453: Improve Your Mental Health, Improve Your Relationship

Sarah Kosterlitz

Hey, love tribe, before we dive in. Today'S episode, we wanted to share with you some exciting news. We're offering our online course, spark my relationship, at its lowest price ever. Only $100. That's nearly 60% off full price to improve your connection with your partner.

Chase Kosterlitz

Today, in less than 90 days, this self paced course will help you create more passion, improve your communication, and build a stronger, more intimate connection with your partner. And have fun while doing it. We've collaborated with over 15 psychologists and therapists to bring you the strategies that marriage therapists teach their clients. So join the thousands of couples who've strengthened their relationship with our online course, Sparkmyrelationship. This offer only lasts until Saturday, April 6.

So head on over to sparkmyrelationship.com and use the code Flash 24 at checkout to get the course for only $100. That's sparkmyrelationship.com and use the code Flash 24 at checkout.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

Hey guys. Today's episode is super exciting in a very special episode. And that is because for the past year, we've been working on creating our new online course called Spark my relationship. And we're excited to announce that today is the day that it launches. So check out sparkmyrelationship.com for all the details.

Sarah Kosterlitz

Yeah, we have collaborated with not one, not two, but 15 psychologists and therapists to create spark my relationship that not only teaches you the skills needed to create a successful and lasting relationship, but the tools to actually execute it. So, as you know, we drill into your head in every episode and talk about how a mediocre relationship is easy, but a passionate, authentic, and satisfying relationship takes hard work. There's just no way around that. And since you're listening to this podcast, you likely already know that it takes hard work. But what you probably don't know are the specific tools and exercises needed to create lasting, positive improvements in your relationship.

Change doesn't happen on its own, and that's why we created this course. It's to help couples just like us. That's why we also started this podcast. Create more passion, improve communication, spice up the sex life, and build a stronger, more intimate connection. Because like you, we also struggle with communication issues, intimacy issues, forgiveness, and stress.

Sarah Kosterlitz

So whether you're happy in your relationship and you want to ignite the passion or you're struggling and you need to learn some healthy, alternative forms of communication, then smart. My relationship will guide you through making your relationship closer, stronger, and and hotter. Spark my relationship has helped us, and we know it can help you, too. So the course teaches strategies marriage therapists actually teach their clients. And it includes a lot.

It includes 18 therapists taught video lessons, 21 workbooks and cheat sheets, over 25 relationship strengthening exercises and four mindfulness exercises. Plus, we have added bonuses like our private Facebook group where we'll have monthly q and a's with therapists. Community support so you can cheer each other on. We'll be in there too. And an exclusive interview with Doctor David Rico about trust.

And you know, we talk about it all the time on the podcast. So not to just settle for an average relationship. And Sarah and I struggle with this too. Cause life can just get kind of easy and it's just kind of average. But we want to make it amazing.

That's why we created this course and we are so happy to share it with you. So on today's show, we brought on doctor Deborah Campbell to talk with us about how we can keep the spark alive in our relationship or how we can reignite that spark for years to come. And so what doctor Deb teaches us today is just a glimpse of what is covered in the course. So in today's show, she discusses the four components couples need to focus on to have a close, stronger and hotter relationship. And some of those topics include the importance of eliminating unhelpful bad habits that can lead to friction and unhappiness, healthy and successful communication tools, the biggest struggles couples have with reigniting their sex life, plus tips to spice it up, the importance of mindfulness to improve stress management, and why having shared dreams and desires can be so beneficial for celebrating our couple culture now and in the future.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

So it's like a little bit of. A glimpse into the course with today's. Episode with Doctor Deb. And you might be asking yourself, tell me more. Where do I, where do I find out more?

Where can I get this course? So go to sparkmyrelationship.com and you also find the link in the show notes. And here's the big kicker. For today only we July 18. Yeah, July 18.

Depending on when you're listening to this, we are offering an additional 10% off our promotional launch price. So if you're not listening on July 18, you'll still get a discount. But if you're listening on July 18, go to the website and you'll get an additional 10% off, which means you can buy the entire course at about 25% off. And not only is there this discount, but you also get added bonuses. And the bonus if you buy today, is the great bedroom makeover.

It's a great little workbook that will help spice things up in, as the creator says, keep the dust out of. The bed, which we definitely want to do. And the benefit about buying on launch day is that not only will you get today's bonuses, but whenever there is a bonus added or an upgrade added to the course, it will always be included. So of course, whenever you buy, if you buy at a later time, you'll still get amazing benefits. But by buying today, you will have the most benefits and the most bonuses that you could possibly have with sparkmyrelationship.

So remember, for that additional 10% off and today's special bonus, head over to sparkmyrelationship.com and enter the promo code. S as in Sam, M as in Mary, r as in Robert. Ten. And again, that's sparkmyrelationship.com promo code smr ten. Thank you guys for listening.

We hope you check out the course and enjoy today's episode.

Sarah Kosterlitz

Hi, Doctor Deb, thanks so much for joining us back on the show. Hello. Thank you for having me back. For our listeners who haven't heard your. Last episode, why don't you tell us why you enjoy helping people improve their relationships?

Because it's just central to life, isn't it? I mean, if you don't have a happy relationship to come home to, somewhere soft to fall at the end of the day, where you feel loved and accepted and relaxed, if you're not coming home to that, then not much of life really feels good. Yeah, it's kind of the central bedrock of a life, of a good life if you're in a relationship and how that relationship is going to make a big difference on your overall outlook. It's just, it sounds like it just really can't be understated. And that's why we're so happy to have you back on the show and talk about four stages that couples can go through to create a stronger and hotter relationship.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

And I like this because we talk about it a lot on the show and you don't necessarily have to be arguing and just adding each other's throats and on the verge of separation, someone sleeping on the couch, you name it. To not be in a great place in your relationship because we want to certainly help those people in those situations. But to those people out there, which I think are a lot of our listeners that are just kind of coasting along, they want to improve their relationship. We have some great tips today that are going to really catalyze. And honestly, Sarah and I are excited to use these ourselves because we're in the same boat.

And we want to take our relationship from good and try to make it great. And it's a constant process. So why don't we jump in and talk about the first of these four components? Sure. One of the first things I usually have to face as a couple therapist with people is dealing with the stuff that's going wrong.

And like you said, things don't have to be terrible for there to be some resentments building up on a daily basis or for there to be a situation where communication could be better and things could be warmer and more flowing. Because it's very easy to take each other for granted when we live together and share family. And life is busy so often, detoxing bad habits or becoming aware of unhelpful patterns is one of the first things I have to do with people, and I think it's a really good place to start becoming aware of what you could do better. What are some of the biggest habits that you come across that these couples need to detox from and get rid of in their relationship? The really big one, Sarah, is criticism.

We often grow up in our family of origin or in schools or just in life in general, thinking that criticism works and is an okay thing to do in the guise of helping people or ourselves improve. And we use the term sometimes constructive criticism. Like, that's nice criticism, but the fact is, in intimate relationships, when we're dealing with each other's most sensitive, closest, most absolutely unprotected, vulnerable parts, criticism doesn't really have a place at all. It just doesn't. There's a place for saying when things aren't working for you.

And there's definitely a place for asking for help from your partner to make changes or to do things differently that are going to help you feel better and help things work better. But there's never really a place for saying you are not good enough in this way or you're failing me in this way or that way, or the way you are isn't right. That's never, ever going to get a relationship feeling better or stronger. It's only going to shut the other person down. And the thing I find most common with couples where things are going wrong is they just don't know that.

They don't realize that criticism doesn't work in intimate relationships. I think, I don't know if Chase was, if this is new to chase, but for me, it just kind of blew my mind that even.

Sarah Kosterlitz

What do you say? What kind of criticism? Constructive criticism is bad, too, which, I mean, I always thought that as long as it's trying to help the partner or have a positive, has positive tone or anything could still be good, but that it's bad as well. Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say bad. I think unhelpful would be the way I would say it in that, you know, what you think and what you feel is never really good or bad.

It's your truth. But the way you say it, the way you ask for something different that you want is either going to be unhelpful or helpful to you getting it. And I think when we start using the word you, you, you, the other person can tend to go into defensiveness, and when they become defensive, and then you probably become defensive going back and start justifying yourself and it becomes a one up and it becomes a combative situation, you're no longer on the same team. So that's why I don't regard criticism as helpful to us in intimate relationships. You know, I just don't think that it's the right way to get what you want.

It's not going to work most of the time. It's going to go to a place of feeling not as good about each other, and that's not what we want. So what I would do instead, because you're probably thinking, well, how do I express when things aren't going right? I can help with that. What I suggest instead to people is to ask for what you want to say.

I'm feeling this particular way. For example, I'm feeling a bit hurt. I think it's because of this or that that happened that you didn't call or something went wrong or you raised your voice or something. And I feel hurt. So this is a really important bit.

Could you please help me and insert the way you'd like it to be done differently next time, for example, by just taking a breath and not raising your voice. Or could you please help me by giving me a call if you know you're going to be late? So I'm not worried about you. Could we just do that a bit differently? That's a great approach, and one, I think it's actually a big area that Sarah and I need to work on because we work together on this podcast.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

We work together with pretty much everything that we do. We both work from home, and so we are giving each other tips or constructive criticism, a lot of, and we often can get into a bit of just not a healthy place with our communication. Like you said, one partner gets defensive and then the other does eventually and it's kind of this back and forth. So I know we'll be able to use those statements, and it's definitely a. Valuable thing to implement.

And another factor, and another thing that I imagine can be good in recognizing that this criticism is coming that we're about to maybe give it out, is mindfulness, and we talk about it a lot on the show. Maybe you can talk about just the importance of mindfulness in relation to this and other aspects of the relationship. The more I work with people and just the older I get, the more I do this, I realize that our mindfulness just underpins everything we do and everything we are because it gives us that chance to just lift out of the moment where we could react and we could make everything worse for ourselves. We could do something hurtful, say something hurtful. We could make a mistake that we're later going to regret and have to come back from.

If we can be mindful in the moment, just take a breath, look at what we're feeling and what our thoughts are and what we're wanting to say or do, and just ask, hey, is this going to be helpful? Is that helpful? Unhelpful again, is what I'm about to say or do likely to help me feel closer to my partner? Is it likely to help them feel closer to me? Is it likely to resolve what's bothering us?

Or is it likely to take us down an unhelpful path? If you can just be mindful enough to lift out of the reactivity for a split second before jumping and saying you this or you that, or having a huff, you know, and storming about, you know, doing something that's going to make it worse. Mindfulness is just that moment, that self awareness where you make the best, most helpful choice for you and the team, being your relationship or your family in that moment or whatever aspect of life, really, it carries out into other things as well. It's so critical in all aspects of life, and it's one of those things, like a lot of the things we talk about, easier said than done, but it is worth the effort in getting. There and incrementally getting better.

Sarah Kosterlitz

And I imagine that when you have this foundation for mindfulness in your relationship, it's only going to help the other three stages that you have to really ignite and spark your relationship to make it even better. Yes, it's really practice mindfulness just to practice becoming aware of our thoughts and feelings. And we can do that through having a little mindfulness practice by practising some meditations or relaxations together just so that you realize that you are actually able to watch your thoughts and feelings. You can observe your inner life. When you work full time, have kids, and run a podcast, it's hard to make time for a multiple step skincare protocol.

Chase Kosterlitz

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You can actually observe yourself and make helpful choices in your emotional life. And it's not something that a lot of us are taught growing up. No. And that's why doing this podcast has highlighted the fact that we're not taught a lot of things that will help us in relationships and we kind of take for granted. Like we're just supposed to be born with the ability to communicate or to have empathy in all situations, or to not criticize, and we're just not.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

And if we're raised by good parents, which Sarah and I were lucky enough to have a great upbringing, even then, there's things that, I guess it's why we started this podcast, to get these tools and to really be able to dial in our relationship and share this information. So we started with this first stage of detoxing the relationship to help make our relationship even stronger and better. Before we move on to the second stage, are there any things that we missed as far as detoxing? Yeah, there's a lot more depth in there. I think I'd just touch on forgiveness.

And that's really about the resentments that we can tend to store up when we live in really close quarters with someone. And no matter how much we love them, they're not us. We do things differently. And it's really easy to store up anything from very small resentments to when things have gone quite off track in a relationship, some kind of large ones. And we have to get to a place of saying, okay, referring back to those resentments all the time isn't helpful, isn't going to move us towards a better relationship.

So some work on forgiveness is usually necessary around understanding that you might not always agree with some things that have happened, but you have to find a place where you can say, hey, I'm still choosing to be here. I want to be together. So I'm not going to use that against you or keep referring back to that. So, yeah, understanding resentments, how they build up, trying not to let that happen anymore, and forgiving the ones that are there is a really important part of detoxing a relationship. So you can learn some positive skills.

Then to add, I think Sarah has. Forgiven my messiness and that's helped her. That's helped our relationship a lot. Rather than constantly battling me and telling me I need to clean up, which I know I do, but I'm joking. But that's kind of a thing that I could see someone over time.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

You can create a lot of resentment and you might not even realize you're just holding this grudge against your partner because when you long term relationships, you almost become like, it can become like a roommate, and that's not a place we want to be. So that is a great tip and a great exercise for our listeners to go through. Let's move on to the next. Go ahead. Okay.

So I was just going to say that so much of that, you know, people could, could listen to that and think, oh, isn't that a little bit of a small thing to worry about whether someone's tidy or not? But I think for couples, what, what gets in the way for us without in our couple relationship and our family is what it means to us. You know, what does it mean to each person to have their environment looking beautiful, feeling beautiful, feeling tidy? What does it mean to feel that their partner cares enough about the environment to keep it the way that they like it and that it feels good for them? You know, it's sort of going deeper, isn't it?

And being able to say to your partner, look, the thing is, I feel kind of out of sorts and a bit disrespected because the environment's not, you know, you're messy in the environment and it's not how I love it to be. It's not how I love it to feel. So can you please help me to keep it nicer? Because it just means a lot to me, you know, that I think that's a lot easier for us to heal that situation. And understand the depth of it and make real change if we hear about how it feels, rather than just, you're so messy, you know, can you clean up?

It's irritating to me, you know, that's not as easy to feel helpful about. What would you say to somebody who, let's say chase, for example, like, he's naturally a messy person, but would it be me trying to change who he is? Or is it just him putting a little bit more effort in to make me happy, do something that makes me happy? Where do you find that medium? I think on one like that, we both have to give on each side.

I'm probably tidier than my husband too. I think it's understanding that the other person is different and not getting too hung up on it, but still asking for some help to have it a bit more the way you'd like it, and saying what it means to you for the place to look tidy, how that helps your emotional state, or how that helps your feeling of happiness. And perhaps if your partner understands that, then they're more motivated to help you feel better about things and try a little harder. It's not always easy to change a habit of a lifetime. So you gotta be patient and a bit cool about it.

And maybe you can ask, look, what can I do to help you be more motivated to pick your clothes up or not drop your towels? You know, what can I do? Would it be easier if we put some more hooks or if we rearrange things? Look at some practical options as well. Well, from what I hear, Chase, when.

Chase Kosterlitz

He was a kid, he used to. Make his bed every single day and hang up all his clothes. That's what his mom told me. So I have hope that he has it in him to be clean one day. Oh, for the record, I've cleaned up quite a bit, and I think there's some deep childhood sort of acting out against my forced cleanliness.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

So we can dissect that on another. Podcast, but it just helps you to. Feel free and relaxed, to throw things about a bit. Exactly. I can deal with that.

So let's go on to the next. Stage of creating a stronger relationship. And that is communication. Huge thing. We talk about it so much and we just could talk about it every episode because it's such a foundation of.

A relationship and often where things go wrong. So how can we shore up our communication? I've talked about that a little already when we were speaking about the way we ask for things and the way we can avoid criticism and instead say, I'm feeling this way, own our own feelings and then ask for what would help us to feel better when we're feeling numb, when we're not feeling great, asking our partner for their help. And this is a way to connect in communication rather than push each other away, as I said, through criticism, which can then tend to go into defensiveness. It's really good to know your raw spots too, and know the arguments that tend to come up again and again.

If it's things about, for example, messiness and things like that, and to know that we have these raw spots and to look at ways to really heal those and to feel like, well, we know about these, we can move on from them and not keep doing them again and again. When you feel one of your raw spots sort of getting irritated, one of these things that is a bugbear in your relationship. It's always good to learn skills like slowing down the conversation, acknowledging how you feel when you talk about this particular topic, you know, taking a breath rather than reacting, bringing in your mindfulness.

Chase Kosterlitz

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Sarah Kosterlitz

Hey love tribe, I have just a. Few questions for you. I want to know why you are here listening to the podcast. Are you here because you want to. Stop bickering with your partner and you want to feel truly heard?

Or are you looking for ways to reignite your sex life? Or do you want to feel more. Emotionally connected with your partner? Or do you just long for those fun, giggly moments of connection that you used to have at the beginning of your relationship? Well, over the last decade of hosting.

Chase Kosterlitz

This podcast, those were the main reasons people tuned into the show. And we get it. We've been there. So we created our course, spark my relationship, because we wanted to put those. Tools to unlocking a fulfilling relationship right in your hands.

Sarah Kosterlitz

We're offering $100 off our course, spark. My relationship, which is a self paced. Course designed to help you create more. Passion, improve your communication, and build a. Stronger, more intimate connection with your partner.

Chase Kosterlitz

And have an amazing time doing it. We've collaborated with over 15 therapists and psychologists to bring you the strategies that. Marriage therapists teach clients. So to unlock this special offer of. Our course, our listeners can visit sparkmyrelationship.com unlock to get $100 off.

That's sparkmyrelationship.com unlock. Asking is what I'm about to say, or do you got to be helpful? And if you find that you're escalating and getting angry with one another, to say, hey, let's stop, let's not let this keep going to always have that sense of, we don't let things escalate into a place where we're not on the same team. We have to keep making sure we're always kicking the ball in the same direction, so to speak. We're always playing together and not against each other.

And to ask in your mind, you know, what am I hoping to get out of this interaction? What am I hoping to resolve here? And to try to stay on track skills like not bringing in all sorts of other things that annoy you when you're talking about one particular thing that you want to resolve that doesn't work. We need to have that mindfulness to stay with the point that we're discussing at that moment and not bring in other resentments or issues at the same time, which is sometimes in therapy called kitchen sinking because you're bringing in everything but the kitchen sink, is that expression. Well, you've mentioned it a couple of.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

Times now, and it's such an important thing to bring into the relationship, and. That is to remember that you're on the same team. So whether we're talking about communication or intimacy or compromise. If you think that your partner is out to get you or you're out to get your partner, then you're just in the wrong spot and it can be really valuable, especially if your partner's criticizing you from either end. If you're criticizing your partner, realize you're on the same team.

If you're receiving that, realize you're on the same team. It's kind of cliche, but it's a valuable thing to tell yourself in the relationship. It is so important and it is one of those things that couples don't realise. They can come to see me and they don't realize that they're behaving as though they are absolutely on opposing teams, meeting, putting on the gloves every time they speak. They've gotten to this position, but they don't see it.

And it's about reminding them, hey, when you're on the same team as someone, how do you behave towards them? Don't you set a common goal and go for that? You know, you're not trying to score points against each other. It's the two of you against the world. And they can sometimes look at me with their eyes wide open as I can see them realizing, oh, yeah, we forgot.

We actually forgot. And so even though it's quite fundamental, they've gotten themselves into this place where they were operating on this automatic, conflictual kind of dynamic and kind of needed to be reminded. When you get together in a couple and you choose to be there, you're actually choosing to kick the ball the same way. So when we have that in mind. That'S a valuable thing to always remind ourselves.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

And one of the things I think it's also important to realize is that we are going to disagree. So how can we disagree and communicate respectfully with our partner? But before we continue, we want to tell you a little bit about today's sponsors. So, Chase, what was the first thing we did after we found out that we were pregnant? We were pregnant.

You were pregnant? I was pregnant. Had a panic attack. No. After that.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

I don't know. I give up. We got life insurance. So fun. Yeah, that's what you do, right?

You have kids, you got to be. An adult and you get life insurance. Yes, but I do wish that Haven life insurance was around back then to make it so much easier. Yeah, Haven life makes it super easy to get life insurance to help financially protect you and your family from the unexpected. It's what you do when you have a kid and you got to be an adult.

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Sarah Kosterlitz

So to get your free quote, head over to welcome dot havenLife.com. I do. That's welcome Haven Haven Life.com ido to get your free quote today. Today's episode is also sponsored by Intelliwaite. Intelliwhite is the fastest clinically proven at home teeth whitening system in the world.

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Sarah Kosterlitz

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And they may not have had these basic rules modeled to them, they may never have had an opportunity to learn them, which is why we have to make a point of learning them later if we want to have the best relationship we can. And they're things like not getting personal or name calling, staying on the same side, remembering that how we feel about each other and how we show each other care is what matters more than any one particular issue we might be disagreeing over. Sometimes you do need to be able to say, hey, we see this differently, and that's okay. We don't have to agree on everything. We don't have to be the same to love each other and get along beautifully.

We don't have to get angry and have conflict when we don't see things the same way.

One of the difficult places can be with parenting can be with raising children. And that can be a place where doing some reading, getting outside advice and reflection can help to find that place where you are both able to give your inputs in different ways and feel that you can respect each other's ways if they're feeling like they're too different. Again, so much of the way we speak to each other with respect and care and with our eye on the eye on the same goal of getting on well, feeling loved and loving in the relationship. We need to do like a whole other podcast series on parenting and navigating these four stages through the lens as parents, because you mentioned just dealing with parenting and communicating around that. But just everything is, as we're finding out now, trying to record this podcast, and our three year old is running around asking for cookies, everything is a little bit more, can be more stressful, can be more dynamic.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

And so all of these tools are certainly important for everyone, but especially parents. And before we move on to the next stage, and obviously, we could do episodes upon episodes just on communication and really all these stages. But are there any other major communication highlights that you'd like to give our listeners? I think the take home really is the kindness and the compassion and never letting. It's a Doctor Phil.

You know, Doctor Phil. I always loved Doctor Phil. And he was one of the first people we saw on australian tv who did therapy, you know, on tv, who spoke to people with such, you know, so sensibly. And I always remember him saying, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? And that is just a great question, because if we can remember that, it can pull us back from being childish in arguments.

You know, the worst part of childish, when we can end up saying and doing unhelpful things, being mean to each other. At worst, people can call names or speak to each other in ways that are just horrible and take a really long time to come back from. We know the Gottman Institute that has done research on couples for decades, has found that it takes four or five on average. Lovely comments apologetic comments, loving words. To pull someone back in a couple after there's been one criticism or unpleasant comment.

So speaking to each other in an unpleasant way and expecting to get results is ill advised criticism, being unpleasant, being unloving, in our words, is actually highly inefficient. It's going to take you four or five tries to even get the person's trust back enough to move on with the issue. That is a great point to leave this stage on is try to give four or five positive comments for every negative one. Or again, we don't want to criticize, but if you have even a negative, not a criticism, but just ask a request. If you're just constantly trying to correct your partner, that can feel negative.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

So put those positives in there and you are going to be happier and having better intimacy and sexuality in your relationship, that will lead us to the next stage. And this is another big one. How can we improve this aspect of our relationship? Sexuality? It's such an enormous part of being in a couple relationship.

And often, even when couples come to therapy, they find it hard to speak about. They can be very distanced in the bedroom, and usually it comes down to having lost some trust in other aspects of their relationship along the way. Resentments building up when we don't feel attractive, we don't feel liked, we don't feel like our partner thinks we're great, then the sexual side of the relationship immediately starts to be eroded. And when over time, we're not getting it right in all kinds of communication, and we're not complementing one another, and we're not noticing one another as the unique individuals we are and loving each other for that. When things are going wrong, that we're feeling judged, or taken for granted, or resented or not seen, sexuality just falls by the wayside.

And then we can wonder, oh, why aren't we having sex? Or why aren't we feeling like having sex and not realize that so much has been able to build up and get in the way? And life can do that, you know, on its own. Just being a parent, going to work, all the things we have to do, being tired, trying to live up to all our responsibilities can get in the way of our sexual, our erotic life. So it takes some real concentration at times to think and to talk about how do we keep it strong.

And it takes allowing each other time to transition from all the other roles that we have to live and be, to woo each other in the bedroom, to put aside special times, not just nighttime, when we're often exhausted but to be able to find special times, holidays, times away, date nights, where we can get some help with other responsibilities and focus on each other. And it is easier said than done. It takes real effort. But as Esther Perel, as a therapist who gives a lot of talks on sexuality in relationships, complacency is the enemy of intimacy and the erotic world. We have to put some care into it and nurture it.

Sarah Kosterlitz

So I know you mentioned not judging your partner, but do you have maybe one or two specific tips that our listeners can use to implement into the relationship to kind of spice things up? Yes, I think, you know, the first one really, the sexual relationship is not happening without the compliments, without the sense of connection outside the bedroom. Another thing Esther Perel talks about that I really like is that when we're not actually in the bedroom having sex the rest of the time in a couple relationship, we could view it through the lens of that being foreplay all the time. Your partner's not going to be easily turned on if you've been criticizing them and they feel lousy about themselves, they're not going to feel easily turned on that night or the next day or when you go on a date, if you've been ignoring them up till then and looking at your phone instead when they're talking, you know, instead of looking at them when they're talking to you. So you've got to look at that wider picture of your life as this is always a build up to the next erotic connection with my partner.

And if you sort of have that lens operating in the back of your mind with your partner, then it keeps you from being complacent, doesn't it? It keeps you focused on, you know, just in a small way at the back of things, of, well, you know, we're heading for somewhere great next time we get together, because I'm thinking about what makes my partner feel good, sexy, special, interesting in all the little ways I can. So that everything is a build up to being closer and not that we're going so far apart that it's going to be so difficult and takes so long to get back when we try. So that's number one. That's really the bigger picture.

Then there's all sorts of beautiful ideas that you can come up with together. If you talk about what you know, it's an intimate conversation, what turns me on, what do I think helps me get in the mood? What helps me transition from the rest of life over into wanting to be intimate. So it might just be things like playing some music you can do special things for each other. Compile a playlist and say why these songs are special to you.

That's a beautiful idea. I've heard you can get some beautiful things for the bedroom. Make your bedroom beautiful, have lovely lighting or beautiful sheets on the bed. Whatever works for you. Spend time in a bath or shower, whatever works for you.

You need to talk about it and put in a little bit of planning. I think that's a good start. It takes work. And you said the phrase complacency kills passion. And it's easy to become complacency, complacent in all aspects of the relationship, especially.

Long term, longer term relationships, because in. The beginning, the hormones are firing, you're excited, there's all this passion, everything's new. And then you settle in and you have a three year old and two jobs and you're tired at the end of the day. And so everything just becomes a lot harder to work on the communication. As Sarah and I do these podcasts that as we put together the course, it was hard for us to even review the course material because the time we do it is at the end of the day and we're just like exhausted between work and our daughter.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

And you really have to carve out the time. And what are some things in relation to, to sexuality and intimacy that like, some specific things we can do to knock us out of that complacent point of, you know, been together for 510 plus years and it's just kind of the same routine. How can we? We hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Just a reminder that we are offering our online course spark my relationship for only $100.

Chase Kosterlitz

That is nearly 60% off. This offer is only available until Saturday, April 6. So head on over to our website. Sparkmyrelationship.Com and use the promo code Flash 24 to get our online course spark my relationship for just $100. That's sparkmyrelationship.com and use the code Flash 24 to get the course for $100.

Doctor Deborah Campbell

You are listening to a pleasure podcast. For more from RSX podcast collective, visit pleasurepodcasts.com.

453: Improve Your Mental Health, Improve Your Relationship

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1: Introduction to "Spark My Relationship"

2: Key Components for a Healthy Relationship

3: Strategies for Maintaining Relationship Spark

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