Lifelong Love — Blog — Michele Lisenbury Christensen Coaching & Courses

Lifelong Love

7 Reasons Your Most Important Conversations Go Sideways

7 Reasons Your Most Important Conversations Go Sideways

Our conversations with our partners are among the most important activities in our lives.  They can also be among the most emotionally activating experiences!  These conversations shape how we feel about the relationship and about ourselves, and they either produce clarity, connection, and concrete, useful actions going forward… or leave us mired in frustration, sadness, anger or all of the above.  

What Great Couples Have Taught Me

I was an executive coach for many years and worked with a wide variety of leaders. Some, of course, found their marriages suffering from neglect that they considered all-but-inevitable given the demands of their careers. The scope of my work, in that first decade and a half, was holistic, but our focus was on their leadership, not on their relationship.

How Do I Make Valentine’s Day A Happy Occasion?

Valentine’s Day, oh, Valentine’s Day.  We love you.  We hate you.  All the potential… all the pressure.  Especially in a long-term relationship… very few of which get through 5 or 10 or 20 Februaries without some “Ghosts of Valentines Past” haunting them and making both partners gunshy for the next.

How Do I Get My Partner To Open Up?

I used to ask him, “how was your day?”
“Good.”
Not that helpful.
When he seemed grumpy or withdrawn, I’d ask him, “What’s going on?”
He’d feel interrogated…. No matter how gentle I’d thought I had sounded.

What if we talked about sex and love?

Picture this: you scroll through your Instagram feed, and the self-portraits are grown women, glowing in the full presence and tingling invigoration brought on by the delicious sex they’ve been having regularly… and they say a little about that. Nothing voyeuristic, mind you… Just like, “Loving the way John and I are connecting… I think it’s good for my complexion, too!”