Four tips for improving communication with your partner and making intimacy come more naturally. Photo / DepositPhotos
The average couple has sex just three times a month - but a few simple habits can reignite closeness and connection.
Couples have never been more disconnected than they are today, says Dr Jody Carrington.
“With so many opportunities to look away from our partners, it’s never been easier to distance ourselves. The distractions in our lives are much sexier than our husbands or wives.”
Carrington, a Canadian clinical psychologist with 15 years’ experience, makes an alarmingly valid point. Here, she shares her tips for improving communication with your partner and making intimacy come more naturally.
“Often when we get into arguments with our partner, we become defensive and protective,” Carrington says. “Imagine you’ve come home after a long day and your partner hasn’t washed the stack of dishes you asked them – very politely – to do.
“You’re annoyed, so you go off on a tirade about how your relationship won’t work because they won’t prioritise the things that are important to you.” When this happens, she suggests that instead of barking back at your partner and telling them to stop nagging, you say something like, “Tell me more”.
“This is an invitation for them to genuinely hear your frustrations and offer empathy.”
In the UK, couples squabble over minor issues about five times a week. Studies show that we are all engaging in similar arguments – from leaving lights on around the house to forgetting to wipe down kitchen surfaces. However, couples who argue effectively are ten times more likely to stay together than those who stay quiet and build up bitter resentment.
In his popular book Habit 5, Stephen Covey developed the idea of “seeking first to understand”. Carrington sees this as the foundation of communication.
“It is so hard to communicate when we are overwhelmed or feeling attacked. The ‘tell me more’ approach can serve as a little cue to remind yourself of when you’re dealing with overwhelm,” she says.
“The superpower we often miss is the ability to slow things down and be more empathetic towards our partner.
“Showing empathy doesn’t mean you’re supporting the behaviour or condoning it – it just offers space for discussion.”
Carrington also recommends being mindful about when you choose to have these conversations. “If you are both emotionally dysregulated, it doesn’t matter what you say – it’s not going to get through.”
“When my husband, Aaron, leaves for work in the morning, we share a very superficial peck and a passive ‘love you’ before he bolts out the door. These days we’re even scheduling when to have sex – couples are having much less sex than before,” says Carrington.
Research shows there has been a sharp decline in how often couples are intimate. In 1991, respondents to the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles reported having sex five times a month; by 2001, that had dropped to four, and by 2012, to just three times a month.
“If you think about the size of our parents’ or grandparents’ beds, and their lack of distractions, they had no choice but to sort their issues out. Aaron and I have a king-size bed – he’s watching a true-crime documentary on his tablet, I’m watching my Netflix show on my phone – and so the disconnect continues.
“Finding time for a six-second kiss offers enough opportunity for your neurochemicals to produce oxytocin and dopamine. A kiss can reduce cortisol levels, anxiety and even blood pressure. American psychologists John and Julie Gottman coined the six-second kiss to ‘create a sense of psychological safety’.
“Six seconds sounds like a long time, right?” Carrington says.
“It’s the last thing we want to invest our time in. We’re too busy worrying about whether they brushed their teeth or if they ate garlic. But when we were 20-something, kissing a random stranger in a bar for six seconds felt like nothing.
“This kiss just gives us enough time to truly see our partners. It doesn’t matter where or when you do it – maybe just suggest to your partner that you want to try an experiment, and see how it goes.”
To anyone who finds it easier to talk to their children about important things while driving them somewhere, this technique will make a lot of sense.
Carrington believes that having a conversation with your partner when you’re not physically facing each other can be very effective. “It feels like a big deal to ask your partner if you can work through an issue back to back,” says Carrington.
“But even just asking evokes curiosity in your partner.”
While studies have found that mutual eye contact is essential to connection, Carrington says that sometimes simply looking at our partners can irritate us when things aren’t going well.
“It’s all about the facial expressions and mannerisms. Aaron has an eye twitch that just gets me going during an argument – he doesn’t even have to say anything.”
“Taking that away from a conversation can help prevent arguments from escalating. It’s just an opportunity to give yourself a bit of relief. And if standing back to back feels too awkward, try sending a text message instead.”
“There’s quite a bit of discussion around how long you should look into each other’s eyes – some say three seconds, others say four,” says Carrington. “Everyone gets stuck on the exact rules of the experiment.
“When Aaron and I tried it, he wanted to know exactly what we were meant to be doing. Was he supposed to notice something different about me? Had I changed my hair? He even insisted we time it, to make it as practical and efficient as possible.
“I think we forget that so much of our communication is non-verbal. If we aren’t looking at our partner, we aren’t really seeing them. This gives you an opportunity to notice things, to remember moments from your shared history.
“I was taken back to our wedding day,” Carrington recalls.
“I also remembered the day our twins were born, and Aaron slept in a sleeping bag at the foot of my hospital bed. I was post-eclamptic and hadn’t brushed my teeth for six days, but he was there throughout it all. There’s so much to our story that no one else sees – and those are the bits we need to remind ourselves of.
“As Esther Perel says, the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. You get to choose whether you want to try these exercises – many of us won’t, because we’re proud, and that’s okay too. The greatest investment of your time is in your relationships, and you can see these four tips as micro-investments. You don’t have to do them all; just pick one and see how it feels.”