Couple Goals
Michele Christensen 0:11
Hi! Welcome to Sex. Love. Power. I'm your host Michele Lisenbury Christensen. I'm a relationship & sex coach who has worked for 23 years with executives and business founders, and by popular demand, I've been focusing on their intimate relationships for the last dozen or so years. As they sought my coaching to push the envelope on how good they could have it in life and in love and sex, my extraordinary, high- performance clients have blessed me with a wealth of knowledge about how to create relationships that are not just successful, but truly GREAT. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help every listener create those same world-class results in their relationships.
Michele Christensen 0:55
If you're like my clients, you're ambitious in every area of your life, and your marriage is no exception. That said, and as much as the hashtag "couple goals" is a running joke that we often make when we think "wouldn't it be great to be like THOSE TWO" - actually, setting goals TOGETHER for how you're going to make your relationship great is not a particularly common practice.
Michele Christensen 1:17
I'm on a mission to help as many couples as I can to learn that closeness, the peace and ease and the totally turned-on erotic connection that we want are all as actionable as our income goals or our fitness goals. Effective communication, great sex and deep intimacy are not the product of luck. They're the product of habits. With the right habits, you can build skills and capacities that make for a fantastic relationship.
Michele Christensen 1:49
If you've never thought of having couple goals, if your partner isn't remotely interested in talking with you about shared goals, or if you can't imagine that a simple habit could transform the stickiest aspect of your relationship, well, you're not alone. Those experiences are shared by many couples. But the truth is, you CAN set couple goals (even if your partner doesn't want to talk about them) and your habits DO have the power to revolutionize your love.
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In this episode, we're going to talk about your desires for your relationship.
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-We'll look at why it's so hard to put a relationship desire on the "goal" status.
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- I'll show you how to look back and see which repeated behaviors created the relationship that you have today, for better and worse.
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-And we'll pick the lock on the love & sex you really WANT to have by identifying the kinds of habits that you can cultivate in the new year that will build precisely the relationship that you're longing for.
Michele Christensen 2:44
I want you to be able to break down anything you want to experience in your relationship- or any experience you want to stop having in your love- into the skills and capacities, that a couple who have what you want have built, I want you to be able to identify the practices and habits that will build those skills and capacities. Because when you know how to map a path from here to there in love, then legacy love- the kind of love that not only lasts a lifetime, but touches others long after your life- that kind of legacy love that you desire will be inevitable.
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So let's start by throwing back the curtain and looking at what USUALLY happens with something we want to create in our marriages.
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What I found through the years is that people go one of four places:
Michele Christensen 3:30
1. We focus on our partner and what they need to do differently
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2. We beat ourselves up for what we think we've done wrong.
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3. We kind of back-burner it, because we think it's a pipe- dream, this thing that we want in our relationship, either is too much to ask or we think that if we're doing things right, it should just happen automatically. We sort of think that the Easter Bunny is going to bring it in a sense, like, oh, lucky people have that. And if I don't have it, it's because I'm not lucky or I'm not doing something right. But basically, you're supposed to be able to create it without trying. Otherwise, it's not meant to be.
Michele Christensen 4:10
4. This is the only one that actually works, is to approach it in the same effective way that we do all the other goals we actually achieve: we look at what we want to create and how we want the process to feel, we marshal resources, we break it down into doable chunks, and we bring it into reality through a combination of making it happen, really active energy and letting it unfold. Really embracing of the process and welcoming our partner's energies and the inevitable stumbles along the way.
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Now, which of these have you been employing? And how's it been going? Right? This question really points up the problem with joint creation- especially inside how we tend to think about relationships in our culture.
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We tend to think of love and wedded bliss and-perhaps most of all, sex- as things that should just happen.
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If they don't happen the way we want, we tend to think there's something wrong with us, or something's wrong with our partner. Or maybe I'm okay, and you're okay. But we together are just a mismatch.
Michele Christensen 5:24
We tend to go into blame- of our partner- or shame, which is sort of blaming ourselves. And both of us render us really not very resourceful.
Michele Christensen 5:33
THIS is why it's hard to reach a couple goals.
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What's the solution? The way that I help people create absolutely whatever they want in their relationship, even if their partner isn't totally engaged in that process, is to help them get as turned on by the process of discovery, as they are by the outcome. We really connect to what they want. But we also really engage in the process with positive, curious energy, rather than the usual process that people engage in, which is one of frustration, and turn off- annoyance, anger, blame, and shame. When we really recognize the people-building crucible that a relationship is, and when we really love every stroke that we get in the process, even the ones that seem to be a smack in the face, then we begin to create a process that not only creates the results that we want, but makes us into something magnificent as we go.
Michele Christensen 6:40
So let's begin this discovery process by looking with curiosity and without blame, at how you built the relationship you have today. Which behavior patterns, thought patterns, habits of feeling and speaking, have established what you have right now? When I'm asking this, I'm not asking you to look at your partner, and figure out what they did to make the relationship you have now. That's actually for them to look at. And any attention you place on what they've been doing wrong too soon in the process, will actually do more to take into the ditch than it will to get you down the road. There will be a time for you to be able to look to them, and ask for more and let them know which thoughts and behaviors and words contribute to what you don't want and what you'd like them to do instead. But if you start there, you almost certainly wind up losing steam before you create any positive change. And in fact, this is how we create negative change in our relationships. This is how relationships deteriorate.
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So I really want you to keep your eyes in your own lane, focusing on what YOU'VE done to create your relationship. Because this is the key to understanding which tweaks will change your relationship for the better.
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So do you two argue? If so, what are you doing with your thoughts and feelings and desires BEFORE the fight that creates that?
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Do you have frustrating, sexless dry spells? Do you have lukewarm sex? If so, what are you doing all day that has you feeling not so sexy? Feeling overwhelmed, distracted or irritated? Not going into a delicious, buttery central place with your partner as often as you'd like? How are you setting that up throughout the rest of your day?
Michele Christensen 8:38
Or do you feel like roommates? Not very close? If so, what daily choices are you making about what you're going to share with your partner? Where you take your emotional needs? Where you seek your relaxation and pleasure? How are those choices creating this roommate situation with your partner?
Michele Christensen 9:02
These are tough questions, but they're really valuable to ask... Because everyone I've ever asked them to who really looked at it could see "Oh, wow, yeah, if I were going to teach somebody to create these results that I don't want, this is what I would tell them to do. I would say keep yourself so busy all day that you're not attending to your emotional or physical needs, then come home ravenously hungry and really irritated from the buildup of all that little detritus throughout the day, the little upsets and frustrations. And then either dump those on your partner or go take them somewhere else, not revealing your inner state to your partner at all. And that's a good recipe for not feeling very close.
Michele Christensen 9:50
But for each of these points before you go beating yourself up, for each of these points in which you have been very effectively creating the relationship that's NOT what you want, we have a really powerful little fulcrum that lets you pivot just a little bit and create what you DO want. So let's look at the kinds of habits you can cultivate in the new year that will build precisely the relationship you long for. Now, with the information that you just gathered by asking those tough questions, this actually becomes simpler than you might have thought.
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You want more sex? Infuse your thoughts and daily routine with more turn-on, starting with yourself.
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Want less conflict? Create habits that soothe your nervous system, so you're less reactive, and set your important conversations up for success by timing them well, communicating with kindness for the both of you, and pausing to settle down if things get heated.
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Want to feel closer? Turn toward your partner and uproot those habits that drive you into your own little cave, so that you are unavailable to your partner, and it looks from the outside, like you're just content with that.
Michele Christensen 11:06
My clients find that their relationship goals become pretty much INEVITABLE- there is no way to avoid winding up feeling the way they really want to feel, because they install loving habits that just plain make more love day in and day out.
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That's what I'm inviting you to begin to do in the coming year: find those little fulcrums around which the key factors in your relationship turn. Make a tiny pivot on one or two or three of those and notice how much the direction of your relationship shifts when you do that. Then momentum will build as you continue those new habits. And if you stick with it, your relationship will be better to an astonishing degree by this time next year.
Michele Christensen 11:50
So please go use these tips now and begin to break your daydreams about your relationship down into concrete goals. I wish you a gorgeous new year of ease, fun, joy and love. And I would love to hear about it as you create it!
Michele Christensen 12:08
I hope you'll join the conversation over on The Secret Society at society.lisenbury.com is a great place to ask your questions, share your experiences, and join the conversation about creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. It’s all happening at society.lisenbury.com. That link is in the shownotes at lisenbury.com/episode/019.
Michele Christensen 12:34
If you've enjoyed this episode or other episodes, what would help me in the podcast immensely is if you would leave a review-particularly in Apple podcasts, because these reviews are how we find new listeners and helps a ton in growing the positive impact that these conversations can have. So please go leave a review right now, with just a few words about what the show gives you. I would so appreciate it!
Michele Christensen 13:01
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Michele Christensen 13:15
Thank you for listening. I'm on a mission to help everyone have the love and sex they really want right inside the relationship that they already have. And this is how we do it by creating these conversations and engaging with them over time, a little bit each day. And life it's a whole lot more turned on. I'm Michele Lisenbury Christensen. This has been sex, love, power. I'll be back here next week with the next episode. Until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.