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Take Your Relationship to the Summit: Focus on Fun
Summertime seems like the perfect time to focus on fun activities. Carrie and I love this time of year when we can be out-of-doors, but we have to confess that we are fun-challenged! Unfortunately, many of our couples are too. With busy lives and crazy schedules, it's sad but true, that we have to be conscious and intentional about having fun together, especially the longer we have been together. In romantic love, having fun together seemed to happen naturally and all the time. But before we know it, we've slipped into predictable routines, and there is little play or fun with just the two of us.
When we were kids, play came naturally to us, and we were allowed the time to have fun, especially when we were out of school, and it was summertime. But this joyous, natural state of full-aliveness was lost as we grew up. There were expectations, do's and dont's, and life became serious.
Fun and laughter, however, are the best medicine for us and our relationship. When couples have exuberant fun together, they not only identify each other as a source of pleasure and safety, which intensifies their emotional bond, but wonderful drugs called endorphins are actually released in the brain.
So what is fun? In Imago, fun is defined as any high-energy interaction that requires no skills, has no rules, can't be done wrong, can be done in a short period of time and produces deep pleasure in the form of laughter, an orgasm or both. Just a few minutes of an exuberant fun activity have an energizing effect. For example, telling jokes, chasing each other around the yard, dancing to lively music, squirting each other with hoses, or making love create more high-spirited feelings than quietly watching TV or reading together. We need to pepper our relationship with fun activities to jump-start our feelings of aliveness, get those endorphins pumping, and the bonding agent of pleasure flowing.
Take the time to sit down with your partner and create a list of high-energy fun activities for just the two of you that you can do in the next few months. This summer make a point of having lots of high-energy together! Your relationship will thank you.
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