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When we are going through a period of "drought" in our relationships, it can feel sad and hopeless. The spark feels like it is just not there. Where there was tenderness and love, there is now distance and hurt.

When a relationship is in this stage, can it be saved? Can you rekindle the feelings that were once there?

Experts like Dr. Gottman believe that an easy and reliable way to stay in love or fall in love again is to maintain or rekindle the marital friendship. When you talk and act like friends, you know each other and you like each other. In other words, to know someone is to love them. 

Dr. Gottman’s term for getting to know your partner’s world is called Building Love Maps. 

One way to think of it is this: When you choose to spend your life with someone, you hand them a map to your inner world. Your inner world is, of course, quite complex including the memories of your past, the details of your present, your hopes for the future. It includes your...

As we have been saying, a healthy and loving relationship between spouses has large, open windows of communication. 

Sometimes, however, these windows can become clouded. Even the best relationships have times when communication is not great, there is unexpressed hurt or withholding of thought and feeling. If left alone, the windows will not clean themselves. In fact, they are likely to get more clouded over time.

When we build walls or opaque windows around ourselves to ward off hurt and disappointment, it also prevents us from feeling the joy, love and intimacy on the other side. 

To live in safe disconnection is like having cloudy windows - the light of love cannot get through. 

So how do we clean the windows of communication between ourselves and our loved ones?

It is quite simple really. 

Share your internal world, your thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams. 

Being open, honest and vulnerable is like cleaning your windows with water and vinegar. 

It is okay...

We have been talking about protecting our relationships by knowing and recognizing the difference between friendships and marriage so that we can keep our commitments strong.

Hopefully you have recognized how easy it is, especially in modern times, to slide into the danger zone of infidelity and why we need to be mindful of the boundaries in our marriage. 

We spent all of last week talking about the importance of boundaries and walls around your relationship to keep it protected.

Walls around the relationship, however, are not enough. In a healthy relationship, spouses have what Shirley Glass calls "large open windows" of intimacy between themselves.

On the safe side of the wall, a couple looks at each other through this clear, large, open window. This is where there is an open and honest exchange of ideas and feelings. The couple communicates well through this large opening between them.

In this healthy situation, the couple may also have close meaningful relationships outside of their connection. However, the windows between partners and their other relationships are much smaller and not as transparent.

How do we keep these "windows of intimacy" clear and transparent?

By connecting with each other by asking questions, telling stories, being honest and vulnerable, and committing to regular and reliable periods of connection. 

If...

Yesterday we started exploring the metaphor of building walls around our relationship to keep it secure. Now let’s take this concept a little deeper and discover the different kinds of walls that we need.

Mental walls

Keeping a mental boundary means that we become aware of where our attention is. While our thoughts can wander into danger zones, we need not let them dwell there. If we become masters of our attention, we can protect our relationship by not letting our fantasies run away with our better judgment. A stray thought can be quashed right at the beginning which will prevent repeated thoughts turning into actions. 

Mental boundaries can also involve intentionally thinking positive thoughts about our spouses when we are away from them and reminding ourselves of our commitment, especially when we encounter temptation.

Physical walls

These involve practical ways in which you can avoid slipping. Physical boundaries come in many different forms.

Being alone
Avoiding spending...

Not "Just Friends": Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity by Shirley Glass is a classic and very helpful resource for couples attempting recovery from the ravages of infidelity.

In this book, Shirley Glass uses the metaphor of "walls and windows" to explain how a marriage slides from security to vulnerability. Let us stay with this metaphor for a few days to try and understand what puts a relationship at risk.

When we get married and form a new family, it is creating a new entity, an entity which needs to be safeguarded from outside influences and threats to the relationship. 

As we have been discussing this week, infidelity can happen in any marriage, even strong and happy relationships are not immune from temptations.

According to research, there are some kinds of marriages which are more vulnerable to infidelity than others.

1) The intimacy-avoidant marriage.

In this kind of relationship, couples don’t talk about anything personal. Intimacy feels too vulnerable for one or both spouses so a lot of areas of internal life, thoughts and emotions are not shared with each other.

Conversation is all about external events and issues, because sharing something personal feels too risky.

On the hand, confiding of fears, sharing of hopes, and encouraging each other’s dreams builds a bond of emotional intimacy between couples that makes them less vulnerable to look outside the relationship to meet these core human needs.

2) The conflict-avoidant marriage (also called the "Dial-Tone Marriage")

This is similar to the first one. In this relationship, there...

It is sad when I meet couples who are in committed and stable relationships but have been blindsided by infidelity because they never ever considered the possibility that it could happen to them.

So the first step to protecting your relationship is to recognize that no marriage is immune from the risk. Infidelity happens in every social circle and even amongst strongly practicing religious families.

We live in a society where we spend much of the time outside the home and away from families, ether at work, volunteering or studying. We may come across temptation when we least expect it and are not prepared.

A casual conversation that starts out innocently enough can slide into an inappropriate relationship unless we take intentional steps to set personal and relationship boundaries.

And we can only prepare and set boundaries if we are aware that temptation exists. And that we need to take proactive steps to guard our relationships.

Over the last several days, we have been discovering how simple it is to grow love in small and seemingly insignificant ways. Hopefully you have added some of these rituals to your own relationships and have been enjoying the results.

There is, however, one important and possibly uncomfortable conversation that we still need to have about the easiness with which love can grow.

The micro-moments of positivity resonance, as we have discovered, happen when two or more people share a positive moment of emotional connection together. The "biology of love", however, does not discriminate between committed and casual relationships.

To put it another way, it is almost as easy (and sometimes easier) to share these moments with strangers than with our own loved ones. This is because strangers don’t come with the baggage that accompanies the challenges of sharing daily life with another human being.

This is why we need to be on guard and recognize that we need to be intentional about...

When the husband complained about the mess, the wife instead of responding to the complained, counter-attacked by saying: I don’t see you lifting a finger to help".

She also said: Your mother spoiled you rotten, but I don’t have to take your [nonsense]

A statement such as this does two things: firstly, it escalates the conflict.

Secondly, it diverts the conversation and introduces a new area for potential conflict.

As we can imagine (and may have experienced), when we try to "kitchen-sink" an argument by complaining and cross-complaining about other issues, we cannot get a resolution on any of the issues.

Also, by introducing many areas of conflict into a single argument, we start feeling discouraged about the state of the relationship in general. The problems start appearing larger than our resources to handle it.

Given such an exchange, how could the couple have handled it differently?

1. He could have taken responsibility

He: [Knows the subject is charged, so he takes...