CAROLYN MCINTYRE: My name is Carolyn McIntyre. I'm a licensed clinical social worker, a certified employee assistance professional and I have training in life coaching. In this clip, we're going to do a beginner's guide to keeping things fresh in relationships. Remember when you were first dating? Remember that first kiss? Remember going out? All those dates, the romantic surprises, the cards, the flowers, that tingling feeling of excitement is a feeling that a lot of couples have in the beginning of a relationship, but they can lose sight of that feeling as time goes on and as jobs, children and other priorities become the focus. Keeping things alive in the relationship means focusing on intimacy, focusing on connection, focusing on allowing spontaneity and surprises, building on each other's interests and passions and allowing room in the relationship for things that are separate and things that you do together. You want to continue to find ways to stay connected, and in this day and age of technology, we have so many ways to stay connected. We have texting, e-mailing, voicemail, faxes, sending your partner a loving voicemail and loving e-mail and doing this in different points throughout the day, 30 seconds or a minute in the morning, in the middle of the afternoon, and later on the day. By the end of the day, you and your partner feel a sense of connection and when you see each other, you feel more relaxed and more connected. Sometimes couples wait until the end of the day before they have any conversation and what I find in my practice is that couples feel more connected and closer when they've been connecting throughout the day. Intimacy and romance still needs to be a priority in a relationship long after a couple makes their vows, and what that means is for men, often they feel that intimacy is a way to feel close, to stay connected and can help them forget about frustrations in the relationship. For women, women often want to focus on affection and emotional connection, and both are important. So you want to make sure that both are a priority and that both of you make time for that to happen. Allowing for spontaneity, doing special things for each other, gifts, surprises, holidays, birthdays, Valentines Day, you want to think about what are the things that you can do for each other and think about new things as you progress in the relationship. Don't always do the same thing every year, but find something new that might surprise your partner, a surprise party or something to keep it alive and keep the couple from feeling bored, and so that both of you can feel a sense of aliveness in the relationship. You want to find out about your partner's passions and interests? When you might want to give your partner tickets to a game another year or later on down the road, maybe your partner has interest in singing or gardening and you might want to give them lessons in singing or gardening. So you want to find out what are your partner's interests and build on those interests and enhance those interests. And again, it gives more of you things to bring to the relationship and helps each of you feel revived. In a couple, you want to have separate interests as well as interests that are in common. If each of you has separate interests or passions that you pursue or things that you do as a hobby, it gives you more to talk about in the relationship and it also give you a chance to miss each other. So you want to make sure that you have interests that are separate and interests that are in common. So the five key points to remember in keeping things fresh in a relationship are: staying connected, finding ways to stay connected throughout the day. You want to keep intimacy and romance a priority. You want to allow for spontaneity. You want to find out about your partner's passions and interests and you want to allow for separate interests as well as interests in common.
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