Rescu.com.au’s relationships expert, Kathryn Eisman shares her top ten tips on how to re-ignite the spark in your relationship and to keep it burning long after Valentine’s Day.
How do you go from falling in love to falling asleep? Get married! Fortunately we’ve all met those couples that are the exact opposite. Couples, who seem so deliriously, annoyingly happy and ‘in’ love 10, 20, 50 years into marriage, you want to know what they’re smoking!
These couples are a barometer against which we often judge our own relationship – at times favorably, often not. They force us to look for clues as to how we too might live happily ever after. So just in time for Valentine’s Day, I’ve found 10 tips you can implement immediately that will bring your water to the boil all over again…
1. Cancel Valentine’s Day and invent your own romantic holiday. Dessertfest 2012, anyone?
2. Don’t. Get. Up. At least once a year, organise for your kids to have sleepovers or stay at the grandparent’s house and commit to staying in bed all weekend long. Pop open the bubbly, eat brunch in bed, read the papers, watch a movie, make love, nap and make love again. Indulge in the rare luxury of doing absolutely nothing, together.
3. Support their crazy dream. Whether it’s to write a children’s book or become a Kung Fu master- support their crazy dream, even if you don’t ‘get it’.
4. Have a shared financial goal. A huge proportion of fights stem from having differing financial goals. Be it to pay off your mortgage or save for that trip to Italy, make sure you have something you’re BOTH working towards.
5. Do it anywhere but the bedroom. Using the office desk for something other than work adds variety and spices up the routine. And, it has the added bonus of not being immediately conducive to sleep, so you might actually stay awake long enough to get down to the other kind of ‘business’.
6. Hold hands. It’s one of the most intimate ways you can touch each other, even if it’s just walking to your car from a burger joint.
7. Give a detailed compliment. Every single day, have a good look at your partner and think of one specific, true thing you’d like to praise them for. If could be how tech savvy they are recording your favorite TV show, or it could be their forearms. This tip will get you in the habit of noticing things you might otherwise have overlooked (and will make him glow with pride).
8. Forgive. Nobody is perfect, no, not even you. While it’s important to address the important issues, let the other ‘stuff’ slide. Once a week just ‘clear’ the silly annoyances (crunching ice in bed etc.) from your mind and let them goooo. Breath in …and out…
9. Laugh until you cry. A good old-fashioned crack up session can be just as intimate as making love. Hire a movie that guarantees laughs, or pop into a comedy club and go for it!
10. Get out of town! Nothing spices up a relationship more than a change of scene. A couple of times a year clear a weekend and book yourself on a mini-break somewhere neither of you have ever been before. Even a couple of nights in a new environment, with a new routine, not to mention, new fluffy bed and hotel sheets (yum!) is guaranteed to bring the spark back pronto.
Warning: if you follow the above advice you may well turn into one of ‘those’ annoying couples.
For more quality relationship advice from Kathryn Eisman make sure to follow her blog on Rescu.
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