love relationship Archives - Page 7 of 8 - Christine Bongiovanni Coaching

Taming Your Emotional Baggage with Dawn Ziegerer

This month get ready for some sassy fun with my guest Dawn Ziegerer. Dawn is THE Rebuilding Coach, she works with women who want to break through their self-sabotage and create a much bigger life.

Her coaching program is called Make Baggage Your Bitch. She helps women uncover the emotional baggage they’re aware of and the stuff that lurks beneath the surface. She knows there’s so much control women can gain over their lives and she’s determined to do her part to help! She’s a certified life coach, mother-of-three, former radio host, and music lover.

You can reach Dawn through her website: The Rebuilding Coach

Make Baggage Your Bitch Podcast

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I am a life coach who works with individuals to break down relationship barriers by awakening their true self. My process isn’t about changing your partner, it’s about discovering who you are so that you can AwakenYou in your marriage. If you’re ready to take your life and your love relationship to the next level then schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s decide together if this is your next step to creating the life you’ve been dreaming of.

Healing The Mother-Daughter Relationship with Karen C. L. Anderson

Healing The Mother-Daughter Relationship with Karen C. Anderson | Relationship Coach

Karen C. L. Anderson is a writer, author, and master-certified life coach who helps women use the troubled relationships they have with their mothers and/or daughters as a catalyst for growth, empowerment, wisdom, and creativity.

She is the author of:

After (The Before & After) (2011)
The Peaceful Daughter’s Guide To Separating From A Difficult Mother (2015…no longer available)
Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters, A Guide For Separation, Liberation & Inspiration (March 2018)
The Difficult Mother-Daughter Relationship Journal: A Guide For Revealing and Healing Toxic Generational Patterns (January, 2020)
Overcoming Creative Anxiety: Journal Prompts & Practices for Disarming Your Inner Critic & Allowing Creativity To Flow (June 2020)
Dear Adult Daughter, With the Emphasis On Adult (July 2020)

Karen’s next book, tentatively entitled Unshame Yourself: Healing The Most Toxic Relationship Of All, is scheduled to be published in 2022.

She is also at work on a memoir, A Letter To The Daughter I Chose Not To Have.

Prior to all of this? Karen spent seven years as a freelance writer and before that, 17 years trying to fit her right-brained self into a left-brained career as a trade magazine journalist in the field of plastics (and if she had a dime for every time someone mentioned that line from The Graduate…).

Karen and her husband Tim Anderson (a left-brained engineer) live on the Southeastern Connecticut shoreline.

Certifications & Education:

Certified Dare To Lead Trained Professional
Master Certified Coach, Life Coach School
Healthy Boundaries for Kind People coach and facilitator
Emotional Freedom Techniques practitioner (EFT Training For Trauma, Levels I + II)
Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from Marist College

You can find Karen and learn more about her coaching program, The Mother Lode on her website: www.kclanderson.com

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How To Increase Physical Intimacy In Your Marriage

Welcome back to part six of my relationship intimacy series! I cannot even believe that we are already on the fifth type of relationship intimacy; these weeks, I have been so into the things I am teaching, learning, and putting into action that time has gone by quickly. Digging into this series has also created a deeper level of wisdom in my own life around how I show up in my relationship and the dynamic of the intimacy dance between partners. Today we wrap up the series by talking about how to increase physical intimacy in your relationship. Then I’m going to take a little break from the intimacy topic before coming back to explore a few different aspects of physical intimacy that will help you right where you are in your relationship so you can sensitively take steps of exploring where you want to go from there.

In review, if you haven’t listened to my previous teachings on intimacy, please take some time to go back and listen, starting six weeks back with the first episode on What Is Relationship Intimacy.

Let’s start with looking at the definition of physical intimacy.

Intimacy: showing a close union or combination of particles or elements: an intimate mixture.

Physical: relating to the body.

Physical intimacy is a close union of the body, an intimate mixture of physicality.

An intimate mixture of our bodies most certainly brings about a mental image of a couple having sexual intimacy, which most certainly is an intimate mixture, and I don’t think any of us will argue with that, but that is not the only way to be physically intimate with our partners. If we are only intimate in a sexual way, without including other forms of physical connection, we might be having sex in a transaction form, meaning it is being done as a “transaction” or duty rather than for intimacy and connection.

There are many other forms of physical intimacy that we want to consider to build trust and desire for our relationship, physical intimacy, and our desire for sex that isn’t transactional. Touching your partner in ways that let them know that you see them, in ways that aren’t sexual or making the other feel sexually threatened, in ways that don’t tell your spouse that “it’s time to have sex.” These could be touching their shoulder when they walk by, making eye contact when you talk, holding their hands, touching in bed without the intention of it leading to sex, putting your hand on their knee when sitting together, sitting close enough to touch. All of these forms of touch are important in letting your partner know you care about them and making them feel safe. If you are only touching your partner when you want sex, that can create a habit of withdrawal; your partner could take that to mean that the only time you want connection is with the intention of having sex.

How to increase physical intimacy in your relationship.

The pattern you’ve noticed in this series is intention. If you want more physical intimacy in your relationship, you must be intentional about creating it and creating it safely. It’s good to understand that many people have experienced some sexual trauma in their lives, which is a great place to start communication. Opening up about our physical desires and our fears can make us feel vulnerable, and that is what this whole series has been about, being open to the discomfort around exposing our fears and desires. Starting the conversation is a good place to start, always knowing how someone else is acting in your relationship has everything to do with them and their life experience and nothing to do with you. It’s important to be sensitive to this truth.

Start small and be open to exploring what is going on for each other and knowing that you are not responsible for how someone feels. We are always responsible for how we feel; if our partners aren’t initiating the connection, it is about something they are struggling with; it is never about you and your lovability or attractiveness.

Another place to start is implementing physical touch forms that feel safe for you and then observing what happens in your body when you implement these strategies. Talk to your partner about what you are feeling and why; as you explore what is happening for you, you’ll start creating awareness, and you might be surprised about what you discover about yourself. As you start to introduce other forms of touch, you build trust and connection, connection to yourself first; from here, you can start exploring each other in the bedroom as well. You can start observing what you are thinking and feeling when having sex; this in itself can reveal a clearer picture of what might be getting in the way of enjoying sex. Taking time to explore what is going on inside of you will help you take steps towards developing a physically intimate relationship that feels real instead of forced or obligational.

Let’s look at some examples of how you can increase physical intimacy in your relationship.

Start small and ask yourself what you would like more of; maybe you want to start with increasing physical intimacy, not through touch but physical presence, eye contact, and awareness. Maybe the two of you aren’t spending much time together; ask yourself how you can increase time together. In many relationships, the less time you are together, the further apart you grow, making it difficult to connect when you are together, again we’re looking at creating intention and talking about it together as a couple.
As you start intentionally creating more physical intimacy in your relationship, please pay attention to how you feel, what you are thinking, and how you are showing up, be curious about it. If you’re feeling withdrawn or defensive, ask yourself why. If you don’t know what to talk about, refer back to previous articles, like creating a connection in your marriage and planning things to talk about. Start small, plan short times together if you haven’t been spending intentional time together. Many of my clients start implementing a weekly huddle; you can read about the relationship huddle here.
Then experiment with other forms of physical intimacy and touch, continue to explore what happens for you as you practice. Think about these exercises like learning how to weight train and build muscle, but you are building your mind, mental fitness. Try something and see what results you get; if you like the results build on your practice.
When it comes to sex, it will be the same; start introducing something different; it could be as simple as exploring how you might want to make suggestions to make the time more pleasurable for yourself. Notice how you think, feel and act while stepping into a bit of empowerment and discomfort; use it to learn and grow instead of seeing how it might appear not to be working.

Learn how to take ownership over what you want and start creating it, remembering that change takes time, one uncomfortable step at a time.

People often ask me why they can’t have the relationship they had when they were dating, and that’s a great question; let’s look at it for a moment. I want you to go back and think about times when you’ve “fallen in love” with someone. Remember how you were willing to do things with them that you might not consider doing with someone else, all because you were “in love.” What often happens when we meet someone and “fall for them” is letting go of our normal relationship boundaries. We let people into our space and “let our guard down” for the sake of love, passionate connection, and the magical moment. The natural progression is for our personal boundaries to snap back into place. When they do, these personal boundaries will keep us from expanding in our love relationship unless we intentionally do the work of stretching them. The work of stretching them is the culmination of all of the things we talked about over this intimacy series.

Intimate relationships are an intimate mixture of two humans with two different sets of relationship boundaries. To grow more intimately connected, work and discomfort are required; if we choose to avoid the hard work, we choose to stay where we are in our relationship. We choose to have a stagnant relationship where we don’t explore ourselves, our discomforts, and our boundaries. Doing the uncomfortable work of growing together creates a dynamic, intimate relationship that keeps growing, that each couple contributes themselves to, looking forward to what tomorrow might bring.

I hope that as you have worked through this series with me, you have been exploring the first four forms of creating intimacy in your relationship. If you have been exploring emotional, mental, spiritual, and experiential intimacy, I imagine you have been experiencing some interesting emotions along the way; it’s even possible that some of those emotions have stopped your progress in creating a more intimate connection with your partner. If this is the case, I want to encourage you to keep moving forward, to look at the steps you have taken as progress, not a failure, and to use what you have done as a way to continue learning about yourself and your partner.

As we start uncovering layers of ourselves and learn more about who we have been in the past when we put ourselves out there, it feels uncomfortable, and our brains want to bring us back to our comfort zone. This isn’t a problem; it’s doing what it has been conditioned to do; the important thing for you is to recognize this pattern and reassure yourself that nothing has gone wrong, that you aren’t in danger, and that you are actually taking these steps to grow and learn. Over time you will build self-confidence brick by brick and see the progress you have made. Remember and remind yourself that you have your own best interest in mind, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

If this series has been helpful for you and your desire to increase intimacy in your relationship, I’d love to hear from you; I’d love to hear how it is helping you and what you might be running up against that might have you holding back from taking future steps forward.

Through this series, I have found a couple of other topics that I would like to explore with you, so please come back over the next couple of weeks as I continue to dig into physical intimacy and affection. Together let’s build relationships that we are proud of, proud because we did the bold work of stepping into what we want to create with our partners.

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How To Increase Experiential Intimacy In Your Marriage

Welcome to week five of our deep dive into learning what relationship intimacy is and how to create more of it in your closest relationship. If you are joining for the first time with this post, I want to encourage you to go back to the initial post about what relationship intimacy is and discover the different ways to start connecting differently with your partner and experience how these start to increase the breadth and depth of intimacy with your partner. We started with the article on Three Ways To Increase Spiritual Intimacy. Then we talked about How To Increase Mental Intimacy. Then we dug into emotional intimacy; you can check that article out here: What Is Emotional Intimacy and How To Get More of it in Your Relationship.

This week we are talking about my favorite form of connecting with others because I absolutely LOVE creating experiences in my life. When I share these experiences with others, it seems to increase the experiential enjoyment triple-fold. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my solo experiences. Still, when I get to share an experience with others, it gives me someone else to talk to about the experience, someone else who experienced it in a whole different way which enriches my experience.

To start learning how to increase experiential intimacy in your relationship let’s start with a definition of what experiential intimacy even is.

Starting with this definition of intimacy: showing a close union or combination of particles or elements: an intimate mixture.

Then looking at the definition of experience: which is a particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something as in an event or occurrance.

Combining those two definitions gives us a definition of experiential intimacy being encountering or undergoing something together, in close union; creating an intimate mixture through a personal encounter with your partner.

Why is creating experiences together important in creating overall intimacy?

First, I want to make it clear that having things that you do on your own or with other people, without your partner’s participation, is very important. I wrote this article that you might want to read about How To Create Great Connection In Your Marriage and in it, I talk about creating a list of different ways you crave connection. Then finding people who are great matches for those connections, your partner will not be the one to fulfill all of your connection desires and that’s important, as well as freeing, to know. BUT, it’s also important to know that finding new ways to connect with your partner and being curious about what those ways might be will be another avenue to relationship growth.

I often hear my clients talk about how their partner doesn’t like helping in the kitchen or doesn’t like doing the types of things they like doing, and I like to challenge them to question these thoughts. These types of thoughts keep us stuck in blame, resentment, and avoidance. I like to ask questions around these thoughts and start to poke holes in them, questions like, how might your husband enjoy helping in the kitchen or what are the sorts of things you have done with your partner in the past that either of you might not have fully enjoyed but gladly participated in because it meant spending time with the other? When we have thoughts that close us down from what we want, it’s always helpful to look at how we might be creating evidence that our thought is true.

How to increase experiential intimacy in your relationship.

By this point in the series, you’re probably noticing a repeating theme and that repeating theme is intentionality. Asking yourself what you might try to increase your relationship’s mutual experiences, ask yourself how you could get participation by trying different approaches. Let me start with an approach that most likely won’t increase participation: “Well, I know you don’t like going for long walks with me, but would you like to go anyway?” Ask yourself how you might want to be invited along on an experience with your partner while also knowing that you have the full ability to say “No thank you.” and still feel love and maybe even come up with some compromise. I do not want to encourage you to do something you don’t want to do, but if you want to spend some time getting to know your partner, what about that thing might you want to enjoy participating in? In other words, how might you look differently at the invitation to do something with your partner when you think about your desire to pursue new experiences and connect with your partner. Could you look forward to the afterward part of spending time doing something they wanted to do, something you would never have wanted to do on your own, and see how the time spent was time well worth it when it comes to deepening your connection with your partner.

Besides being willing to spend time doing what your partner wants to do, what is it you want them to do with you and why? The why is what’s important here. Them spending time with you or not doesn’t have to mean that they love you or that they don’t love you; it can simply mean they aren’t interested. Can you be ok with that? From there, how might you generate some interest and willingness in your partner to do things with you? How might you invite them to help out in the kitchen or participate in activities you enjoy doing? Again, look at your approach and how it might be creating a tension that is creating resistance for them in their willingness to join you.

Let’s look at some examples of how you can create experiential intimacy.

My background was thirty years of coaching athletes to perform at a higher level, helping them break through limiting beliefs, so let’s go with the example of working out together or, even better, finding something to workout together for, like a competition or a race or an endurance event. Preparing together gives you the experience of helping each other out and supporting each other along the way. After the event is completed, you can look back and have shared memories of the experience.
Here’s one for those of you who think your partner doesn’t help out in the kitchen. Meals are a daily event; even though many of your weekday meals might not be much of an event, they are still a process where both can participate and enjoy each other’s company. Maybe it’s sharing duties with one partner creating the main meal and the other partner cleaning up or doing the other dinner necessities like preparing the table, prepping the beverages, cleaning up as you go along. If you think that your partner isn’t interested in participating, I would like you to challenge yourself to question why you think this thought. Could it be possible that he fears doing it “right”? How might you help show him how you would like the table set or how you would like the beverage served, or how could you be ok with him doing it his way and not judging it as wrong? Taking everyday tasks and finding ways to make them enjoyable is how we create deeper connections while working them into our everyday routine.
What about outdoor activities? How could you incorporate cooperation? Maybe one person decides what you will do and where you’ll go while the other person takes care of all of the other details, like any supplies you might need to have a comfortable experience?
What else do you enjoy doing, or are you interested in doing? Something you could start exploring with your partner? Short mini-vacations or day trips to local towns or cities you haven’t explored or camping or canoeing, perusing through a local museum or art show, the farmer’s market, discover something new and explore while learning more about each other.

Notice what thoughts come up for you around any suggestions and how you might be turning them into “no’s” and why. If your partner chooses to say yes and if while you are sharing the activity, you catch yourself thinking thoughts like “they’re bored,” or “they aren’t having any fun,” or “they aren’t participating.” Explore how you might express your thoughts and feelings, another way to explore deeper emotional intimacy and observe how you are judging them versus enjoying the experience. I love to ask myself how I can get out of his business and how can I enjoy this time together?

Creating experiences with your partner after a dry spell of being separate and not doing many activities together will take some planning, as I talked about in previous episodes; I want to encourage you to go back and listen to my post about Scheduling Time To Improve Your Relationship and start taking baby steps, use these steps to learn, not to close down and give up, and find out what it’s like to have your own back when it comes to creating the relationship you love.

If you want help with any of the material I shared today, I want to encourage you to reach out; I would love to help you find more ease around creating experiences with your partner.

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Loving Your Sex Life with Amanda Louder

Today’s expert interview is with Amanda Louder. Amanda is a Certified Life Coach who helps women from conservative Christian backgrounds love their sex life. She helps women embrace their sexuality to help them strengthen their relationship with themselves, their spouse, and God.

In addition to being a coach, Amanda has been married to her husband Kevin for 8 years. They have a blended family of 5 children ages 12-21 and live in Salt Lake City. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, watching her kids play sports, traveling, fishing, and camping.

You can find Amanda on her website: Amanda Louder Coaching

Sex for Saints Podcast

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Enjoy my other Expert Interviews by going to my YouTube channel.

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What Is Emotional Intimacy and How To Get More of it in Your Marriage Ep 6

Welcome back to part four of my relationship intimacy series, where I help you find new ways to create a well-rounded and deeply intimate relationship with your partner. I kicked off this series by talking about what relationship intimacy is. Then we started digging into five areas where you can create deeper intimacy; two weeks ago, we talked about three ways to increase spiritual intimacy. Last week we talked about how to increase mental or intellectual intimacy. This week, we’re going to dig into what emotional intimacy is and how to get more of it in your relationship.

What is emotional intimacy?

Intimacy shows a close union or combination of particles or elements: an intimate mixture, and I explained this a bit deeper in my article What Is Relationship Intimacy.

Emotional is relating to a person’s emotions or feelings.

Emotional intimacy would be a close union or combination of each other’s emotions, an intimate mixture of sharing each other’s thoughts and the feelings they evoke.

As you follow along in this series, you will start to notice a common thread, and that is the word intimacy. Since I am defining intimacy as a close union or combination of particles or elements, you will start to see that what all these different types of intimacy have in common is the ability to share, “in-to-me-see.”

Emotional intimacy is the ability to get uncomfortable, get vulnerable, and be honest so that each of you knows what is going on with the other. It’s the ability to share your deepest fears and insecurities, your most outlandish dreams and disappointments, and how you are feeling about anything in your relationship and lives. Emotional intimacy is feeling safe sharing your most intimate secrets without the worry of judgment, humiliation, belittlement, and the strictest of confidentiality. Knowing that what you have shared in privacy stays between the two of you and won’t be shared outside of the relationship.

Why is emotional intimacy important in your marital relationship?

Remember the “in-to-me-see” definition of intimacy from Focus On The Family? The more transparent we are with our partners, the deeper our connection, the deeper our desire will be. This includes sharing honestly how we are feeling, not feeling like we have to keep it to ourselves for fear of embarrassment or your partner being dismissive and invalidating how you feel.

How to create more intimacy in your relationship.

Learning how to become more emotionally open about what is happening for you is where you start and then sharing expectations. Together with defining expectations that what is shared in the privacy of your shared space won’t go beyond that space goes far in one’s willingness to share while not having to re-iterate the qualifications. If a partner breaks the set expectations, honesty is necessary; sit down with your partner and share your disappointment while not blaming and belittling.

It’s also important to remember that there will be times when our partners will share things that we might not want to hear and using these moments as opportunities to look inward. When we look inward, we can determine why we don’t like what our partner has shared and start shining a light on something that might be insecurity within ourselves.

Learning how to process your own emotions is a key skill to learn when becoming more emotionally present with your partner and yourself. When we can process our own emotions, it keeps us from blaming others for how we feel and allows us to see where that emotion is coming from, which is always something we are thinking. After you’ve worked on processing your emotions, share in a direct, non-qualifying manner and tell them how you feel, making sure to be clear that you are creating this emotion, not blaming it on them.

I love this quote I found from psychologist Helene Brenner, Ph.D. “Take the risk not to protect yourself. You can’t simultaneously protect yourself and be emotionally intimate. Let your heart be seen.” Not protecting yourself by blaming allows you to be seen.

Another way to increase emotional intimacy is learning how to ask great questions. When we listen with curiosity and compassion while our partners are sharing, we can ask questions that help them process their emotions and create a more intimate and safe connection that encourages future open communication.

Some examples of how to be more emotionally intimate.

Being open to having sensitive conversations about what each other wants out of their relationship and even what might be worrisome to them about the relationship. This sort of conversation allows a couple to move closer to each other with more individual understanding.
Being open and honest about a partner’s interaction with other people might make them uncomfortable and having empathy around their concerns versus making excuses and insinuating that the other is paranoid.
When one person shares something from their past, the other partner is attentive, offering emotional support.
They openly share struggles they might be having within themselves and trusting the partner to offer comfort, support, and possible solutions, if wanted, instead of dismissing their feelings.

All of this open and honest communication starts by doing this work within ourselves; we cannot be open and honest with our partners when we haven’t done the work of doing this for ourselves. Holding back from sharing keeps us from the intimate connection that we desire. That’s why the work we do in AwakenYou is valuable for re-building a relationship that feels good and keeps feeling better.

The process of learning how to open up and be vulnerable can be a scary one, and that’s why it’s so much easier when we have someone guiding us. That is what I do for you in my one-on-one coaching program; I help you find the courage to show up in your romantic relationship in a way that feels good for you.

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