One key to couple satisfaction: surprise

I asked Marty to share some of his thoughts about Valentine’s Day and here’s what he had to say…

Limits in the middle ground are not placed on partners by each other but are presented by circumstances or adversity. Leaving Eros out of the middle ground is a little like envisioning a healthy diet without a thought about acquiring fresh and delicious food.

1. Number one will come as a surprise to many. A school of prominent psychoanalysts inform us that a person’s ability to become surprised – by others as well as by themselves – is a reliable index of their state of mental health! A person whose existence lacks an occasional, or even more frequent, surprise may have shut down their capacity for spontaneity. Delight is the best variation of surprise on Valentine’s Day, so: Take a chance on doing something that, though decidedly out of the ordinary, you have confidence will bring a smile to your partner’s face. Pleasing a child in this way is a snap. Why is it harder to make it work for a grown-up? Because our capacity for surprise grows rusty in proportion to our accumulated responsibilities; so consider this a rebalancing exercise. Dress up is always an option, whether you go in the Victoria’s-Secret direction or become a walking replica of your partner’s male-to-die-for-fantasy. If you can’t think of a specific character to take residence up within, how about becoming a masked mysterious caller. Whatever works as long as it playfully surprises.

2. Put some thought into giving your partner a means to true satisfaction. Shuffle a deck of index cards, each of which has a coupon value written clearly on the underside. For example, one may say, twenty minute back massage; another may say, I’m in the mood to please, tell me what I can do for you –again, as in all suggestions here, no one is ever obligated to do anything they find unappealing. So, if you ask for something and it’s refused, go on to wish number two. Another card may say, let’s spend a day at the spa together or any other pleasurable sensual experience that you wish to plan together. I’d like to take you to the restaurant of your choice, or tell me where you’d like us to go together may work. A proven winner: Play the second movement of Mozart’s violin concerto #3 in G Major (adagio) – it’s under ten minutes and guaranteed to transport you both – try it even if classical music tends to leave you cold! (Find it in the public library or download it from iTunes)

3 – Take a brief detour just over the steamy border of your comfort zone. Sex therapists strategize ways to help couples feel more comfortable talking about what they feel in the realm of touch, affection, love-making; this can mean revealing what each of you likes, dislikes or feels they could take or leave. Do you know what kinds of touches your partner likes? Have you ever articulated what you enjoy? Has either of you ever actual broached these topics in conversation? If you have not had talks like these with your partner, try taking turns expressing your feelings and curiosity by candlelight. Aim for anything from giggly fun to dumbstruck deer-in-the-headlight enlightenment. Guideline: state explicitly that if either you or your partner feels uncomfortable in the conversation that you both agree to stop immediately without any pressure or negative repercussions. Whether the dialogue builds momentum or is short-lived, being able to respect each other enough to stop with sensitivity can be a trust-builder with enormous positive repercussions!

Valentine’s Day is a day to brighten up the spirit of mutual renewal. Forget about your grievances for this time period and go with the flow of honoring each other’s initiative in event and decision-making. Give yourselves something to remember and look forward to – and if you must, throw in a few chocolates, flowers and even a Valentine’s Day card for good measure. There’s no harm in any of it.

Marty Babits, LCSW
Author, The Power of the Middle Ground: A Couple’s Guide to Renewing Your Relationship

It’s been four years since the divorce that ended my 27 year marriage. How and why it happened is a story I’ll tell you some other time. My son, knowing that it is not even a remote possibility, is rooting for his mom and I to get back together. He has tried to persuade me to limit the length of my dating to six weeks per dating partner. “After that,” he counsels,” you’ve got to find someone else and start again., dad.” So now that I am having a relationship with a woman, a woman I am crazy about, and have been seeing for well beyond the six week stint that he approves, I get considerable bristling and growling in response to mostly everything, mostly everyday. He avoids her at every turn. Before she’s been invited into the picture in any formal sense, he’s invited her out.

You should know that, up to now, I’ve had no privacy in my post-divorce living space. My bed is set down in a combination living and dining room area. It’s large enough to separate into two rooms but I haven’t built a divide. Why didn’t I put a wall up? Probably because I’ve felt guilty about not being able to shield my son from the pain of the divorce. So with no wall, I’m on 24/7 call. I’ve been focused on making him feel how important he is to me. Whenever I think of moving on, the following question dogs me: “How can you bring a new person into your living situation (my son lives with me) against his vehement opposition?” This is where I have been stuck.

Wednesday Martin, like the good friend that she is to all her readers, helped me reason this through. Reason, not as in Archimedes’ principle, I’m talking about heart-reason, emotional logic. Stepmonster helped me understand that by living without a private space for myself, I was sending my son a confusing and essentially untrue message: that time was standing still. Also, he had a room with a door. Was I telling him – by my actions – that his needs trumped mine? That’s not how I want him to understand me; it benefits neither of us. We both have to learn to take care of ourselves.

Children of divorce, probably universally, harbor fantasies of their parents reuniting. Having no wall invites him to misinterpret what I am doing and feeling. It is of form of colluding with him by allowing the fantasy of parental reunification to comfortably flourish. As his dad, I realize that he needs to accept that the ending of my romantic relationship with his mother has already occurred; it is a fact rooted in the past and not to be revisited. The inevitability of my son’s need to grieve the losses he has experienced as a result of the divorce – and the fact that the divorce marked the finale of his childhood – amount to a double assault on his sense of security; two tough blows, two rough psychological truths that he must learn to come to terms with. Maturation is dotted with traumatic interludes. Failure to grieve brings on failure to thrive.

So the wall that marks my readiness to move forward in my life, to re-establish my need for privacy and the prospect of a life – or at least a significant portion of a life that is uninterrupted by my son and intentionally kept separate from his experience – is now appropriate. Maybe the wall is a way of walling out the past from the present; or at least walling out the predominance of the past in the present. Stalling on the wall registers as a vote of no-confidence in his (and my) learning to handle the changes in our lives. Seeing it from this vantage, I am tempted to erect a series of walls, one for each developmental juncture – in my son’s and my own past – that needs resolving. But, of course, I know the bulk of this work gets done internally. So, it’s one wall to represent them all.