The first rule of successful dating and, subsequently, relationships, is deciding on what you want, as opposed to simply settling on what you think you can get.

The reasons why, as if they weren’t evident already, include the following:

It’s hard to find something or, better yet, to attract something into your life, if you haven’t given at least some thought about what or who it is that you want.

I don’t know how many times I used to say, “I want to be in a relationship,” or, better yet, “I just want someone to date.  How hard can it be?”  Well, not that hard as it turns out, assuming that you have neither standards nor a clear vision of what you are looking for.

On the other hand, people who know what they’re looking for tend to be more successful in their quests.  Because once they know what they want, they are unlikely to settle for something less and they are more likely to put themselves in situations that allow them to succeed!

Having said this, what do I mean by knowing what or who you really want?

I’m not suggesting that you single out a particular person and set your sights only on them.  What I am suggesting, however, is that before you go out on the market (whether it’s on-line or in real life), you should make a list of characteristics that matter to you. I would recommend that you stay away from the tired old cliches of “a professional man” or “a could-be model,” and think about what really matters to you.  Do you want a partner who is a workaholic or one that has enough time to do things?  Do you want someone who pays to have things fixed around the house or would you rather have someone who can fix things themselves?  Do you want someone who looks like they could earn their living on a runway, even if it takes them three hours to get out of the house in the morning?  And you say you want someone with six-pack abs and chiseled arms?  What about someone who is strong enough to carry your six-year old when they want a piggy back ride but who doesn’t feel compelled to spend every free weekend at the gym?  The point is, it’s good to think these things through, but all to often, for whatever reason, we don’t.  So we end up without a clear vision (or at least a set of meaningful parameters) and we just date whoever comes along and forget about the things that will eventually matter to us long term.  Trust me, I am speaking from experience on this one!

Same thing with relationships.  Don’t start off your search by saying, “I want to be in a relationship,” or, worse, “I’m tired of being alone.”  What kind of relationship are you looking for?  What are its emotional contours?  What types of activities is it based on?  Are you looking for a friendship that blooms into love, or are you looking for the type of love you’ve only read about in novels and hoping against the odds that it will last?  Are you looking for something fun and light to fill your summer or are you looking for something strong and steady that will change with you throughout your life?

I challenge anyone new to the dating market to ask themselves what they really want – and I mean really answer the question, not the pat answer they give their girlfriends or their buddies at the bar when they’re all sitting around wondering where all of the “good” ones are.  Stay away from the cliches, the easy outs (“I want someone like Brad Pitt”) and the hard and fast descriptions (“she needs to be 5′ 2″ and weigh 109 pounds with ice blonde hair and smokey green eyes”) and to come up with what they really want – and why it really matters. How do you really want to spend your days?

And when you have this clear in your mind go out and look for it. Or better yet, go out and be the person that will attract what it is you’re looking for.

Establishing regular check-ins with your partner is an essential part of good and conscious communication.

By having a regularly scheduled time to talk – really talk, without the distractions of email, kids, chores, or anything else that may be in the way of establishing a connection – it allows you to bring up difficult issues or minor irritants without making them bigger than they are.

Regularly scheduled check-ins with your partner also allow you to be more reflective about the role that you might play in whatever it was that they did that you found irritating.  Such self-awareness is too often lacking in the moment!

Check-ins also remind you to express the appreciation and gratitude for your partner that arises, but may be otherwise remarked upon, during the busy week or month.

Couples that don’t have regularly scheduled check-ins are more likely to bring up grievances in the moment, thereby exacerbating a perhaps already tense and unfortunate moment.

If you don’t have a regularly scheduled check-in with your partner, it’s easier to accuse your partner of doing something that irritated you without actually thinking through why it was that you became irritated as a result of something that your partner happened to do, either purposefully or inadvertently.

And if you don’t have a regularly scheduled check-in with your partner, it’s easy to forget to tell them how much you appreciate them or to find out how much they appreciate you!

What, exactly, do I mean by a check-in?  And, more importantly given every one’s busy schedule, what, exactly, constitutes regularly?

A regularly scheduled check-in is an opportunity, agreed upon in advance, for couples to express their thoughts about the month previously (or the week, depending on your time frame).  Partners simply take the opportunity to address any gratitude or irritants that came up for them since the last check-in.

What the regularly scheduled check-in is not a bitch-fest or an opportunity to yell at your partner.  Instead, you should be able to identify the situation without generalizing or sandbagging as well as your own reaction to it.

For example, when Michael J and I first started dating I used a lot of self-deprecation and snark, because that’s the way I communicated with my last two boyfriends.  When Michael J brought this up, he used I statements. “I am concerned that….”  Although I don’t remember his exact words, essentially he was concerned that if I was truly insecure in the relationship my insecurity would undermine our relationship in the long term.  He also expressed that he was not particularly attracted to insecurity in a partner and talked about the reasons why.  He then reminded me of why he was attracted to me and expressed all of the reasons why he hoped I would eventually become secure enough in the relationship to let some of that old stuff go.

At other times, there are no negatives.  We simply express our appreciation of the other.  When’s the last time you sat down with your partner and told them how wonderful they were or identified one or two things they did last week that you really appreciated? When’s the last time they did it for you?

This doesn’t mean we’re not mindful or don’t express our appreciation for the other at every chance we get.  Usually we just express gratitude on the fly, though sometimes after the fact one of us will call for an extra check-in.  If it’s something that I really want to engage in we’ll schedule a specific check-in time.  If we don’t do it that day, it’s usually within 24 hours.  Again, setting the time and the intention to tell someone something brings more weight to the communication.

In addition to having sacred time set aside to discuss things that have the potential to strengthen or undermine our relationship, regularly scheduled check-ins also have the potential to be practice fields for communication.  All this means is that the better we are at our regularly scheduled check-ins, the better we are at expressing our appreciation, our gratitude, and our concerns on a more fluid basis.

So, how do you do it?  One of the biggest challenges is simply remembering.  In order to better facilitate actually doing it, Michael J and I decided that we’d check-in on the 29th of every month.  Why the 29th?  Well, we met on the 29th of June, we had our first real date (and kiss) on the 29th of July, and three years later, we started living together on the 29th.  Thus, it’s an easy day to for us to remember.

Sometimes we check in on a walk or while we’re in bed.  But our favorite location for check-ins is on the couch with a cup of tea.  Sometimes we use a heart stone as a talking stick, other times we just talk.  During check-ins it’s important to let your partner talk and for you to hear and really listen to what they’re saying.

When is the best time to start regularly scheduled check-ins with your partner?  I think as soon as you possibly can.  We started them in our first year.  You don’t have to call them check-ins, you could simply ask your partner to sit and have a conversation with you on the couch, on the deck, etc.  If they’re not familiar with check-ins you can just start.  If you’re already in a co-creative space, they’ll have something to add; if not, they may simply say thank you, which is a perfectly legitimate response. Regardless, I’d recommend starting and ending with positive thoughts and using touch and I-statements throughout the conversation.

Next time your partner does something that you really appreciate, especially if it’s something small and might otherwise go unremarked upon, take the time – really take the time – to sit down with them and tell them.  Let them know how much you appreciate them and how grateful you are that they’re in your life.

If you start there, the rest will be easy.

Are you tired of being a slave to your feelings and emotions?

Have you ever said something in the heat of the moment that you wish you could have taken back?

Have you ever made a situation worse, rather than better, by giving into your anger, your jealousy, your disappointment, or your hurt?

People who are managed by their emotions are more likely to inadvertently damage their relationship with loved ones compared to their peers who are more emotionally savvy.

People who have the ability to manage their emotions in the moment are also more likely to achieve their longer term relationship goals (that is, love and connection, communication, and trust).  They do so not by being inauthentic, but by controlling themselves in the moment so that when they eventually bring up their concerns or requests with their partner, they do so in a manner that actually allows them to be heard.

We tend to think about emotions as things that are inherently “natural” and therefore wild or untamed. Recent sociological research, however, shows that instead of being an individual phenomena, emotions are actually social!  They are comprised of four factors: the physiological sensation (that is, the blood that rushes to your cheeks, the sweaty palms, the heart palpitations, the shortness of breath, etc.), the label (that is, saying that you’re feeling “angry” instead of “jealous”), the expression (that is, do you grin and bear it or do you jump up and down?), and the situation in which the emotion occurs.  According to the sociological view of emotion, these four factors are interdependent, meaning that any change in one of these factors will necessarily create a change in the others. What this means is that emotions can be managed by making a change in either the physiological reaction, the label that you apply to the feeling, the expression, the situation itself, or the meaning that the situation has for you (also known as framing).

Let me give you a practical example to show you how it’s done.

Recently I came home from running errands.  I was tired and hungry and I made a request that set off Michael J, which in turn set me off.

Instead of starting a fight (which, granted, was my first and preferred mode of response), I took a deep breath (altering my physiology), went upstairs (that changed the physiology again, as well as changing the immediate situation).  When I came back down into the kitchen, I got pissed all over again, so I took another deep breath, drank a bottle of cold San Pellegrino (again, changing the physiological state). At that point I was at least calm enough to put myself in his shoes and realize that Michael J was probably at least as tired and hungry as I was. I also forced myself to remember that he has good reasons from his past to respond the way he did (which helped me to change the meaning of the situation). I also reminded myself that I had been really tired, irritable, and hungry before all this started (reclaiming the label) and acknowledged that that could have contributed to the situation as much as Michael J’s knee-jerk reaction. I continued to focus on my breathing and drink my fuzzy water while I cooked dinner. I didn’t quite manage to smile, even though there have been a number of studies which show that when you smile you actually improve your mood, lower your blood pressure, and reduce stress! There was a reason why your mother always told you to smile when you were a sulky teen!

When Michael J came upstairs for dinner, I told him my perspective on what had happened much more calmly (i.e., without yelling, screaming, crying, or accusing), Michael J admitted that his reaction was a little irrational and based more on his past than his present, and, before dinner was over, we were laughing about it and had completely moved on. But more importantly, we gained  a better understanding of what makes the other one tick (at least on this particular issue) and developed a better blueprint for avoiding conflict in the future and dealing with it in a constructive and loving way.

Next time you find yourself at the “mercy” of your feelings, try managing them instead of letting them manage you!  Try changing your physiology (which is amazingly undifferentiated from emotion to the next once you think about it), the label you apply to it, your expression of it (smile if you can), and the situation, either by leaving momentarily or your understanding of what just happened and why.

For whatever reason, I’ve never been much into heavily promoted vacations like cruises or beachfront resorts. Instead, I tend to enjoy going to a new city and wandering around people-watching, taking photographs of architecture, eating great food, and seeing live music. I also like staying home on vacation and doing lots of nothing along with some lightweight puttering like clearing brush or organizing books. Full-scale house projects like painting or landscaping are not vacations in my book!

In 1996 I discovered the learning vacation and it’s been one of my favorite vacations ever since. It turns out to be a really great way to connect with your partner and share experiences that you’ll remember and build on.

Learning vacations are great for recharging your energy and picking up some new skills. You can reconnect with your partner around a topic you’re both interested in, and hang out with interesting people who also enjoy learning and have a lot to talk about. This helps you move toward all sorts of goals, since bonding with your partner, exploring and learning new skills, and connecting with interesting people are some of the best ways to advance your relationship, career, and social life. When I return from a learning vacation I’m recharged and energized, ready for the world.

When you take a regular vacation you can unwind and relax and have fun, but it doesn’t increase your personal power, and it only sometimes advances your relationship. You might end up meeting some cool people, but if you meet anyone at all they might turn out to be boring duds. If both partners enjoy the same activities there’s a chance to bond, but if one person is on the beach while the other plays golf you’re not doing things together. And it’s hard to achieve anything on a veg-out vacation, because the goal is to not achieve anything! When I return home from a boring vacation my energy level is low and it takes me a few days to get back in the groove.

Learning vacations can take many forms. You might go to a national park, and learn about the history, the geology of the place, or the people who discovered or built it. Because you and your partner have different perspectives you’ll have a shared topic to talk about on the vacation, with friends when you return, and again in the future together. I’m most familiar with learning vacations at retreat centers, and because we live in the Northeast USA there are at least two great retreat centers within a few hours drive of us: the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies and the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health.

Typically, retreat centers like these offer three-day and five-day sessions (and sometimes 10-day or 30-day workshops). Three-day sessions start Friday with supper and an evening orientation/introduction, and end on Sunday at noon. Five-day sessions start Sunday at suppertime and the evening introduction and end Friday at noon. A typical day at Omega offers:

• yoga, tai chi, mediation, or movement class early in the morning;
• a buffet breakfast, often with gourmet vegetarian food;
• morning class from 9:00 to 11:30;
• more awesome nutrition at the lunch buffet;
• afternoon class from 2:00 to 4:30;
• more yoga, tai chi, mediation, or movement classes;
• another fantastic meal;
• evenings are sometimes free, sometimes have classes, and sometimes have sampler workshops from the other classes on campus that week.

At Omega Wednesday afternoons are free time, and most retreat centers have wellness spas where you can schedule massage or other bodywork as well as a range of other holistic treatments. Or you can just hang out, take a nap, read a book, have a snack at the café, go for a swim, or hey, maybe even make love in the afternoon. ;) The accommodations range from camp sites to private rooms with private baths, so you can be as frugal or comfortable as your budget allows.

About a year ago Kathryn and I decided to merge our households and live together (after two years of dating). In a case of perfect timing Omega was hosting a number of workshops on relationships. We decided to attend a five-day workshop called Sharing the Path, with Robert Gass and Judith Ansara and it was an absolutely fantastic experience. There were maybe a dozen couples there. Perhaps 30% were in good shape and taking things to the next level, maybe 50% were going through big changes such as children going to college (“empty nest”) or relocations and job changes, and the rest were on the verge of breaking up and were trying to figure out the right move.

So we spent a beautiful week in a structured environment talking about our hopes and fears, the logistics of living together, how to handle conflicts, family issues (like where to spend holiday time), and what each of us needed to not just feel safe but to thrive as we merged our lives. There were great sessions on sexuality, massage, communication, and gratitude, and everyone had fun learning basic dance moves at a mini dance party. I think one of the most valuable aspects was getting a peek inside other relationships, both the “let’s be like them” as well as the “hopefully we can avoid that sort of train-wreck” variety.

We drove back to NH on Friday afternoon, moved in together that weekend, and it’s been pure bliss ever since! ;) In all seriousness, it was a key anchor to integrating our lives, and we’re both grateful we had the foresight and opportunity to attend and lay this foundation stone in our life together.

I’ve also attended workshops on rustic chair building, yoga, and straight-out R&R. I know folks who have taken workshops on career change, singing, and flying trapeze.

It might take a year or two to align mutual vacation schedules and a workshop you’re interested in. So look around your region to find a retreat center, and sign up for the catalogs (Omega, Kripalu). In March or April you’ll get a nice printed “dream book” and you can see if anything look interesting. Take that first exploratory step, and see if it leads you to a fulfilling, exciting, and energizing learning vacation.

Rituals serve many purposes.

• they anchor people’s emotions to a particular act
• they provide structure to your interactions
• they improve emotional connection within an interaction
• they facilitate the entrance into a desired emotional state
• they create a strong shared social identity (that is, they create a feeling of being a “we”)

So, what are rituals? Although the term “rituals” often has religious overtones, rituals, at their simplest refer to any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner. Examples of rituals include tipping a hat to a stranger, washing one’s hands before dinner, or checking email before bed. They can be anything, as long as they are performed in a regular and set pattern.

So how do you incorporate rituals into your coupledom?

One way to establish a ritual is simply to do it; eventually it will become a ritual, because your partner will expect that type of behavior from you.  They, in turn, may either pick up the same ritual or develop a complementary response.  So, for example, whenever I come home, I tend to say, “Hey babe,” and Michael J tends to respond, “Hey darlin’.”  We didn’t decide on that, but it is something that, in retrospect, has developed and persisted between us.

Another way is to borrow someone else’s rituals.  One of Michael J’s friends told him that he and his wife always have a candlelit breakfast.  That’s their special time, where they connect and share their plans for the day to come.  They do breakfast, instead of dinner, because of their respective work schedules.  Michael J and I both liked that idea, but we also liked having our mornings free, so we modified it.  We have our candlelight dinner at night – every night.

And, yet, another way is to simply stumble across them.  The first weekend that Michael J and I spent together, we were both so nervous that we bumped noses when we kissed!  Through much laughter, we both admitted our nerves (as if it wasn’t obvious!) and we tried again, yielding much better results.  Then and there the two kiss minimum was born.  Whenever I kiss Michael J (or whenever he kisses me) there are always two kisses, well, at least two kisses!  Not only are two kisses always better than one, every time we kiss we remember – or at least I do – the butterflies that we had in our stomachs and the anticipation we felt all those years ago.

If you currently aren’t observing rituals in your relationship, I would highly recommend trying them on for size.  Again, it doesn’t have to involve incense or even candles – though it most certainly could!  But they will add a texture to your days and, simultaneously, increase your feelings of connection not only to your partner, but also to the couple.  Start small, but don’t understimate the results!

Our American culture prizes efficiency over nearly everything else, but focusing on efficiency is not the best way to build connection in a relationship. We realized this one fine Friday when we met at the grocery store after work. We were buying food for the weekend and in order to “get home sooner” we split up in the store with separate lists. When we met up at the registers to check out we realized it was the first time we’d done that, and it was disconnecting! Plus, how much time did we really save?

It is much more pleasant to shop for food together, make menu and ingredient choices together, and enjoy each other’s company as we transition from the workweek to the weekend. Far from being less time-efficient, shopping for groceries together is a very efficient way to reconnect with each other. Instead of minimizing your time in the grocery store, try maximizing your enjoyment of your time together. You might be surprised at how efficient you can be at connecting if you don’t try to do everything as quickly as possible – and it’s not going to add that much more time to your errand.

Why is it important to see yourself as a part of a couple?

When you see yourself as part of something bigger than the sum of its parts, you automatically view yourself, your partner, and your relationship in a more cooperative and interdependent  way.  What I mean by interdependent, is that you come to realize that the individual decisions and behaviors to you make or do impact not only your partner, but also the relationship itself.

When you become a “we”, you automatically experience a feeling of stability and security that is lacking when you’re simply a “me” who is has a steady date.

When you are a “we,” instead of a “me” (and a “you”), your conversations and plans take on a more co-creative aspect.  “My plans” – often with a little input and a little revision – can easily become “our plans.”

Social psychologists have long known the importance of identity when it comes to predicting not only behaviors, but also thoughts, attitudes, and emotions.  One of the strongest tendencies in the human psyche is to be self-consistent.  The identity (or view of one’s self) that a person has, is the foundation which holds the behaviors, thoughts, attitudes, and emotions in place.  Another way to say this is that people are motivated to engage in behaviors, have thoughts, hold attitudes, and experience emotions that are consistent with their core, fundamental identities.  When they don’t, they experience feelings of cognitive dissonance (or unease) which makes you overcompensate.  If you’re part of a newly formed couple, me-oriented overcompensation could have disastrous consequences!

Now, before I met Michael J., I had been seriously uncoupled.  That is, although I’d been dating fairly steadily, it was never with someone with whom I felt I was part of a couple.  Michael J, however, was used to being in a couple, so I think the transition of being “a couple” with me was easier for him than the transition of being “a couple” with him was for me.  Does that make sense?

Of course, having been stubbornly single for a few years, I really hadn’t thought much about this, until it was brought to my attention, inadvertently of course, by Michael J.

We had probably been dating about three months, when I dropped by his office while running an errand in town.  “Do we have plans this weekend?” I asked tentatively.  Viewing myself as a “me”, instead of us a as a “we”.

“No, thank God!” Michael J responded.

What?!  I think my mouth dropped open about six inches.  Not because I hadn’t been expecting a no (after all, single people get turned down all the time, right?), but because his tone was so rude!  Thank God?! Michael J is normally such a sweet guy.  I wasn’t sure what had happened.  Hadn’t we been getting long reasonably well the last three months?  My mind immediately went in disaster alert (that is, self-preservation) mode.  I think I picked up my bag, drew myself up a little straighter, and started to leave.

Missing most, if not all of this, Michael J then said, “So I thought that maybe we could just cook at home on Friday, maybe watch a movie.  Is there anything in particular that you’d like us to do on Saturday?”

The room tilted.  My bag hit the floor.  And, knowing me, I laughed out loud.

Shaking it off, I told Michael J what I thought had happened – including the fifteen different breakup scenarios that my imagination so helpfully supplied in less than fifteen seconds.  Michael J’s frame included an assumption of being in a couple, and that we didn’t have plans as a couple. I do remember the laugh we had over that!

After that, I really began to see myself as part of a couple.  I no longer worried that every new weekend was going to bring with it the threat of rejection.  In fact, as a result of that communication miss, we agreed that we should assume that “we” had standing plans, unless we heard otherwise.

So, how can you begin to make this mindshift?  One, pay more attention to the way that you talk about yourself in the relationship.  Also, how does your partner use the term “we”?  Do you/they say “me” or “we”?  Is it “my” or “our”?

If you’re not sure where you are, just pay attention to how you use “me” and “we” when speaking about yourself in relationship.  If your partner uses “we”  and “our” and you’re using “me” or “mine”, try “we” on for size.  You might be surprised.  If you’re saying “we” and your partner is using “me”, and it bothers you, it might be worth a conversation.  Although bringing the topic up may seem scary, if you have what it takes to actually become a “we”, it shouldn’t be all that hard.

Let me know how it goes!  Or, as Michael J just pointed out, let us know! ;)