not last for days or even hours. We take space, are responsible for calming ourselves down, and then reconvene with our partners to explain, apologize, and move forward from the situation.

This is key.

How you handle conflict just needs to be “good enough,” not perfect.

You need to have a good enough balance in your emotional bank account, a good enough point at which you stop an escalating argument, good enough strategies to calm yourself down, and a good enough habit around initiating and accepting repair attempts.

And you need a partner who is invested in doing these things good enough, too.

Be sure to listen to this week’s episode to hear our latest not-so-pretty conflict stories and learn more about how we resolved them.

We live in a world of pressure, deadlines, and overwhelming to do lists. Naturally, this way of being has a tendency to flow over into our romantic relationships. But, what happens when it does?

Truthfully, it doesn’t always go very well.

A few things to consider:

Is this something my partner actually has control or influence over?

If not, that’s a good indicator that putting time pressure on your partner is an attempt to cope with your own feelings of hopelessness or helplessness in a given situation. If there’s nothing they can do to make it go differently, there’s nothing they can do.

Am I imposing a deadline to reduce my own anxiety or discomfort with the unknown?

Before moving forward with creating a deadline for your partner, check in with yourself. What is my emotional state right now? How am I feeling about this situation? If you’re feeling negative, overwhelmed, stressed, upset, anxious, out of control, or another highly uncomfortable emotion, it’s likely you’re desire to put time pressure on your partner is an attempt at coping.

The most constructive way to connect with your partner in these situations is to share your feelings. Let them know how worried, stressed, or uncomfortable you are with the unknown timeline. Seek emotional support and see how you can team up to manage this distressing time together.

To learn more about to handle time pressure in a relationship preserving way, be sure to listen to this week’s episode.

Our resident Certified Sex Therapist, Marina Voron, gets asked this question by couples A LOT.

“How often should we be having sex?”

For most couples, it seems once a week is a healthy target.

Why?

The focus on frequency of sex is really about making it a habit. Once a week seems to be often enough that couples can get into a routine and have consistent enough opportunities to make it happen.

When sex happens less than once a week, it can start to feel high stakes and pressured, since it doesn’t happen “a lot.” We look for “perfect sex” and are easily disappointed if expectations aren’t met. This can kickstart a cycle of negativity around sex and physical affection, making it increasingly challenging to reset.

Be sure to listen to this week’s episode to learn more about how to prioritize sex and establish your own routine.

One of the most challenging dynamics couples face is when one (or both) partners lie. Being lied to can be extremely triggering within a romantic relationship. Growing up, we’re taught about the inherent “wrongness” in lying and those lessons become internalized as unwavering beliefs.

“Bad people lie.”

“People who lie have something to hide.”

“If someone loves you, they will always be honest with you.”

Learning your partner has lied can lead to a cascade of worry thoughts and questioning past experiences, like:

“How could the one person who is supposed to love and care for me LIE to me?”

“They must not love me as much as they say they do.”

“They must have something to hide.”

“If they’ve lied about this, what else might they have lied about?”

While this is normal, it likely won’t serve you, your relationship, or lead to more honesty from your partner. Lying often comes in moments of emotional stress, as a means of surviving this moment. (Yes, we know they would survive without lying, but it doesn’t always feel that way). This means that establishing a culture of emotional safety is crucial in shifting a dynamic of dishonesty.

If you want to know more about why our partners’ lie and how to change this pattern, be sure to listen to this week’s episode.

In case you needed more motivation to get your relationship on the right track, research shows that the quality of your romantic relationship has a significant impact on your physical health.

In her recent book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, Emily Nagoski details the range of affects marital quality can have.

Perhaps not surprisingly, worse marital quality was associated with worse mental health and quality of life. Consider the daily impact of relational negativity on your well-being. The emotional environment in which we live affects our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and more.

One of the most mind-blowing findings?

Marital quality was a higher predictor of health than smoking.

Smoking?!

Friends, if you’re struggling in your relationship, it’s time to make a change.

To learn more about these studies and the other findings, be sure to check out this week’s episode and Emily’s book.

In our recent discussions about the benefits of gratitude journaling, we learned that not everyone feels inspired by making a list. While I love lists - haha - and feel satisfaction from filling each line, Marina feels restricted and bored by that. Lists can have an association with chores or “to do’s,” making them a turn off from some people.

If you’re more of a “Marina,” mindmapping may be a better fit for boosting your mood and enhancing your relationship.

Mindmapping is a more flexible and fluid way to brainstorm your gratitudes. Instead of a traditional list, you’ll start with the broadest categories (i.e. my husband, my family, my home, my job) in circles around the page. Then, branch off from each one and expand from there.

What are the specific things you’re grateful for about your husband? Your family?

Then, branch off from those too.

Mindmapping is nice because it gives you a visual representation of the abundance of things to be grateful for in your life. Imagine seeing a page full of notes about and connections between everything that impacts you in a positive way!

We go into more detail on this week’s episode, so be sure to check it out!

You must be curious what this one simple thing is…

Gratitude.

Why is gratitude journaling so powerful?

Our brains are extremely skilled at picking out what’s going wrong and what’s problematic. We don’t have a natural tendency to focus on what’s going well. In a relationship, this can perpetuate negative cycles and make it hard to see your partner (and be seen) doing things differently.

We want to help you change that.

By spending a few minutes each day scanning your memory for things that felt good in your relationship, you’re consciously focusing your attention on the positive. You’re feeding your brain good thoughts and your body good feelings in the context of your relationship. It’s sort of like making deposits in the emotional bank account on your own time!

Creating a gratitude journaling practice means:

- Identifying and writing down things about your partner and your relationship that you are grateful for.

- Looking at your list and feeling the feelings of gratitude, joy, or appreciation in your body.

- Visualizing the scenarios you’re referring to on your list and letting yourself enjoy it again.

This is such a small investment, huge payoff activity (our favorite!) that there is nothing to lose by trying it out. We both swear by it and have tons of clients who have experienced significant shifts in their relationships as a result of integrating this practice into their daily routines. Give it a try!