Qualities of a Great Man

In honor of my husband's birthday, I thought I would dedicate this blog entry to him and share some of the qualities of a great man (which he is).

Last year I interviewed nearly fifty professional women on the topic of having "the best of both worlds" for a project I am working on. The one common denominator that influenced whether the women felt that they did, in deed, have the best of both worlds was the level of involvement from their spouse or partner. Those who felt that they were doing a good job at, and enjoying more, both their career and motherhood said that they had a man at home who was either just as involved, if not more so, on the home front.

I am blessed to have one of these men in my own life.

• He understands the value of family time: My husband shares with me a desire for regular family meals. It is uncommon in our house for us to have dinner without all family members around the table. This doesn't mean that we eat late. Instead, my husband makes it a point to be home around 6:00 p.m. so that we can all eat together. This is his choice and is based on he and I communicating about our shared vision for our family. He could choose to work later, but he knows that the consequences of doing so are lost time and memories with his kids...and the wrath of his wife who would not be happy with a different choice.
  

• He strikes a nice balance between playing with the kids and parenting the kids: My husband is happy to get down on the ground a play with the girls, whether it's Tickle Monster or doll house. He will take them to the park and play tag or try out the equipment. However, he does not leave all the discipline and tougher parenting issues to me. He is right there, by my side, when we need to give time-outs, have a difficult conversation, or enforce the rules. He often reminds me that boundaries and consistency - and play - are the keys to raising happy, healthy and well-balanced kids.
  

• He wants to protect and provide, but not dictate: In my previous life, I had a hard time not being in control of everything. I also had a hard time letting someone else take care of me. Over time, and with the help of my husband, I've learned how wonderful it can feel to have an actual partner; someone who shares the load, steps up when the other is down, and makes it clear that he has my back and is watching out for the best interests of our family. He's not dictating or controlling any part of our life, instead he is sharing the responsibility of life.

• He really listens to me and hears me: Just the other night, after he came home from work and I shared with him how exhausted I was feeling, he immediately told me to get in to bed and let him handle dinner and baths. My "I don't want to be weak" side struggled with this, but I allowed myself to receive the gift. After he got the kids settled he came in to talk to me and find out more about what was going on. In that moment, I felt like I was so loved and cared for. He really heard me when he came home and supported me in taking care of myself.
  

• He does his fair share (if not more): I can't tell you how many times I have heard a fellow mom tell me that her marriage was saved by the cleaning lady. From what I know about other men and relationships, I understand that the topic of cleaning the house can be one that sends many marriages into turmoil. That is not our case. Again, my husband sees our house and the chores that go along with it as a joint responsibility. We share the value of a clean and healthy house and a vision of working together for it to be the way we like. We have a list of all the house related tasks and we've easily divided up who does what. It's become so relaxed that now we may even switch chores from week to week, but without much conversation or issue around doing so.

I could go on and on. But I think I'll stop for today.

Consider this: What qualities and actions are you grateful for in your own husband or partner? Focus on those first. If there are things that aren't feeling okay, get really clear about why they are bothering you (is it about respect, difference in parenting styles, not feeling loved) and then set up a time to have a heart-to-heart with your partner about how you are feeling and what you'd like to see change.

Tips for Nurturing Your Relationship

Life with kids is busy, right? You barely feel like you have enough time to get the necessities done (feed and clean kids, take care of house, work, appointments, etc.). For many people, the two areas of our life which have the greatest impact on our overall happiness and satisfaction fall to the very, very, VERY bottom of the 'Life List'.

1) Time to nurture self
2) Time to nurture your love relationship

Let's talk about the relationship piece here.

Of course, over time and with more responsibilities added to the mix (i.e. kids), there is going to be less focus on 'couple time'. However, when we choose to let everything else in life trump nurturing our love relationship, we are asking for trouble.

Parents wonder why the spark has burnt out or why in a few short years they have gone from being connected and in love to not even knowing who they are married to anymore.

It's called a lack of nurturing.

Take a plant for example. A really strong, hearty plant may be able to survive for awhile with no water, attention and nurturing. But that's really all it's doing: it's surviving. And over time it becomes weaker and weaker and less able to handle the tough times (extreme weather, a move, being trampled, etc.). Give a plant with good roots even just a little water, attention and nurturing and that can be the difference between it surviving versus thriving.

However, a less sturdy plant may not last long at all without these essential elements.

So it is for a relationship. A relationship with strong roots (foundation) can usually survive without the needs of both people being met continuously; without active love, attention and nurturing. But you are simply surviving, not thriving.

A relationship that doesn't have strong roots or is already weak may not be able to survive without the essential elements of time, connection and nurturing.

A little, consistent nurturing can go a long way and help deepen the roots of any relationship.

Nurturing is what helps a plant grow stronger.
Nurturing is what keeps a plant alive.
Nurturing is what helps a relationship grow stronger.
Nurturing is what is keeps a relationship alive.

What are you doing to nurture your love relationship? You don't have to spend a lot of time to nurture it, but you do need to give it some heart. This is one of those areas where the idea of "quality over quantity" is really true. Your nurturing acts or moments do not need to take long.

• It's the small things like little notes to simply remind your spouse that you are thinking of him/her.
  
• It's the conversations beyond, "what's going on with the kids?" and "what's the schedule for next week?"
  
• It's the few minutes of snuggling before you fall asleep.
• It's taking a few brief moments to actually look in your partners eyes when they walk in the door and greet them with warmth.
  
• It's making one night a week your night, whether you have a babysitter or not, to eat dinner together (alone), sit on the couch and talk, or work on a project together; to connect and interact on a deeper level then the practicalities of life and parenting.
  

Tips for success:

1. Set the intention now to nurture your relationship each and every day.
   
2. Be open and inspired by what ideas you have (big or small) to support this intention.
   
3. When a thought comes to mind ("I want to call Mike and tell him I am thinking of him"), act on it if you can in that moment. Don't over-analyze it or rationalize it away. Take the inspired action. Those are the ones that usually take the least time, are the most pleasurable for us, and have the best results.
   
4. Start each day with the reminder and intention to notice and act on small ways to nurture your relationship.
   
5. End each day checking in with yourself as to what you did to nurture your relationship.
   
6. Better yet, discuss the idea of consciously nurturing your relationship with your spouse/partner and do the checking in with each other at the end of the day.

Designate a Date Day

Remember what it used to be like before kids when you could wake up on a weekend morning and know you had the whole day ahead of you to play around with your spouse or partner? You could sleep in. You could fool around (wink, wink) in the middle of the day. You could go out for a leisurely lunch. You could take in a movie without worrying about rushing home. You could get out of the house and the day-to-day life management stuff and just enjoy being together…for an entire day.

Why not do that now? My husband and I had a date day on Friday. Yep, an entire day. Well, from nine in the morning until four thirty in the afternoon, but when you’ve only had a few brief hours alone over the course of months, nearly eight in the same day feels like an entire day.

How did we do it? We both took the day off. Yep, he took the day off because he knew he was going to have to work over the weekend and, being self-employed, I cleared my own calendar for the day. After dropping the kids off at school and day care, which they would have been going to if we were working, we started our date day together.

Did we feel guilty? Mildly.

Did we do it anyway? You betcha!

And what did we do? Well, after kissing in the car wash (yes, we felt like teenagers), we spent the first three hours of our date day negotiating the purchase of our car at a dealership. Were we thrilled with the length of time we were there? Not necessarily. But we were happy to be there together taking care of something we needed to do without two young kids in tow. (Can you even imagine trying to entertain an eight-year-old and three-year-old at a car dealership for three hours?)

After that it was off to a relaxing lunch at a restaurant we’ve been meaning to try. The hostess must have known that this was a special day for us as she sat us at the back table for two, tucked away from the noisy crowd. We’re use to being put in the back of a restaurant, but it’s usually because we have the small kids in tow. Not this time. In fact, not only were our kids not around, but no other kids were either!

Next, we killed some time wandering through a bookstore before heading to a movie. We agreed that we could easily spend an entire afternoon browsing through a bookstore, especially without children asking to buy things or climbing up the shelves.

And then there was the movie. We got a good chuckle when we walked in to an entirely empty theater. Hmmm….perhaps another opportunity to steal some kisses? Not quite, because a few others did show up, but the thought made us both smile.

I can honestly say that I really did feel more connected to my husband at the end of the day. We held hands more. We kissed more. We talked more. We definitely laughed more. And we came home feeling happy about our day, happy about our relationship, and exhausted from a day spent focused on us.

Your Relationship Deserves More

Over and over again I hear from women who I am talking to about the concept of having the best of both worlds—a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life, with the energy to enjoy it—is how hard it is to stay connected in their marriage with young kids.

Having a successful career or running a successful business takes time, energy and attention. Raising healthy, happy and well-adjusted children takes time, energy and attention. Having a fun and fulfilling relationship takes time, energy and attention. For whatever reasons, the first two usually trump the last when it comes to where you choose to put your time, energy and attention.

However, if you really do want to have the best of both worlds, which includes having a loving, fulfilling and connected relationship with your spouse or partner, you need to start giving that relationship some of your time, energy and attention now. If you don’t, the best case scenario is that you’ll be in a relationship that doesn’t particularly feel good to you. Worst case scenario is that you’ll both feel so disconnected over time that you’ll forget what even brought you together in the first place.

I am going to start offering relatively simple tips and suggestions on this blog for giving your relationship even just a bit more of your focus. Try those that interest you and let me know what you think. Also, if you have any other ideas to share, please email me at nicola(at)trueinsightscoaching(dot)com (using the appropriate symbols instead of the words).

Tune Your Tone

Have you ever noticed how the first few seconds of interaction with someone can set the tone for the entire conversation?

I just had one of those reminders from a brief phone exchange with my husband. I had called him at lunchtime with the intention of checking in and seeing how he was doing. I was feeling good about the day and excited about reaching him.

However, it took no longer than 30 seconds of hearing his voice to bring me down. I realize this doesn’t sound so good, but I am being honest. Plus, there’s a point to all of this and hopefully a reminder that we can all use to improve our communication with others.

Little did I know that my husband was having a frustrating morning, but he was and I just so happened to catch him it at a particularly frustrating moment. And it only took me asking the wrong question in the wrong way at the wrong time for him to snap.

He snapped. I got defensive. And the rest of the conversation went downhill from there.

What caught my attention was how the tone of that conversation set off the tone of further conversations with him later in the day. My email regarding some scheduling stuff was “strictly business” instead of my normal loving tone. And even after that we had a brief Instant Message exchange that lacked the intimacy and connection we are use to.

Why did the first 30 seconds of one conversation with my husband impact me so much? Because in our relationship how we are with each other—our level of connection, intimacy and positive exchange—is often the temperature gauge for the other areas of our life. If "we" (our relationship) are off, we both feel off in general.

My husband I have discussed this before. We know that how we greet each other when one of us walks in the door has a huge impact on how the rest of the evening will go. We have both made an effort to remember this and to stop what we are doing, welcome the other person home with open arms and a kiss so that we can help set the tone for a loving and connected evening. It only takes a few moments and it makes such a huge difference.

As for that phone conversation earlier today, my husband has apologized for taking his frustration out on me. We agreed that it wasn’t our best interaction and that we are looking forward to reconnecting when he gets home tonight.

My point: Good relationships take good communication. Good communication doesn’t always come easily…especially when you are tired, frustrated, sick or irritated. Choosing to tune your tone towards the positive when you first connect with someone can mean the difference between a positive and fulfilling conversation or a negative and unsatisfying conversation. Which will you choose?

Too much of a good thing?

Today was one of those days when I had a few too many really great things packed a little too closely together. From 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. I was doing just what it is I love to do: having deep and inspiring conversations with people I enjoy. However, without a break between appointments or time to eat, I literally felt ill by the end of the day.

So now I have learned a very valuable lesson. That because of who I am and the type of relationships I choose to have (both personally and professionally), it is extremely important for me to balance out my days between connection with others and time by myself to recharge. It seems sort of silly, but I am thinking that I will start scheduling in my "recharge time" between appointments and conversations with others.

Tomorrow I get to try it all again!

Reaching Out

I recently threw a couple of Life Purpose Parties with my friend and hand-analysis Laura Kennedy (more about that in a future post). I found it interesting, and yet not surprising, that nearly everyone who participated said that connection (connecting with self, with others and with nature) was a key component of passion, joy and pleasure in their lives.

What does surprise me is how much we limit the opportunities for connection (again, with our self, others and nature) because we are so busy trying to do so many things. I realize this relates a bit to my previous post, but what prompted my post today was this article.

The article claims that having a strong social network can help you deal with stresses of everyday life. I find this to be true, if (and this is a big if) I choose to spend time with people who help fill me up rather then drain me. There's such a big difference between connecting with people who you enjoy being around, you feel good being around and with whom you feel a--well--connection, versus those who leave you feeling overwhelmed, undermined and empty.

Perhaps it's less about how many people we have connections with and more about the depth of those connections. That and consciously choosing to reach out to those people in order to further develop the relationship, grow the community and feel the connection that feeds our soul.

Turn It Off

I was very proud of my husband last night when he decided to turn off the baseball game (he is a huge Red Sox fan, so I know this was probably challenging for him) in order to focus on reading to Ella, my step-daughter. You should have seen the smile on her face when her dad clicked off the TV and said, "this is Ella time."

It seems as if we have all become master multi-taskers. We have been taught, and now believe, that we are more successful when we are doing multiple tasks at once. However, it has occurred to me that a result of our need to be doing more then one thing at a time is a loss of depth and connection with ourselves and those around us.

Yes, I may be able to accomplish more faster if I am responding to a work email while discussing the weekend's plans on the phone with my husband or talking to my mom on my cell phone while pushing my daughter on the swing, but what it is costing me?

It costs me an opportunity to be in the moment and fully connect with one other person. The email response is shorter and more abrupt and there are typos because I wasn't fully paying attention. My husband gets frustrated because I don't remember what we decided on. My mom keeps getting interrupted as I deal with my daughter. And my daughter is playing at the park with a mom who is not available to play with her.

Seeing the look on Ella's face when her dad declared that the following 15 minutes was her time and not her time shared with the TV (or anything else for that matter) reminded me of how important it is to make the conscious choice to choose connection--choose the relationship. Not all the time, but some of the time. Turn off the technology (or one piece of the technology) and give just one thing or one person your undivided attention. Especially when it comes to kids, sometimes even just 15 minutes of an adult (preferably their parent) focusing just on them with no other distractions is enough to last them an entire day (or longer).

Try it out. The next time you find yourself doing more than one thing at once, especially in the area of communication with others, see what if feels like to turn something off and choose one task or person to give your focus to.

Bring Back that Love'n Feel'n

My husband and I had a recent conversation about how easy it's become to forget to do the little things to show each other that we care. It's not something that I really wanted to admit, but it had been nagging at me that neither of us were making the effort to say, "I love you" in the sweet and romantic ways we once use to.

I know, I know; many people say that's just what happens over time in relationships. And when you add young kids to the mix, time and attention between the two adults in the house becomes even more limited. But, honestly, that's just not OK with me. I like the way it feels to get those sweet, romantic reminders that my husband is thinking of me. Even when it's just him surprising me with my guilty pleasure of a celebrity magazine tucked away in the grocery bag, it feels good.

But it goes both ways. Whether it's leaving a note on his pillow when I leave for a trip or sending him a loving email message at work, I now realize that for us, consciously choosing to do the little things helps us feel more connected. It can become all too easy to get caught up in life and expect our relationships to just continue on auto-pilot without much effort or attention on our part. But creating, continuing and growing a loving, fulfilling relationship requires attention and appreciation...and the little gestures along the way that say, "I choose you again today."