The way to maintain intimacy between couples

Sharing tasks that need to be done fairly;

Spending time with each other on daily activities;

Seeking each other's advice;

Comforting each other in times of trouble;

Apologizing to each other when you make a mistake, and having patience and understanding with your partner.

In love intimacy, people don't give the least for the most, but seek a rough equality, giving as much as they get.

2. Attribution

Professor of psychology Bradbur et al. found that happy lovers often do to strengthen the way of attribution, the other party's good behavior attributed to internal factors (such as character, personality, etc., and the other party's bad behavior attributed to external factors (such as the environment, other people's factors, etc.).

Unhappy lovers often do to keep the troubled type of attribution, the other party's good behavior as lucky, and its bad behavior in the internal cause. For example:

"You went out to dinner with her to deliberately piss me off." It's attributing the problem to an internal cause, for being too flamboyant.

"No, I couldn't resist" is an externalization of the problem, which is often more acceptable.

Analyzing the problem rationally, cautiously, and "reinforcing the right way to attribute" can help improve the quality of your emotional interactions.

3. Communication

Poor effective communication with each other will lead to the breakdown of intimacy.

The University of Washington psychologist Gottman et al, after thirty years of tracking research, found that the unhappy partner has the following communication characteristics:

Off-topic: complaining, to live can not be accurately expressed, but like to rehash the old accounts, the irrelevant issues together, and ultimately lead to a problem can not be resolved.

Negative listening: always rush to conclusions from their own perspective, often interrupting each other, and using their own complaints about their partner (rather than recognizing their own faults) to attack their partner.

Negative emotions: they like to be sarcastic about their partner's complaints and criticize their partner on the level of character or personality; they like to refuse to respond to their partner's complaints and start a cold war.

Good communication is about making each other feel respected. Small misunderstandings often turn into permanent misunderstandings, affecting the intimacy to last.

4. Jealousy

Jealousy is a negative emotional response that occurs when an important relationship related to the "self-concept" is threatened by a real or imagined threat.

Jealousy can be related to the status of others, work, hobbies and so on. For example:

Psychologist White found that 1/3 of female college students and 1/5 of male college students brag about their exes to their partners to provoke jealousy.

Jealousy of an ex can lead to damaged relationships.

Your partner is jealous that you love your job more than your partner, and that you spend more time on your hobbies than you do with your partner.

Jealousy is certainly a sign of attachment, but this complex builds up to a point where it triggers extremely negative behaviors and affects the longevity of the relationship.

Instead of being jealous of your partner's behavior, you can help your partner but be the person that TA wants to be, you can enrich yourself, and you can be involved in TA's life.

In his book Intimacy, Christopher reveals the secret of love: the real reason why two people fall in love is that they fulfill each other's needs in some way.

Therefore, to maintain a long-lasting intimate relationship, we need to fulfill each other's needs to enhance the satisfaction and durability of the relationship.

Two ways to improve relationship satisfaction

Relationship satisfaction refers to a person's subjective evaluation of the quality of the relationship.

According to the theory of interdependence, if we are in a relationship where the rewards we get exceed the costs we pay, we will show higher relationship satisfaction.

Relationship satisfaction is determined by both expectations and reality***.

1. Correctly Adjusting Self-Expectations

Costs in a relationship are the `unpleasant events that we know and perceive.

Correctly adjusted/expectations, not over-ambitious or self-hatred, know enough to stay away from unpleasantness. For example:

If you don't expect TA to buy you a gift during the holidays, you will be very happy when you receive the gift he has prepared for you.

But if you have been expecting something from TA before the festival, then once you don't receive the gift, you will have a lot of negative emotions because of the disappointment.

The first thing you can do to improve your relationship satisfaction is to adjust your expectations.

It's not recommended to use photos that don't match your actual situation, don't boast too much, and don't make promises that are beyond your ability.

Because these practices will artificially raise the other party's expectations of you, and if the reality lets TA down, it will reduce TA's satisfaction with you.

Want to enhance the satisfaction of the relationship, but also through their own behavior, to guide others to adjust their expectations, so that the other party in the process of getting along with you, to find more and more surprises.

2. Do more than what is expected of you

Doing more than what is expected of you can increase your satisfaction in your relationship. For example:

Leave a note of love in an unexpected place.

Memorize the wishes of the other person that he or she does not intend to say, and then help him or her to realize them.

Through self-improvement, fitness, make-up, clothes, reading, etc., become a better person, exceeding the expectations of the TA, the other party will be more satisfied with you.

The more your actual behavior exceeds expectations, the more satisfied the other person will be.

Relationship satisfaction determines the quality of love intimacy, and relationship longevity determines the longevity of love intimacy.

1, understand each other

What is understand each other? The first thing you need to know is that you have to be able to understand what is going on in your life, and you need to be able to understand what is going on in your life. Understand each other's premise is to do a heart, each other's favorite dishes, remember in the heart; each other's habit of observing; each other's birthday, an important holiday in mind, many people do very well before getting married, after getting married, think you can rest easy, each other no longer cherish each other, slowly marriage to the grave. The best way to understand each other is to be a person with a heart.

2, appreciate each other

No one is perfect, no one is perfect. Intimacy in getting along more to see each other's strengths, you put the focus on which, the results in which. You can negotiate an agreement with your lover *** with, every day in each other to find one to three advantages, praise each other, when you heart to discover each other's flashpoints, you will find that the relationship becomes better and better.

3, *** with the same hobby

Psychologists have found that: to maintain a long relationship with the partner has a *** with the same characteristics: like-minded, opposite personality. Having the same interests is a fundamental condition for a good relationship.

You can cultivate some **** the same hobbies, **** the same hobbies can let each other play together, chat together, such as traveling, playing ping pong, dancing, etc., through the **** the same hobbies, so that each other's sense of tacit understanding on the increasingly strong.

4, with the growth

If the man is compared to the tree, the woman is the vine. If the tree does not grow, the vine will climb to other trees, if the vine does not grow, the tree will be entangled in other vines.

This is why some intimate relationships, at the beginning, like glue, sweet and happy, with the passage of time, quarrels, contradictions, and gradually go their separate ways, did not grow together is one of the main reasons.

5, each other's help

As the saying goes: husband and wife together, the benefit of the gold. Intimacy can be seen as a whole, a glory, a loss. Two people together is not to ask for each other, but to pay each other, mutual dedication, mutual achievement, can be *** with the same business partners, in the business you have me, I have you, mutual support.

First, why do we need intimacy?

1. Intimacy can affect our physical health and mental health

In the book, the author gives a research report that shows how the lack of intimacy affects people. One rule that can be summarized through this report is that lack of intimacy can damage a person's physical health.

For example, when a person is lonely and unaccompanied, the immune response becomes weaker and it is easier to catch a cold; people who have very few friends and loved ones throughout their lives tend to have a shorter lifespan, and the probability of dying early is two to three times higher than normal.

A lack of intimacy can also cause psychological problems such as depression, alcoholism, and schizophrenia, meaning that having good intimate relationships doesn't just make us happy, it also makes us healthier.

2. Intimate relationships can give us a sense of belonging

The book points out that intimate relationships can give us a sense of belonging more than ordinary human interaction. In the American psychologist Maslow's theory of hierarchy of needs, the need to belong is second only to the physiological needs and safety needs of the third level, which maintains our inner peace, is one of our human instincts.

Our happiness depends largely on how much the need to belong is satisfied. In order to fulfill the need to belong, we strive to establish and maintain intimate relationships with others. The fact that we can be so unsettled when our intimate relationships are in crisis is a good indication of how important belonging is to us.

3. Intimacy leads to higher self-identity and high self-esteem

The dominant theory of sociometry is that self-esteem is people's "social relationship meter", and that we use self-esteem to measure the quality of our relationships.

Intimate relationships make us feel recognized, give us a higher self-identity, and help us repair low self-esteem and build high self-esteem.

People with high self-esteem tend to be more successful than those with low self-esteem because they can be confident and never discouraged in the face of difficulties and setbacks.

Two, if you want to be in a close relationship, you have to be attractive.

In the book, the author says that the essence of attraction is the reward of others. What does this mean? We believe that there are two types of rewards: direct and indirect: direct rewards refer to the intuitive pleasure of the communication process, the other person's intelligence, humor, and beauty can give people direct rewards.

Indirect rewards refer to the potential benefits of relationships, such as money, status and fame. The more direct or indirect rewards a person can offer, the stronger the attraction.

Yet this is a simple model of attraction, and the reality is more complex than that. For example, people who resemble each other are attracted to each other. When we meet someone who is like us and we realize that we have the same background, interests and tastes as each other, we feel happy. Another example is that in interpersonal interactions, the closer we are to others, the more attraction we feel for each other increases.

We should all know that we tend to be closer to our roommates than to other students during our studies. So, the more contact people have with each other, the more they increase their liking for each other. There is a saying in psychology called the exposure effect, which refers to the fact that people's attitudes toward other people or things become more positive as the number of contacts increases.

So both our own attractiveness and the potential benefits we can give to others can provide us with attraction, people who resemble each other are more attractive, and close and frequent contact can make people closer to each other.

Three: How to Use Communication Skills to Maintain Intimacy

We choose to communicate with someone because we want to send them a message that expresses our intentions. The point is that there is often a discrepancy between our intentions and the other person's understanding, which creates a disconnect between people. In intimate relationships, this disconnect can not only cause resentment on both sides, but it can also get in the way of intimacy.

For example, a shy male employee decided to pluck up the courage to confess his love to a female employee. So in the first hour after work to find the female staff to chat, he was nervous to test the female staff, ask her what arrangements for the holidays. By this time the male staff has been nervous and red in the face, can only be embarrassed to say. He thought his intention to show his love was obvious, and hoped to get a warm response from the other side.

However, our heroine doesn't realize that the male employee is hinting at a date, and is just saying that she wants to get ready for her next job. So the male clerk, believing that his clear and sharp show of affection has been coldly rejected by the other, decides not to make any more attempts and to distance himself from the female clerk, who will never know what happened.

Through this example, we can find that the interpersonal gap is so easy to occur, in the interaction of people is always difficult to clearly understand each other's true intentions. So, how can we eliminate the interpersonal gap? The book points out the use of two kinds of behavior to express themselves, that is, verbal behavior and non-verbal behavior, as long as the two kinds of behavior as far as possible to eliminate the unclear, inaccurate components, you can effectively reduce the interpersonal gap.

Verbal behavior is what you say, non-verbal behavior is the emotional state of the display, for example, we joke with others, said offensive words, then the other side will be from our tone, rhythm, facial expression to determine whether we really have hostile, if we with exaggerated tone and laughing expression, then the other side will think that we are joking.

So nonverbal behavior is crucial, and often determines whether people can communicate at all in the first place. For example, if you're excited to tell your partner what you're thinking and realize that he or she isn't even looking at you, you're instantly frustrated, and the excitement turns into interest. If either partner doesn't pay attention to non-verbal behavior, there can be a lot of misunderstandings, and it can reduce happiness and satisfaction in the relationship.

But why is it that sometimes when we speak our minds and try to communicate with our partners, we don't get what we want? Researchers at the University of Washington have been studying this issue for more than 30 years, and have finally come up with an answer, summarizing two common patterns of miscommunication.

1. Accurately expressing one's intentions

When we discuss an issue with someone close to us, we often follow it up with a discussion of several issues, so much so that by the end of the day, we have forgotten what we were trying to say in the first place. For example, when a husband forgets to pay the electricity bill and the power goes out, the wife says, "I forgot to pay the bill because you've been fooling around with your friends all day and never pay attention to what's going on in the house."

Such a conversation is very easy to deviate from the subject, from one problem to another, the original discussion is to forget to pay the electricity bill, but transferred to the husband's circle of friends, such communication not only can not solve the problem, but also prone to trigger more contradictions and conflicts.

In order to minimize the impact of inaccurate expressions, it is important to convey concern and understanding to the other person when receiving their message, so that he knows we care about him.

If we repeat the other person's meaning in our own words, when the other person hears it, he has the opportunity to recognize whether our understanding is consistent with what he is trying to say. At the same time, when we repeat the other person's words, we give ourselves one more chance to understand them, which may slow down communication and make it seem less fluid, but in doing so, we can correct any deviations in understanding early on.

2, restrain the negative emotions

In the communication of the negative emotions are often expressed, encountered problems, not only do not actively discuss the solution, but also complained about sarcasm, and the face of the attack, the person usually reacts to the self-protection, looking for a variety of excuses to shirk their responsibilities or simply attacked back, and so the communication has evolved into mutual accusations and The first thing you need to do is to get a good understanding of what you're doing and how you're doing it.

So we need to be proactive in examining our perceptions and feelings, refraining from negative emotions, and not treating common problems in our lives as if they were serious, intractable problems. We need to be clearer in expressing messages that do not carry the flavor of gunpowder, but after we can clearly understand, detailed and specific point out the other person's problems, we should encourage the other person with positive words and thank them for what they have done, and then listen attentively, this kind of caring and thoughtfulness can often be greatly appreciated by the partner and appreciated, and things will become easier to solve.

There is one technique that works very well, and that is to use the first person to explain how you feel. This means starting with "I" and describing your emotional response clearly and unambiguously. For example, when we want to say, "Can't you see there's no toilet paper in the house?", change it to "I need you to pay more attention to our home. Regular use of this syntax helps the other person recognize their own emotions, and communication becomes more harmonious.

Of course, when arguments inevitably arise, we still need to be polite and restrained, and always clearly show that we care about and respect our partner's point of view, which are all important elements that make up good communication.

In the end, communication is the art of sincerity and skill, and good communication can make our intimate relationships healthier and our lives happier.