Successful Relationship with Emma

What Struggling Couples Can Learn From Successful Couples – Emma Solo (Ep.32)

• Emma Viglucci • Episode 32

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In today’s episode, Emma shares elements that Successful Couples do automatically in their relationship to create their Successful Relationship. This doesn’t mean they don’t invest in their relationship, on the contrary it means that they do! To create a Successful Relationship there are 5 Key Elements we have to invest in to transform our relationship from ordinary to extraordinary. These are the core Elements of the Successful Relationship Strategy™.  

Emma explains these elements, how couples usually show up to them that undermines their success and connection, and how to start investing in them to create your transformation. And, BONUS, she also shared 4 Virtues for each that make it easier to invest in each of the elements when these are cultivated... Focusing on investing in your relationship is what we call embracing a Relationship Enrichment Lifestyle™. 

Play with what’s on offer here and watch your transformation begin!  

Hope you enjoy it! 

*Visit the Episode’s Page for the Video, related article, other resources AND to get our FREE Relationship Enrichment Mini Course!  


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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.



Emma Viglucci:

Hello, lovelies, and welcome to another episode. I am so excited to be here with you today. I am flying solo again and I am doing that to help you get started the year right with just packed information for me to cook you up for a new beginning. And, as we're finishing up January and we are turning towards the month of love, I want to focus today on offering you all kinds of things regarding creating a transformation in your relationship. So first I'm going to give you a brief background as to where what I'm talking about comes from. Then I'm going to share with you our successful relationship strategy, how that gets couples from one place to the next. But I'm going to show you first those are five aspects of the relationship, and I'm going to show you how couples that are struggling actually are doing their own things in those five areas. So then I'm going to show you how to apply it differently to your relationship if you're struggling. A quick takeaway that you can start using immediately, differently to your relationship if you're struggling. A quick takeaway that you could start using immediately. But also, I'm going to hook you up with four virtues for each of the five elements that you could cultivate so that you could start creating a transformation in your relationship with ease. Ease and just focusing on those things will start automatically creating that shift.

Emma Viglucci:

Okay, so the key here is that successful relationships do these five elements automatically right. It's part of inherently naturally comes to them to do these things in their relationship Couples that struggle not so much. And so, over working with many couples over close to 30 years now, I've come to see patterns, things that couples deal with, and in addressing those things, these five elements came to be these five areas of relationships. So we're calling that the approach here, the successful relationship strategy. These are the five elements of that strategy that came from seeing those patterns and working with those patterns. Now the work itself I'm calling the Transcendental Relationship Therapy and it includes the Successful Relationship Strategy. So I'm gonna walk you now through what that strategy is and I'm gonna start giving you the things that you need to start creating a transformation. And if you're doing fabulous already and you just started listening to this to enhance and enrich your relationship, amazing, just take whatever you're doing to the next level. Take what I'm saying to the next level. Okay, so I'm going to try to give it to you in a way that you can easily translate to do the advanced version of this for yourself.

Emma Viglucci:

Okay, so the first element is the circumstance and mindset element. Now, up until recently I used to call this a context and mindset, but context is a little abstract and so I'm renaming it into circumstance. I think it makes more sense. But so what this one has to do with is kind of what are you bringing to your situation? What is your mindset, what are your boundaries, what is your accountability? How do you look at things? How do you own yourself? How are you approaching the relationship? What are you bringing to the relationship that either supports it or you sabotage, right? So all of the things that you bring.

Emma Viglucci:

Now, particularly with this one, what we want to do is have a relationship enrichment mindset, which means that we want to look at the relationship as the vehicle for our transformation, for our life experience. Our partner is our partner with a capital P, like I like to say. You might have heard me say this before Now. What that means is that we chose our partner to have this life experience with, like. If we look at this from a higher perspective, we're choosing this person as the person to do our life journey with, like. If we look at this from a higher perspective, we're choosing this person as the person to do our life journey with. That's a pretty significant position that this person holds in our life, and so our job is to treat them with such respect and honor, and we usually don't and vice versa, obviously. And so part of this element is to reposition our partner in our relationship to that place of priority, of importance. So our partner is our playmate, our relationship is our playground for us to experiment, play, practice, do all of the things to evolve and experience our grand life, experience the grand adventure. So when we reposition our relationship, marriage and our partner from that perspective, from that angle, it's a very different way of showing up to those interactions and for us to look at the whole context of our relationship and all of our circumstances. So what we want to do is look at our partner as an ally, not as our enemy. So it's not me versus you who gets more, who does more, who does less and all these things that people do, but rather, ooh, together we make a greater whole. The whole is greater than the parts. That's what we're shooting for. We're shooting for that oneness, right? So having that mentality, that mindset, shift to this up-leveled way of looking at things takes you a whole different direction than thinking which the partners of struggle think. Well, I do more than my partner. How come they want to have to do the things I do more? My partner doesn't show up. My partner this. My partner that Blame, blame, blame, complain, complain, complain, as opposed to seeing what's my place in this?

Emma Viglucci:

What am I doing? How am I showing up? How am I co-creating this? How am I inviting this? What can I do different? How can I contribute? How can I own my part in this and create a shift from my part? If I shift my part, my partner has to shift in relationship to how I'm different. That's how we create change, right. So there's a lot of different things here that we can own and step up so that we can start creating a transformation.

Emma Viglucci:

Now the relationship strategy starts with this. The successful relationship strategy starts with this, because if we have a different filter, a different mindset, a different way of looking at things, then everything else flows from there Our communication, how we interact, how we try to have fun and connect, how we collaborate right, which are the other elements which I'm going to show you in a second. And so we have to clean up and step up this mindset piece. Okay, so that's number one, and the main thing that I want you to take away from here is for you to own what you bring to the interactions. Now, don't make yourself a saint, don't make yourself to be the perfect person, because if your relationship is struggling, you are contributing to that. Your job is to figure out what you are doing. Sorry, don't shoot the messenger and start changing that. I promise you that once you start changing yourself, the relationship starts changing as well. You can't say the same if a part of it changed. By definition. If a part changed, the whole thing is already different. Okay, and that will invite change from your partner, I promise.

Emma Viglucci:

Now, the other thing with this is that, aside from that ownership, it's to set boundaries. So we want to set effective boundaries, and that means that the boundaries are set from the perspective of what I do, what I'm willing to put up with, what I'm no longer willing to put up with, rather than putting a boundary on you. So we can't tell people what to do, but we have control over what we do. We can tell ourselves what to do. So, if my partner does such and such. This is what I'm going to do, as opposed to telling my partner don't do this or don't do that, you see, and so our partner will learn not to do the thing if this is what they're going to get in turn, and so that's how this works. And this works in all other contexts as well, not just in our relationship.

Emma Viglucci:

Okay, now, what I want to show you with this is that if you don't show up as being critical and shaming and complaining about your partner, but rather you step up your game and you start shifting, that ownership and that boundary setting from that perspective will start creating shifts immediately. So this is something and of course, we go into circles and ownership and boundaries, like all kinds of different things in our first session with clients, but as soon as this gets implemented, like things happen very quickly, because from here the whole thing is already like repositioned right, there was a different approach and a different way of flowing. That starts creating that transformation. So start with this Now if you want to take it a deeper level. These are the four virtues that I want you to cultivate and to play with.

Emma Viglucci:

So number one is commitment. So if we are going to have this grand life experience and we already make this choice of this partner. Let's commit to this relationship and to this partner Full stop. Okay, no hedging, not this, only this. If that and the other thing Full on, full in, you close all the Xs. When you do that, all of the energy is in one place and that level of commitment, like we're going to make this work, helps you make it work. If you're a half in, half out and you're just waiting for your partner, they're waiting for you, nothing happens, I promise. Waiting for your partner, they're waiting for you, nothing happens, I promise. So, full commitment, full in, be loyal, dedicated to a full journey, experience that, in and of itself, just shifts things and things that are showing up and playing out differently, because just that commitment just makes you show up differently right off the top. That's virtual.

Emma Viglucci:

Number one practicing that commitment in everything that you think, say, do, show up and all the things. Number two is confidence. Actually believe that this is possible, believe in yourself, believe in the relationship, have that level of faith. The next one is conviction, and this means staying true to your values and your principles. Integrity, your word, those things matter. That is your biggest currency, your energy and your word, how people could count on you and trust in you, and so nurture that, cultivate that and be true to your values. We actually have a downloadable.

Emma Viglucci:

I'm going to put all the links for all the things that I'm going to offer today in the description and in the show notes and all other places in the captions and stuff so that you could access anything that resonates for you that you think you need to help you with whatever I'm saying, so you could identify your values and staying true to those values and aligning things along those values and creating shared values. All these things are super important to help you align and reduce friction and conflict and noise and hurt and pain and all the things that might come from focusing on their own things and going about things their own way. So this conviction is staying true to that thing that's really inside of you. And the next one is contentment. These are all within element one still Contentment. Cultivating contentment means that you appreciate your partner in the relationship, that, even though there's always room for growth, always room for evolution, always room for doing things better, for tweaking, for polishing, for up-leveling, upgrading all the things, that at the bottom line there's an appreciation there, a true reverence for who your partner is, for them being your partner with a capital P in your journey and for the vehicle that is your relationship. That the opportunities that your relationship provides you to expand yourself in this human experience Isn't that beautiful. You might want to rewind if that was a mouthful and you're like, oh boy, I want to play with those things. By all means, go back and just take some notes and see how you could apply these things for yourself and start creating that shift immediately.

Emma Viglucci:

Okay, element two. Element two is communication and alignment. So this has to do with all ways of communicating, and it ranges from the body language for how you show up, how you are tuned to the things that you hear, to how the things that you say, how you say them all of the different ways, and specifically how you are tuned to the things that you hear, to the things that you say, how you say them all of the different ways, and specifically how you set up conversations so that they're productive. Okay, so of course, this is only one episode of a podcast. There's a gazillion moving pieces to each of these things that I'm offering. I'm giving you a highlight now so that you can start creating changes immediately. But just know that there's a lot more to each one of these and that you could always dig deeper into them within our content or, if you want to work privately, if you need support Now, in our free content. Again, I'm going to put links in the description and in other places so that you could dig in deeper.

Emma Viglucci:

For the communication one, the conversation piece for us to have productive conversations, we need to set them up properly to begin with. So one way to do that this is the takeaway is to ask for a conversation. So you're not going to do what people who are not successful in a relationship or who are struggling do, which is they walk by their partner and they dump information, or they address things that bothers them, or they complain about something, or they make a request and they assume that their partner heard it and that they're going to be able to act on it, or that they agreed to it, or that they understood it. Meanwhile, a lot of the time, the other person is not registering it. Meanwhile, a lot of the time, the other person is not registering it. So this is for, like, everyday things, but also for bigger things, and what a sure way of making sure that we are not in alignment, not on the same page, and that we create problems and conflicts.

Emma Viglucci:

So what we want to do is make sure that our partners are available, that they could take us in or that they could hear us. So, for example, you would say something like hey, honey, I want to run something by you. Okay, you have a minute. I just want to share something that happened today. Or I need to pick your brain about something. So make sure that you have their attention. And they could be like okay, hang on one minute, let me finish writing this email, let me finish this thing that I'm doing. Or like, give me five minutes. I need to go to the bathroom first, whatever right. Or they could be like yes, I'm available and sure, what is it? But we have to have that you know.

Emma Viglucci:

Yes, we're talking, we're both present for this conversation. We're both present to exchange information or to receive information. Both. That's super important. That's number one. And then two, we want to make sure that we share how we need to be heard. Are we just sharing something for kicks? Do we want somebody, the other person's input? Do we want a shoulder to lean on? Do we want to reach a place of an agreement to make a decision about something Right. So we have to give our partner a heads up as to how to listen to us so that they could look for the right information and respond to us in a way that serves that conversation, that exchange, and that our needs get met so they don't get flooded, they don't get lost, they don't get whatever and we get what we want out of that conversation. Now, this is especially true for women when I'm offering, because we tend to talk in circles, we tend to express a lot of detail, be very expressive, and we tend to lose our male counterparts if we're in a heterosexual relationship or more masculine brain partner. So we want to make sure that we tell them how to listen to us and so that we can have a productive conversation and this is true for both partners, but definitely for the way that the women communicate, so that they or the more feminine brain communicates, so that the other partner could take us in and actually meet us where we need them to meet us at.

Emma Viglucci:

Now. Those two things are super important right off the bat. You have some skills there and that's just for regular conversation. That's not for when you're triggered or when you need to address something more heavy duty. That's like a little bit beyond today, but for now that's good enough. Just don't make those assumptions that your partner is hearing you or sticking you in or is receiving the information, unless you have confirmation and you check in that you're on the same page.

Emma Viglucci:

Okay, now with this one, what I want to offer is the four virtues, for this one are clarity, and that means to communicate clearly, openly, honestly, thoroughly, without overdoing it. So there's clarity in what you're saying, the message that you're sending and it could be received. So you have to be a responsible sender so that the other person can receive you. If you're talking giverish, the other person's going to receive giverish, and then you can't get upset that you're not being understood, just saying Okay. The next one is civility.

Emma Viglucci:

So this is interesting because partners usually think that it's okay to treat their partner as somebody who will just take anything right. Because we're married already or in a long-term relationship, we think that it's okay for our partner to receive the worst parts of us and for us to treat them like crap when we have an crappy day. That's just not true and just not so and not fair. For those of you who are thinking well, that's what marriage is. I should be able to put up with stuff. I don't have to be. Why do I have to be perfect? Why can't I make mistakes? Nobody is perfect. Like I will have a bad day, yeah, fair.

Emma Viglucci:

But that doesn't mean that you can't moderate yourself to some place, to some, in some form, so that you're not a complete jerk to your partner because you're having a bad day. It doesn't give you a license to be a jerk. You might have a hard time regulating yourself or being pleasant, but doesn't mean that you have to still not be cautious, or intentional, or careful. To some extent that could mean even things like or careful. To some extent that could mean even things like hey, honey, I'm having a bad day, you know, like I can't even stand myself. So stay clear, just a heads up, just bring in some intentionality, right? So it doesn't mean that we could just go off the hinges because we're not in a good place, right? We don't want that from our partner to do to us either. We're here to support each other in the good, the bad and the ugly Within moderation. It doesn't mean that all gloves are off because of that belief. So that's stability, right. Treat each other with respect and kindness and consideration.

Emma Viglucci:

The third one is carefulness. And carefulness, I mean, sounds a little funky, right, but that comes from a place of just being thoughtful with your words and with your actions. And how do you show up to being intentional? In a way, and I don't know if you noticed it, but all of these words start with a C. I just had fun creating a C list with all of these virtues, so that one just came up to share with you.

Emma Viglucci:

And the last one for element two is courage. And so what we want to do with this one is embrace vulnerability and the ability to tackle tough conversations, and the ability to tackle tough conversations in a way that we're showing up authentically, that we're opening up, that we're vulnerable, that we're available, that we take a risk If there's something that we don't like or something that we prefer differently, that we're able to speak up. And speaking up and standing up for ourselves doesn't mean that we cancel our partner in the process. It means that we create space for both of us to be heard, right, but just stretching in this department. So those are the four virtues for element two. So again, let me repeat them for you Clarity, civility, carefulness and courage. And for element one, just a quick recap. They were commitment, confidence, conviction and contentment. All right, so we're going to move on to element three. Now for element three. The name for this element is clarity and dynamics.

Emma Viglucci:

This one has to do with the loop, the patterns that we create in our relationship. Now, the less that we've done to heal, grow, evolve, develop ourselves, the more likely that we are to have programs, beliefs and conditions and all kinds of different things playing out in the backgrounds, subconsciously and unconsciously, to create what drives us. So we are parading from programs, we're parading automatically, we're not being intentional, we're not being conscious in our interactions, and what happens is that in interactions we might get more easily triggered and then, when we get triggered, our automatic responses come up, the usual triggers, so things that are not resolved happen, and then we react to those and respond to those the same old way. We trigger our partner's sensitivities in places, and then they have their own reaction Also. They haven't done their own work right, so they're more triggerable also if they haven't done their own work and they have their own automatic reactions as well, and the flavor of their reactions will trigger ours and then we respond in kind and triggers theirs and we create a perpetrating loop. Boom, that's not what we want. So that's how we create stack dynamics and patterns in our relationship.

Emma Viglucci:

If you heard yourself say things over and over like we keep going over and over these things, I keep repeating myself we keep having the same experience, we keep making the same mistakes. You keep responding that way. I already told you I don't like that. Whatever, whatever the flavor is in your relationship, the repeating things that don't work is because of this right, so they haven't resolved things or unhealed things. You haven't resolved things or unhealed things. You have mechanical or habitual responses, patterns playing out, and that stuff is having a relationship. So it's not the authentic you, it's the core of you guys interacting. You have your junk having a relationship. So it's not the authentic you, it's the core of you guys interacting. You're drunk having a relationship.

Emma Viglucci:

So the work here is to watch your stuff, clean up your stuff, up-level yourself, heal, deprogram, decondition, so you can show up more authentically, right, and so you're not as triggerable, you can have more grace. So that's what partners do? They show up with all that noise and then they wonder how come there's so much friction? How come we're constantly bickering? How come we have all these fights? How come I can't open my mouth and you automatically get mad? How come we can't have a conversation that we get into a disagreement and then a fight and then like a massive fight and then we're thinking about breaking up and we throw out the baby with the bathwater. We don't want any of that stuff.

Emma Viglucci:

So, owning our things, being mindful not to trigger our partner's things, and then investing in healing ourselves and giving things to our partner that heals them right and to help us each other, bringing that intentionality to help each other and ourselves decondition, reprogram, heal, reparent ourselves. I just gave you a mouthful, so that's like a lot of stuff to do there. Don't be intimidated by that. The main thing to do. The takeaway is to be intentional and mindful, to increase your awareness of what's happening when you get triggered.

Emma Viglucci:

So, as soon as you start getting worked up, install a pause, if you may, or call out a timeout and be like I'm getting triggered, I just need a moment. So some of us could, in that moment, talk through what's happening and that could be a transformative experience in the moment. But that is very hard to do so. If you're a newbie at this stuff, you could say pause, time out, let me just think, let me regroup here, let's take a few to regroup and come back. And a few could mean whatever and come back. And if you could mean whatever right up to 24 hours potentially, like I need to just sit with this and process and once you have a handle on what got triggered for you, what your experience was, the assumptions that you made, the scripts that came up and started running rampant and all that kind of stuff, and you could see your partner's side also.

Emma Viglucci:

This is the cue, the clue. How do you know that? You processed it and you're regrouped and you're ready to have a conversation, and then you realize that nobody's the enemy and you both just were having a bad interaction and you could have a better conversation about that. If you're thinking about it and you're still like I want to tell them oh, bah, bah, bah, bah. Better conversation about that. If you're thinking about it and you're still like I want to tell them oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, or they still didn't see this or they didn't understand the other and I still want to show them this and like they don't get it and this is what they did.

Emma Viglucci:

If you're still thinking like that, you're still having ways to go to process that you haven't fully regrouped for lack of a better word and so sometimes you can regroup together after, like things, calm down and you can help each other see stuff, and that's what we do in therapy, right? So the conversations help us do that, or help partners do that, I should say. And so in those moments, processing back and forth the experience, the partners get to see what happened for them and what happened for the other, and they have a fuller understanding. And in that understanding there's alignment, there's healing, there's being seen and heard and validated and all the yummy stuff. And so that's part of the takeaway Having that awareness, taking a pause to regroup to see, okay, what's happening, and then coming back and having a conversation as to that, right. So then that's where the juicy stuff happens and the growth and transformation happens, and then, of course, always being mindful not to trigger your partner as best you can. Sometimes they get triggered just because they get triggered, and vice versa, we get triggered just because a partner doesn't necessarily do anything wrong. That's just the way of life. So that's why we bring in the other piece of like, okay, process it and then address it together and that's where the healing and the beautiful stuff happens. Okay, that's again a whole bunch of stuff. There's a lot more that meets the eyes there, but that's just some quick takeaways for you to start playing with this particular element, particular element, okay.

Emma Viglucci:

Now, the virtues for this one are calmness, and this means that, like I said before, with all the noise and the triggers and this and that and the other thing, like all the things show up, calmness means that during challenging times, you could still remain peaceful, you could still stay sane, you could still take in what's happening and you could address things properly, that you don't allow yourself to get triggered to go to that place. Or even if you're triggered, you kind of remain even keel, like you're able to just manage right. So you regulate yourself. Composure is the next one, and this one has to do with staying collected when you're in conflict. So you're not going for a ride, you're not biting the hook, you're not getting all up in the other person's grill, you are staying collected even though there's conflict going on, right. So these two sound similar. The other one's like more of a global thing, like situations are happening and you stay pretty peaceful within yourself, in your routine, in your day, in the moments. The other one's more specific to an exchange in the immediate moment, right. So calmness is like the bigger, higher perspective, more global experience. Composure is more in the moment and doing that and interaction.

Emma Viglucci:

Then the third one is compassion, and this one has to do with supporting each other with empathy and understanding, and so when there are those moments of intensity, of triggers, emotionality and things like that, to be able to respond with compassion and with kindness, with understanding, with empathy for our partner's experience. A lot of times we might look at our partner and we just don't get it. Why did they get so worked up all of a sudden about something that we did or somebody else did? It's challenging to see when we're both worked up or when we both get triggered. Else did. It's challenging to see when we're both worked up or when we both get triggered, but usually most of the time one person gets triggered. First they kind of go a little berserk and then in that berserkness they trigger the other partner, right? So then the whole thing gets a little wacky. But so while your partner's being triggered and you haven't gotten triggered yourself. Yet perfect, that's when you bring in the compassion and this empathy because potentially you would help them shortchange that circuit and then you don't get grabbed into the whole crazy moment.

Emma Viglucci:

And then the last one, with this element three. The last virtue is consistency, and this one has to do with how do we show up with love and care regularly so that we build trust right? Part of people feeling neglected and abandoned and getting triggered in those places is because there is inconsistency in how we relate and how we show up and how we keep our word, our commitments and what we do. We keep our word, our commitments and what we do, and so that's the shortest way to undermine our trust and our commitment in our relationship, the status of our relationship, and so this consistency piece is very important, especially for partners who have those kinds of wounds. Okay, so these four virtues for element three are, again, are calmness, composure. For element three are, again, are calmness, composure, compassion and consistency. Okay, we're moving on to element four. Element four is connection and intimacy.

Emma Viglucci:

Now, this is one of my favorites. I mean, I love them all. They all have their own awesomeness and, again, we don't have much time together so I can't flesh out all of these elements to all the degree that I would love to and give you all the nuances for each one of these and tell you what I love about each one. But just know that there's really yumminess in all of these places, and for this one it's bringing a lot today just because of us. We are gearing up for Valentine's day, so I want to say a little bit more about why this one is special to me, or why I love this one so much, and that is because this is where we get to build connection, and if you know anything about my content and our approach, one of the tenets of what we do is that, or the beliefs that we build on, is that through connection, we could pretty much take care of what we do. Is that, or the beliefs that we build on, is that, through connection, we could pretty much take care of anything and do anything. And so, of course, this one that is like really special for me or to me, and the key with this one, obviously, then, is to build connection. So create connection, maintain connection and deepen connection. Maintain connection and deepen connection. That's the goal with this one.

Emma Viglucci:

So if the relationship is requiring more safety and and there's conflict and there's trust issues and there are funky things in the relationship. Then we need to work on the emotional connection side of things. Once that piece is more established, then we let our hair down and we could work more on the physical passion side of things. So there's like that spectrum there. Of course we could do both at the same time. Of course we could focus on passion if we want to, but just know that those are harder things to do if there's no emotional safety first. Okay, so this is kind of like a quick little mindset piece around that. So you understand maybe where you need to focus more on If you're having a blast sex life, know that some of the things might need to happen first before you start tackling that intimacy piece, that physical intimacy piece, anyway.

Emma Viglucci:

So what partners usually do here is completely shut down. They lead parallel lives, they avoid each other. They just don't know how to enjoy each other. They neglect the relationship, they don't invest in the relationship, they don't have fun together. They don't know how to have fun together. They can't have intimate conversations, right. So I'm sure that you can relate to a lot of these if you're struggling in your relationship. And so what we want to do here is prioritize the relationship.

Emma Viglucci:

What happens a lot is that life gets in the way. Things get busy, we might have the children, the children become a priority and the whole romantic side of a relationship goes out the window. We become the partners in the business of life. We become the husband and the wife I'm sorry, we become the father and the mother if we're heterosexual or whatever the combination is if you're not. And it becomes about that, right, the doing of life, the raising of the children, the making the life. But the connection between the partners get lost, right, the juice of the couple gets lost. There's no more couple, there's no more romantical partnership. It's only the business of life, the marriage part, and this is where most couples go wrong, right? So losing sight of the specialness, the intimacy, the connection that's inherent to being a romantic couple. And so that's where the prioritizing the relationship comes first.

Emma Viglucci:

Now people say things like the children are important, the children are a priority, and things like that For sure, right, who's going to take care of the children if it's not for the parents? A hundred percent. But they can't be at the expense of the couple. This is a mistake that the partners make. You still need to prioritize the couple, and it doesn't mean that you give the couple all of the time. It means that at any moment in time you assess what is the priority and how you protect the bond and the couple from the onslaught of everyday life and parenting. Okay, and so, whatever you need to do to make some time, quality time, for you and your partner to nurture that part of your relationship Huge.

Emma Viglucci:

Now for this one, we have a protocol. It's the Date, your Partner protocol, that you could also download from our website. It's free and, like I said before, I'm going to put all kinds of resources At the end of this. I'm going to tell you all the things that I'm going to put for free in the description so that you could help yourself with whatever element or something is for you the most that you need to do, the most work on well-being, pretty self-explanatory Charity, being generous with how you show affection, how available you are with your time, with your presence, with gifts, whatever is important for you guys in a way that touches your partner.

Emma Viglucci:

The next one is cheerfulness, and this one is about bringing positivity and joy to the relationship. Right, there's nothing worse than a partner who's constantly whining or complaining about something, or who is just picking at everything and like nothing, nothing makes them happy and that's just boring, right, and that's just. I'm thinking of the worst words I'm catching myself here. But that's just like a downer, right, it's every downer. We don't want that. And so just how do we bring that positivity? How do we up-level our game with that? And the last one for element four is creativity, and this one has to do with how to keep the spark alive, having fresh experiences, fresh ideas for things to do together, to experience, to check out, to explore, and all of the things. How do you create the adventures? How do you create moments to learn each other even more and more deeply? Okay, so the four quick recap. The four for element four are caring, charity, cheerfulness and creativity. Okay, so I'm going a little long, so I'm just gonna. I'm trying to speed up here a little bit, just bear with me.

Emma Viglucci:

Element five is collaboration and partnership. So this one is fun just because this is where the practical stuff comes in, and some people really struggle with putting things in place and being practical, and some of us are just nerdy with this stuff, and just that's why we love it. So this is where that stuff happens. And for this one people who are struggling in their relationship they just don't have good systems for co-creating with their partner, for creating a partnership, right. Everything is off the cuff, flying by the seat of their pants, winging everything. There's no plan, there is no system, there is no structure, there's no routines, like just everything's pretty chaotic. And I'm saying there is none, there is none, but there might be some. It's just not enough to create ease and flow and good working machine out of the operations of running your lives together. So that's what this one is about Mapping out the cadences of when you do things, how do you do them, and creating systems for making them happen. And we don't want to show up haphazardly, we want to be able to. Okay, I leave off here. My partner picks up here, right, like what is that system? Like I'm supposed to reinvent the wheel every time something comes up or every time I have to get something done. That's just more work than it's necessary. Life is enough work, we don't need to make it worse and more complicated.

Emma Viglucci:

Okay, so the four virtues for element five are collaboration. And some of these words are self-explanatory, right, but we want to apply them to the relationship. Collaboration is building a shared vision. So this one has to have like a higher perspective as to what are we co-creating, what's my input, what's your input, what is the shared vision and how do we go about making that happen. Like a big picture perspective of like what kind of life do we want to create? What kind of lifestyle do we want to live? How do we go about making that happen? The next one is cooperation. So this one is slightly different in that this is more down to earth as opposed to like the higher perspective. This one is more like how are we a team, how do we tackle all the tasks and create the things? How do we achieve the goals? Just like more foot to the pedal kind of thing, like more in the moment, more practical. The other one is more visionary. This one is more of the doing. Okay, and then that was collaboration and cooperation for element five. And then the next one.

Emma Viglucci:

The next virtue is compromise, which has to do with finding a balance of mutual solutions. Now, when people hear compromise compromise has kind of, for some reason, a bad rap People think that, okay, I give something up so that we could meet in the middle, right? So I give something, you give something, and we find a middle, a common ground in the middle. Sure, that's one way of doing it, but I hate to look at this as giving something up. I think that a better way of looking at compromise is how do I bring my stuff in? You bring your stuff in and they melt together so we create a common thing, as opposed to we lose things. We create a greater thing that we can do together that meets both of our needs. That's how I like to look at compromise so there's no loss in there. So that's what we're looking for. To look at compromise so there's no lowest in there. So that's what we're looking for.

Emma Viglucci:

And then the last one, the virtue number four for this element five is competence, and this has to do with being reliable and capable in meeting responsibilities, and so you want to bring your strengths and your skills and capitalize on those, and you will have different strengths and different skills and most likely the opposite. So it actually behooves you to bring your stuff to the table, because you will create a greater whole, the parts will create a greater whole. So capitalize on each other's strengths to synergize, to move things forward to pick up momentum right. So working together, creating a synergy that's fabulous, okay. So quick recap for element five. They are collaboration, cooperation, compromise and competence okay, my love.

Emma Viglucci:

So a quick recap of all the things this successful relationship strategy came to be from all of the work that I've done with all of the couples for all of the time. And it boils down to this four, five aspects of relationship, these five critical elements that when you start investing in them intentionally, you start creating a transformation in your relationship. If you're struggling or taking it to the next level, if you're doing okay and today I added to the description of them a quick kind of like where you might get stuck, like how you're doing it wrong, and a quick takeaway so you can start creating a transformation. And I added the bonus of four virtuals for each of the elements so that you could dig in and cultivate those characteristics and take everything to the next level for yourself. Thank you so much for watching and for listening up to this point.

Emma Viglucci:

I hope all those things served you and, like I promised, I'm going to list a few things I'm going to offer in the resources. I'm going to put a list into our YouTube playlist of the elements, so you go deeper into each one of them. Everything that I'm going to say today is free. I am going to put a link to 20 Days Relationship Enrichment Challenge. It's going to be perfect for Valentine's Day and the month of love. I'm going to put a link to values so that you could identify your values and you could align together and work towards those shared values and creating a shared vision. I am going to put a link to the Date your Partner Protocol. So, bam, you could create that connection and have fun with your partner.

Emma Viglucci:

And two other things that I didn't really mention, but why not? I think that will hook you up with all these things. One is sharing responsibilities checklist, so you could really divide and conquer, and this is for element five so really create a good collaboration, sharing chores and responsibilities. People get hung up on that and fight all the time about that stuff. And the other one is setting effective boundaries. I did mention that, but this PDF really goes into depth, describing types of boundaries, how they show up and the meaning and how to apply them. So I think that that will be fabulous and really helpful for you. Okay, so tons of resources. Be sure you check them out. I hope you enjoy them. I would love to hear how you make out with them. If you have any questions, let us know in the comments which element resonated the most for you, which one you're going to be playing with for Valentine's day and how you're going to be making things amazing, and I look forward to seeing you at the next one. Thank you for watching. Bye.

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Emma K Viglucci, LMFT

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