Keep the Love and Spark Alive this Valentine's and Always – Emma Solo (Ep.11)

Happy Valentine’s Day, and happy Loving today and all year around! I think we all know that if we don’t nurture our relationship that it withers and dies… This is why I love Valentine’s Day so much. 

~ It serves as a reminder to step up our loving game 

~ It helps us make a deposit in our love account

~ It helps us reset and recommit to our Love… 

Love is always there but can become very elusive if we are not in touch with it… ✨

All the commercial aspects of the holiday aside, this is a wonderful time to refocus on our couple goals, relationship nurturing, and connection habits. 

And, depending on the status of our relationship this might be a great time to invest in taking our loving to new heights – to rekindle the spark, spice things up, and enhance passion… 

In today’s episode, I fly solo for a robust episode on addressing culprits to low desire, upleveling relationship dynamics, and meeting targeted relationship needs – for connection and passion...  

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🌟MENTIONED INSIDE / RESOURCES:

~ Do you want to have out of this world deeply connecting, engaging and super fun dates with your partner? Date Your Partner Protocol (Free Downloadable)

~ Do you want to create a stronger, deeper, more meaningful, and nourishing connection with your partner? Valentine’s Experience

~ Do you want to experience less conflict and more love in your relationship? Play with our Relationship Enrichment 2.0 retreat - pre-recorded for your convenience and FREE with our Radiance Membership… 

~BLOG:  Stay Connected

~ YOUTUBE PLAYLIST: Successful Relationship Strategy™ 

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🌟MORE ON THIS EPISODE:

Watch the YouTube Video!

More about the podcast on our Podcast Page

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DISCLAIMER: This content is meant to support your Journey and not as a replacement for professional assistance. Additionally, the ideas and resources provides by our guests are their ideas and recommendations alone and not necessarily a reflection of the host’s.

Transcript

Emma: 0:30

Hello, lovelies, welcome to another episode I am so excited for today. I want to wish you a fabulous, fantastic and most romantical Valentine's Day. In today's episode, I am going to offer things to help you address any lack of desire, any intimacy blotness that you might have going on in your relationship or anything that might be getting in the way from you experiencing your connection, your love, your passion, and from really creating the relationship that you desire. So we're going to cover things. I'm going to give you insights and practical takeaways to help you rekindle your love, deepen your connection, enhance your intimacy and keep the spark alive. Stay tuned, you're in for a treat. So welcome to another episode I am so excited for today. I am going to cover the topic of love from a more intimacy, fun, sparkly place today, and I'm going to break this down into three parts. The first one is going to be talking about five culprits to desire and intimacy. I'm going to cover five areas that might get in the way of feeling more sexy and available and ready to have fun with your partner just because of the way life is. So those five. Then I'm going to give you more of a specific thing that might be happening in your relationship more dynamic and relational in nature and what to do about that and how to address that, to also help in this area. And finally, we're going to talk about how to nurture love, depending on what kind of love your relationship needs. So first we're going to assess that and then I'm going to give you specifics, very practical takeaways on how to nurture whatever it is, how to address whatever it is that you need in your relationship, the type of love that you need. We're going to help you put that in place. So, loads of content, stay tuned, grab a pen and paper if you need it. I am going to give you all kinds of goodies today and, in the name of Valentine's Day, we want to really take this in so that we could continue to have an amazing month of love and thereafter, like I like to usually say Okay.

Emma: 3:00

So here we go. What are the five culprits of desire? The first one is exhaustion. Right, that's almost like a no-brainer. And before I jump into that, I actually want to highlight something to take into consideration before you dive into doing more behavioral, lifestyle, relational changes, and that is to be aware that there might be something physical going on, right? So, if you're finding that you have any hard time performing, whether you're whatever organs you have male, female or whatever to get yourself checked out Are your hormones working properly? Is your blood flow working properly? Is your heart okay? Is whatever right? So check it out. And even more mechanical, like is your back okay or is your range of movement okay? So, whatever it is, if you have pain, if you're just having a hard time taking care of business and having fun, get a physical, see the proper doctors to help you assist. If there's anything that needs to be addressed outside from psychological, relational, spiritual, energetic and everything else that I'm going to try to offer you today, so take care of business from that side. Get the clean bill of health, so rule out anything else that might be going on. Medicines impact also just how things operate in Lovito and things like that. So that's number one. The number two we're going to play with what I'm going to offer today. All right, okay.

Emma: 4:28

So going back to exhaustion, we want to do a little bit of a shift from all the doing that we do to more of a recharging approach to life and how we do our life. Now I hear what you might be thinking about this as I say that it's like well, heck, how am I going to do that? My life is so busy. I have so much stuff going on. I get it, believe me, I get it right. So what we want to do here is stay open-minded to the ideas that I'm going to offer you, because you will find that you will have excuses, resistances, explanations for why you can't do these things, and you will find that you're trying to make a case for keeping these things right, for why you can't change them. And I promise you, if you stay a little open-minded, you will be able to make changes to this fiber culprit.

Emma: 5:21

If any of them are fit for you, if they're part of what's going on for you in your life, you just have to stay open-minded and target it and play with it, Okay, so you have to think about what to do and how to do it, and you play with it to your heart's content, as much or as little as you like. If any of these resonate for you, take it or leave it up to you. The more that you take in, obviously, the nicer the shift that you could make, the bigger and the faster and the more that it sticks around. And so it's up to you. How do you want to receive this? All right, and so I know that we're very busy, that we have a lot of things going on and that we run from one thing to the next and we rush and we're jam-packed, are scheduling our day and our routines are loaded with things, responsibilities, commitments, running around, taking care of business, and so what I want to offer and I offer this a lot in all the content I'm sure you've heard me say this, if you follow me or if you work with us that we want to move from being a human doing to a human being.

Emma: 6:22

All right, we want to create more leisure, more spaciousness, more flow in our routines, in our lifestyles, in our style. We want to make sure that we are not running ourselves to rocket. We want to make sure that we are not spending ourselves, that we're not burning ourselves out, okay, and so look at what your day looks like, how packed is it, and see what things you could get rid of. What can you streamline, delegate, outsource, scratch, and say to yourself, like, why the heck am I doing this thing? It's just a killer of energy and time and resources. You got to go right. So be brutal with this because you will find that a little bit of a time and space that you create in there automatically would allow your body to start recharging and replenishing, right, if you don't have it constantly on high alert and going.

Emma: 7:18

Something else about that is that if you're not operating from a high alert place, your nervous system is not constantly activated. It's in flight or freeze mode constantly, like when you're in that place all the time. You're really wearing yourself down, you're really doing some damage to your body and to your life. So when you create a little bit of space, you will find that you activate your parasympathetic nervous system and from that place, all your resources come online. You see, so deep breathing and just creating a little bit more space will help you do that and therefore you're automatically resourcing yourself. You see, it doesn't have to be that challenging. Just create the environment for it.

Emma: 7:58

Baby steps that get rid of things. And I'm actually going to say more Right now, just lining up the five culprits, and then I'm going to give you a little bit more of what to do with each one of them, on how to fix it. Okay, so that was number one. Number two is domesticity not being too domestic, right? So with the first one, if you're exhausted, obviously it's hard to feel sexy, to engage, to have the energy for being intimate and for playing and all that kind of stuff. When you're too domestic, what happens is that you're squashing the attraction and the sexiness factor between the partners right between yourself and your partner.

Emma: 8:39

You are in a role partner, wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend and I'm saying in duality, like that, just to make life simple. Okay, understand that people have different genders, different couple structures, different family things. So just offering the more traditional opposites, just to make points. But I know that there's a whole range and there's a whole thing that people identify with and that they play out in their lives, and that's totally fine. Just translate it so that it fits you. Okay, when you hear me use binary language, then translate it for yourself in terms of what applies to you and know that when I use that language, I'm actually referring to the whole spectrum, okay, and so when we're very domestic, then we're playing out roles that come along with how we identify ourselves. Whatever things we pick up in the home. Our roles can be more gender specific and traditional or not so much, but there's still roles involved. Like I'm the caretaker of these things, I'm the caretaker of those things, right. There are things that we play out mom, dad, right.

Emma: 9:48

And so we are in our roles, we are in our identities and we are in that way that we look at ourselves. That is like a cover on the essence of who we are. The essence of who we are. Energy is where the attraction is right. That's where we usually we tend to polarize with our partner in terms of that energy. But when we are in roles, all that stuff gets muted. Just the roles are interacting and having a relationship and connecting. It doesn't really work out that well because the attraction can't be felt. You see, it becomes about talking about the doing and just being in the thinking place and being mechanical, and we don't get to fully show up with our energy and with our awesomeness and with our radiance and with our chemistry and with just the yumminess that creates the attraction, right. And so I'm gonna give you an anecdote for this when I move on to the second part of this part.

Emma: 10:57

Okay, so that was number two. The mysticity Number three is expectations. So with the roles come all the expectations, and even outside of the roles we have expectations of our partner, of our relationship, of our commitment, of our marriage, of just being a person, right? We have things that we like, that we prefer, that we want, that we expect, and so we have those beliefs and thoughts running around. And if our partner is not aware of our expectations and the things that we would like and how they would meet our needs and that would create joy in our life and that would work for us, how are they supposed to meet them? On one hand, on the other hand, it's not their job to make us happy and to take care of all those things for us, right? So let's not get hung up here with that observation. The point is there's a whole tangent there, okay, so we wanna meet each other's needs and take care of each other and be nice to each other because we want to, not because we have to. So there's a whole conversation about that.

Emma: 12:13

But for this segment of the conversation is, when we have those expectations and we impose them, knowingly or unknowingly, or whether our partner knows it or not, we create funny business, you see. So, first of all, they might not know any of that. So whether they want to do that for us or not, it's irrelevant, because they're gonna fall flat on their face regardless, because they're not aware of what they're supposed to be offering us or providing us or giving us or delighting us with. And if they do now they might not be interested in doing some other things. And then why is that held over their head? They don't know us. Anything In that language might get you. We are in relationship because we want to and we're making a commitment and it's a choice and for the minds that are in relationship enrichment and success, creating a successful relationship.

Emma: 13:07

Check out the podcast that I did a couple of months ago. It was called 10 Tactics to Ensure Everlasting Love in your Relationship and in your Life. In that I go through all the whole relationship mindset how to look at this. So if you're getting tripped up with some other things that I'm saying, you're like what the heck? No, that's not right. I don't believe that in my relationship. So some other beliefs that you might have might be getting you right. So check out the podcast. If you're finding that some other things that I'm saying are you're like we, what If they feel foreign to you? Or if you're having a strong reaction, just check it out right, because I explained it really well in that podcast that sets up what is a relationship mindset. That's helpful to have to create the relationship that you want.

Emma: 13:54

A lot of times, the things that we think that we should think and that we think they just set us up for failure, so they don't know us anything per se. They want to please us and take care of us and be loving and nurturing, and all these nice things, and so it would be nice if they knew what those expectations were, and also to have a say on the things that are desired from us. If I say first, obviously, so that they could contribute to what we would like to get, either in the way that we would like it or it could be massage between the two of us, and so we get what we want and they give also something that they're able to give. You see, because sometimes we make these demands and our partners either it's really against them or they really can't, and then we're setting ourselves up in them. So it's not fair to anybody. So just tweaking that first of all, like making expectations be known and then, secondly, flying in together so that the expectations can be matched properly. Yay right, so with that we quiet down all the noise that we have running in our head and all of the potential resentment and all the feelings that might come up because the expectations weren't being met, and both those feelings and those thoughts get in the way of being able to relax and feel good feelings and show up properly to intimate moments for them to be able to happen. And this is very especially true for women the more female partner because our brain gets really active and it's very hard for us to relax and quiet that down and be able to get in our bodies and be available for more intimacy. And so very important to address this so that, although that could quiet it down and then we could show up better to interactions. So that was number three.

Emma: 15:56

Number four is enmeshment. Now, enmeshment means they were too close and let me clarify that. Some people who are experiencing distance in their relationship or disconnection, they might be like well, what's wrong with that? That sounds kind of cool and I promise you that's not what you want. That is not the definition of connection and intimacy and closeness.

Emma: 16:18

So enmeshment means imagine that your fingers are interlaced and if you try to move your hands around they can't go very far because the hands are kind of stuck together and each hand is a partner and when you're doing that, there's only so much visibility that you have from one part of the hand, from like what the pinkie's doing to what the thumb is doing. You can't see very much what's going on and so the connection might feel closed because you're all intertwined, but it's also limited because you can't really see the whole thing. You really can interact and fully experience the whole thing. But now imagine, un-interlock your fingers, close your fists gently, not too tight, and then put your fingers touching the other fingers from the other hand. So touch your hands together as if you're making a heart, so your fists are touching each other and now rotate your hands all around and you can see that the pinkie could go all the way around and see what the thumb is doing, and your whole hand could touch all the other fingers Right one hand. The fingers of one hand could connect and touch and feel the fingers of the other hands, all of them. You could rotate around and all of it could be known.

Emma: 17:36

So when you are close and close and intimate and connected, you have the opportunity to have those hands closed and touch and be able to move all around and know all of your partner on the other side and vice versa. So when you are probably from that place, you will really know and connect with your partner and likewise to your partner with you, and you're not too close for comfort. You're able to really feel and experience all of the other and they could experience all of you without feeling like you're having friction and that you're limited and stuck. So what we wanna do there is we don't wanna be too close to be able to feel the allure between us. When we are too close, we almost need a breather right. When we have that in mesh, we're like like it feels, like there's a grip on our heart and on our soul, like we can breathe, we can like function right. It's too much closeness. There is such a thing and for now that we had the experience of the pandemic, I'm sure you can relate to what I'm saying right, there could be such a thing as too much when it comes to this. So we want to make that shift so that we are intimate, connected and close, but not too close for comfort.

Emma: 19:02

That was number four. Number five is boredom and sometimes when we get too much into a routine, too much of a rhythm, too much of life having all of these things and too busy and too full impact with everything else, it becomes all of the doing all of the same things, all the same routine, over and over and over and over. And it's like and for those of you who can't see me, if you just listen to the podcast and not watching the video, I'm tapping my forehead like duh. It's too much, right? That level of life is soul sucking, it's really. It creates burnout. It doesn't inspire, it doesn't generate energy, it doesn't give spark, it doesn't stimulate, it doesn't give joy, it doesn't create the awesomeness of life. You're not really living life, you're doing life. There's a difference. We don't wanna do, we do too much. Our whole life is about doing right. We're missing the point. Okay, so with that, what's missing is more stimulation and good energy, and so we want to change things up to be able to create that and that be so raw in our life.

Emma: 20:13

So I'm gonna go back through the five again. I'm gonna get more specific in terms of what you can do to address any of these culprits that might resonate for you if you're experiencing them in your life and listen, and if you have a lot of them, or if you have all of them, it's okay. No judgment, right? This is just awareness. There's insight here. Now you know that like, oh man, well, not for nothing, I'm not interested. Not for nothing, I'm not feeling it. Not for nothing, I don't have the energy for it. Not for nothing, we haven't been intermittent this long. Not for nothing, whatever it is you're going through in your life. Okay, so it's all good, we're here to get that awareness, to recognize what's happening and to do something about it. Okay, so I'm gonna go through more specific things to do for the five culprits and then I'm gonna also address, like I said before as part of the plan for today, part two of today's presentation, which is gonna be addressed in more relational, dynamic, things that might be getting in the way, and that's potentially why some of these culprits got created in the first place, you see. So we're gonna start going a little deeper as we go. So for the five, for number one of part one that one was exhaustion. So I already mentioned to clear the decks as much as possible, to create some leisure, to create some spaciousness, to move slower, to have less things right. All of that, just basic stuff.

Emma: 21:43

What I wanna add here is the icing on that cake, which is and again, if you've been following me, you've heard this before is to integrate a self-love practice into your lifestyle. Please, don't roll your eyes, don't have them puff, don't have resistance about this. You're shooting yourself on your foot if you're doing those things. Okay, just stay open-minded. Self-love means that you are going to approach your life in a way that's really gonna take care of you so that you could really have the life you want. Okay, this is like a must. It's not negotiable. You can't afford not to do this. So a self-love practice in a nutshell, and also I do have other content that talks about this. There is another podcast on the self-love practice that came out at the beginning of January, just because in January we practice the new habits and all the new things, and you can check that one out for more specifics.

Emma: 22:41

Okay, but for now, the highlights, just to hook you up with this, is that the self-love practice has four parts self-honoring, self-management, self-care and self-connection. I actually call them aspects. So the four aspects of the self-love practice. When you engage with them to the degree that serves you as much or as little as you like then you will recharge, replenish, start sparkling again creating that awesomeness. Okay, this is what's gonna help you not have that exhaustion and have your own back, and so you're gonna play with those four aspects, with the self-honoring has to do with honoring your time, your boundaries yourself, your desires, your goals, just everything about you that you want to allow to come through and not be stifled and really be honored.

Emma: 23:37

Self-management has to do with how you line up your day and your schedule and all your things. Self-care has to do with doing all of the basics with food, nutrition, exercise, sleep, hydration, supplement all of that whole angle, which is usually what people talk about when they talk about self-care. We're gonna really drill in with that, and actually I have a podcast. The last one that came out has to do about that, that self-care aspect, so you could drill even more if this is the thing that you need, and then you're gonna build that in into your lifestyle. And listen, I'm offering you a lot of things and I'm gonna offer you even more as this conversation continues. You don't have to do all of it, right? It might feel like you're telling me not to do stuff, emma, but yet look at all this stuff you're giving me to do. My son can't do it, but I don't want you to do all of it.

Emma: 24:30

You see, this is where you get to use your discernments and your judgment. You get to say to yourself, hmm, out of the five culprits, which is the one that's kicking my butt? That's the one that I need to address first, and let me focus on that. And how do I wanna focus it? Come up with all the things that I'm saying, what lights up for you, what stands out for you, what resonates for you and for your life, and play with that. You see, and that, in and of itself, will create momentum and will spread, it will have a domino effect and it will take care of you. So you don't have to do all of the things. Find the thing that really will work for you, that resonates the most for you, and then play with that, leverage that one, so it affects everything else. So please hang on to that note there, okay.

Emma: 25:20

So then, for the mysticity, I already mentioned that playing those roles squashes that essence of us. It gets all covered up and we don't get to really shine and radiate and have that good energy that creates the attraction between us. Therefore, what I wanna offer for this one is to create special time, couple time, where you just get to be a couple, where you're not husband and wife, you're not partners, you're not parents, you're not all the things, you're romantical partners, like I like to say, and just the two people are hanging out, the essence of the two people are showing up to the moment, and you're engaging in an activity that tickles both of you, or one of you more, but the other one just enjoys the fact that the partner's tickled. Okay, and with this one also, I usually like to add dating, and there were some other things. As I continue this presentation today, there's more things I'm going to add to this element so that it creates more and more of that connection, deep connection, more nourishing connection, more spark. Okay, so stay tuned for what else is coming for this, but for now, just create into your routine consistent, protected couple of times.

Emma: 26:42

For number three, for expectations, I kind of already threw this one out there and I just want to highlight it a little bit more, and it had to do with sharing the expectations with. The expectations are right. I said it the other way around and, like, your partner might not know what the expectations are and so, more specifically than is, share what the expectations are. Share the things that you like, share the things that you desire, share the things that give you joy, share the things that give you pleasure, share the things that you would like, share the things that make things easier for you, share all of the things right, and in so doing, then your partner knows how to show up for you, how to have your back and vice versa, right, and with this one.

Emma: 27:27

Not only that, but also are there any negative beliefs, any negativity, bias that continues to play there? How you're looking at things, how you're looking at your partner, how they always let me down in this way. That's a script, right, and it's driven by some wound and some limiting beliefs and something else playing out there. So you have to do that work for yourself. And then earth thing where the drivers are for your stuff. So if you're having these negative beliefs as programs, you're not showing up very nice, right. And even if your partner is doing everything, perfect, you're still going to see something wrong, and there's no such thing as perfection. But you know what I mean. You're not showing up to the best of their ability and it's pretty darn good and you still see full with it. There's a program there, right, you're not receiving, there's a limited belief, there's just funky stuff playing out, and so not only be clear with the expectations and share stuff, but also see what are the drivers behind all of the things that you want and how you're looking at things when you're not getting that. Okay, that's the little hint there. That's very important. Live with your programs, play with your beliefs. See what the scripts, all this stuff that might be holding you back, that's getting in the way of your really genuinely experiencing your partner and having clean communication and clean connections.

Emma: 28:50

Okay, for a measurement, this is the fun one. So, for a measurement, what we want to do is nurture individuality. Now, again, this is my son counterintuitive, because we're trying to create connection, and so we might think that we want more togetherness, not more separateness. Right, but the hint here, or the key, the tip, is that we don't want to be silos and just be complete, so separate, that there is nothing together, that there's no together, there's no couple, there's no relationship.

Emma: 29:26

That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that it's okay to be you, to be your own person, to be your own individual, to have your own feelings, your own thoughts, your own interests, your own preferences, right, you could have a very strong connection and be a very strong couple and still have a very strong individuality. You don't have to become a more massive blob of thing because you're a couple with there is no individual in there, right? If anything, the more than the individuals are there. That's where the attraction is, because you were attracted to the other person when you met them. You weren't attracted to the blob or part of you, right? That doesn't make any sense.

Emma: 30:07

So we want to make sure we hang on to that, like, what makes me special, what makes my husband special, right? What's unique and different about us? How do we connect and nurture that? How do we play with it and enjoy it and relish it and then generate good energy? And then we get to bring that back and bring more yumminess into our time that we do have together, because now we're showing up with renewed spark, right, really admiring of ourselves and just really yummy stuff. And so with this one, what we want to do is create me time and protect it and use it well, right, we don't want to just be like, oh, it's me time and just you just waste it and throw it out the window. You want to use it to do things that really light up your heart, that makes your heart sing, that makes you feel really good, that really touches you and plays with your passions and your gifts and expands your just who you are right. Use that time to become more who you are. That's an investment in your relationship. Okay, didn't see that coming to you.

Emma: 31:14

Okay, so the next one, the last one for the call British boredom and the antidote for boredom is to do things differently into things, change things up. That's probably a no brainer, but when it comes to the relationship and connection and intimacy and passion and desire and all these yummy things, what we want to, to the way that changing things up looks like, is changing of the routine, the flow of life, the commitments, the lifestyle, the things that we engage in together and individually, and expanding on our intimacy repertoire. Right, so the whole gamut we want to play with in changing things up and adding different touches and sprinkling different things, different lists all over the place. Now, that will keep you on your toes, that will keep you alert, not creating stress, not creating overwhelm, not overdoing stress, not doing it. I will never suggest any of that. Just to make life different.

Emma: 32:21

Okay, here and there. We want to add newness, and that will be the antidote for boredom. Okay, we want to add stimulation. We want to stimulate our senses, stretch our brain, interact differently, show up differently, feel differently, different energy, you see, automatically, everything's different. It's so beautiful, okay, so I'm going to show you the five culprits, what they look like and how to fix them.

Emma: 32:45

Now I'm going to move into relationship dynamic. I'm going to do a highlight because, like I mentioned before, I have a whole episode for that, I have YouTube videos on that, I have all kinds of content on this blog posts, all kinds of stuff and I'm going to cover it by highlighting the successful relationship strategy. It's five elements and how they impact what we've been talking about. All right, so the first element of the successful relationship strategy is mindset, and I think that you could already pretty much graph from the conversation that we're having so far that if you're having crooked thoughts, limited beliefs, weird scripts, weird ideas about expectations and relationship and how things work and whatever, that you will not going to have a good experience of your partner and your relationship. You're probably torturing yourself, right, and you're probably fighting a lot and you're getting into other snorkels a lot and, of course, then your desire will be low, your connection will be low, your intimacy will be low and you're not going to be having a great time in your relationship. So the main thing to do here is to watch. That was running through your head. What are you subscribing to, and you need to clean that up, okay.

Emma: 34:00

Number two is communication. So the first element was mindset I'm sorry, context and mindset. The second element is communication and alignment. So this is where we get to expand our communication skills, tools and repertoire, where we get to step it up in how we do all of our exchanges showing up, communicating, addressing things, solving conflict, even apologizing. You could step up all of that. How do you do everything? Whether you're communicating with your words or just with your body, all of it could probably stand to be stepped up and upgraded. So do some homework, figure out some resources. Again, I have all the podcasts and all the YouTube videos and all the blogs and stuff. You can use my content and step it up a notch.

Emma: 34:54

Number three is clarity and dynamics. This is where our emotional patterns get in the way, where our wounds get triggered. Our sensitivities get triggered, our defense mechanisms show up. My partner does something. It triggers me, I react In my reaction, it triggers them. So then they react, they react, they do something. It triggers us some more, we react some more, it triggers them some more, and we're stuck in a loop, right?

Emma: 35:21

And so the key here is to figure out, okay, what are my sensitivities, what are my wounds, what are the things that I need to stretch in and reprogram, deprogram and get rid of and clean up and address and heal and grow? What are my partners? How do we work together to meet each other's needs? How do I meet my own needs? It's not my partners job to get all my needs met, right? Is there job air quotes to meet my relational needs and to meet some of my other needs and just to be a good partner and support my journey, my growth and my evolution and my healing might be coming, my best self and who I really am, but it's not their job job, it's not their responsibility, right? It's a nice thing to have in a relationship, one of the points of being in a relationship in vice versa, right? But so then, how do I meet my own needs and how do I make requests and address things so my partner could help me? Right Then, meeting my needs or supporting me, meeting my own needs, right, and how can we be mindful not to trigger each other? And when we do, how do we go about that differently so we have a healing experience? So there's a bunch of stuff here, okay, so you could play with this as well.

Emma: 36:34

Then the next one is actually connection, and I'm going to say more in the last part of this recording, but for now, connection, intimacy, is just that right. How do we connect with each other In a way that serves us both? How do I connect to myself? Because then, if I'm connected to myself, I'm actually present in my own body suit, and when my partner interacts with me, he's interacting with me, not just some blob of meat, right. And so first connect to myself, then show up to my interaction Beautiful and then share what's going on in my internal world, share what's going on in my thinking, and it needs to be clean, it needs to be about what's happening for me, my experiences, my thoughts, not how you suck. This is not how we communicate and this is not how we create connections. We speak of ourselves, right, and then we're building good practices around developing, enriching and deepening that connection and that intimacy which is going to be in part three.

Emma: 37:40

The last, one of the elements of the successful relationship strategy is collaboration and this helps a lot with some of those culprits because it helps with exhaustion. If you're dividing and conquering, then one partner's not overdoing the doing, they have more support. It helps with that, with the domesticity you create different ways of doing, collaborating in your home and in your life, visioning and creating dreams, right. So then you're tapping into all kinds of other things and you could just make it more yummy, more robust, more rich. So, with collaboration, how do we create systems and way of collaborating that it's not a grind and it's not conflict and it's not friction every time that we had to get something done, but we fear out of a way to get on the same page and to get things done. So those are the five elements. As you could see from mindset, communication, wounds, triggers, connection and collaboration All of those things will have an impact on the culprits. If you're looking at things funny, if you're communicating funny, if you're overwhelmed, if you're triggered, if you're not feeling connected, it will show up in all of the places, right, it makes sense that your connection and your intimacy will be more deeply affected, impacted.

Emma: 39:05

Okay, so for part three, this is the final part of the whole presentation today. So what I want you to do is to think for yourself okay, what's the deal with my relationship? Where's my relationship at? What's the status of my relationship? Do I need to build a relationship because it's feeling unsafe, insecure, unstable, conflictual, disconnected, funky, right, which is all of those things? This is usually where people come to see us for couples therapy or marriage counseling. Because it's just not feeling right, like you're not synchronizing, you're not getting your needs met. You might be fighting a lot and getting on each other's nerves, potentially considering even leaving each other, just because you just can't make it work. If that's the case, then we need to do relationship building.

Emma: 39:52

Now, if your relationship is fairly good and you're just like, hmm, we have an amazing relationship, but we're having a hard time getting to the intimacy place more better, just because all these things, you know, life happens, just like we've been talking about today, and I would just love to spice it up a bit, let's make the relationship even better. How do we get to the eroticism and romance and passion and the yummy stuff, and for that we call it passion building? Okay. So choose for yourself, and of course you want that too. If you're building your relationship, I get it. But it's hard to build that stuff if you're not getting along.

Emma: 40:31

Okay, this is where people get tripped up. So we got to do first things first. It doesn't mean that you never have sex again. That's not what I'm saying. That means that you continue to do your intimacy, like you usually do, while you do your relationship building. And we could do some other things in there too. Once you hear what I'm going to offer, it doesn't mean that you don't work on that at all, don't invest in that at all, don't play with that at all. That's not what I'm saying. But you're more focused on the other side, because once your relationship is stronger, more built, then it's much easier to do the other stuff and more fun, right, you'll get more bang for your buck, if you may.

Emma: 41:04

Okay, so for relationship building, what we want to do is address your attachment, love. Usually, what's happening here is that you're not feeling very secure or very loved or very connected, and what would need to happen is to do nurturing of the relationship and of each other, and so we would do that through connection habits, and I'm going to give you some examples of those in a second. And then, if you're working on passion building, what we want to work is on passion, love, and what that looks like is that we want to building alluring habits, and for the first one we do nurturing, for the second one, we do enticing. So if your relationship needs more building, we're going to do nurturing, we're going to work on attachment, love and creating security and connection and making it work better. And if you're looking for passion, we're going to do enticing love, where we're going to building some alluring habits just to spice things up. And this is another spectrum, guys.

Emma: 42:08

So it doesn't mean that they're different worlds. It might feel like they're different worlds, but you could slide back and forth depending on the status of your relationship at any given moment. It doesn't mean that it's so discreet and easy to be this or this. You could slide. Nobody's stuck anywhere. Sometimes we might feel much better about our relationship and it's easier to go to the other side, where you could be more spicy. And at all these times we were really struggling and there's no way that we're going to be intimate, and so it depends on what's going on at any given time and the season of life that your relationship is in and it's so good. There's no right, there's no wrong, there's nothing happening. You just play with what you have and you make the best of it and you create what you like.

Emma: 42:56

So, to wrap up, I'm going to give you some examples of each of those and what the connection habits are if you're doing nurturing and relationship building, and what the alluring habits are if you're doing enticing and passion building. So for connection habits, we have things like morning coffee, midday chicken, delighting your partner, doing a daily debrief, having meaningful conversations, having an appreciation session, having the couple of times that I was talking about before, having sexy time, like I said, doesn't mean that you're not having sex anymore. Having a date and your partner planned, planning fun, doing some visioning for life and creating the life that you want, doing relationship enrichment those are just some examples. You could use those to spark other ideas for yourself. Now I'm going to give you some resources to help you with this. If you go to my blog and you put in connection habits, you're going to get a bunch of blog posts that could help you. That's number one. Number two this is some of the podcasts I already mentioned from prior episodes. And number three this is what's really cool about today's conversation.

Emma: 44:09

If you join our Radiant membership, you get our three-day relationship enrichment 2.0 retreat and no additional cost. The membership is only $29 per month. You give it for as long as you want, you can cancel it at any time and when you sign up for that, you get the whole retreat. It's recorded. You could do it at your own time, in your own pace, in your own comfort of your own home, and you can create your own retreat experience and you do it however you like. And this is a great way of investing in your relationship and building those connection habits, okay, taking your relationship to the next level. So check that out. We're making it available this month for Valentine's Day. It's going to stay in the membership, but we just put it up for you and I hope that you take advantage of that. It's going to be really amazing for you to have.

Emma: 45:04

And then I mentioned the Date your Partner. There's a free resource also on our website. If you go to Resources, we have, for February, a Date your Partner Protocol. So one page downloadable is free and with that you could properly date your partner. So the essence shows up and you do the couple of times in the dating properly, okay. And then, lastly, we created a Valentine's Day experience. It's not the day which is today, it's on the 18th, it's coming up, it's a Valentine's experience and it is going to be amazing ground breaking work on deepening your connection, really creating a nourishing connection with your partner, deepening it, and there's a whole experience on how to do that, and it's a prize around creating a piece of art to stick with you. At the end you don't have to be artistic to participate and to enjoy the experience. So check it out. I'm going to put all of these links in the show notes and those are all different ways to invest in your relationship, to nourish it, to expand your love and experience your love this month and thereafter, okay.

Emma: 46:17

And then for the alluring habits. So here's some other ones, just to make things more spicy and to move more towards the other side of the spectrum. And so here's, here are a few erotic reading, erotic watching, sexy shopping, sexy research, tantric meditation, self-pleasure, dress up, go naked, essential bath, massage as a gift, make out time, anything that gives you pleasure. You get the idea Right, so you can play with all of those extrapolates and make them your own and really have fun. So those are just some ideas just to kind of spark some of the juices there, and you can take it to the next level for yourself and explore them and play with them.

Emma: 47:10

Okay, my loves, I hope that you'll enjoy that. I would love to hear what you liked about today, what resonated for you in terms of the culprit, what might be in the way in terms of the five elements of the successful relationship strategy where you might need support, or what you need to play with, and which one of the sites of the spectrum are you playing with the most at this time and which one of those habits sounded really good to you? So anything of those things that you want to share, I would love to hear, let us know, how you do and what you love most about today, and I wish you the best Valentine's day and much love today, this month and always, until the next one. Bye.