Sustaining Romance After Becoming Parents

Sustaining Romance After Becoming Parents

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Title: Sustaining Romance After Becoming Parents
Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com
Copyright: © 2005 by Margaret Paul
URL: http://www.innerbonding.com
Word Count: 708
Category: Relationships

Sustaining Romance After Becoming Parents
By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

A major challenge for parents, especially new parents, is finding the time to be together in ways that foster romance in their relationship. A question that a reader recently asked me is: “Is it the quality of time versus the quantity of time that is significant in 'we-time'? If yes, how?”

Romance is determined far more by the quality of the energy between two people than by the amount of time they spend together. If two people spend all day together, but they are not open to each other regarding the sharing of learning, laughter, play and creativity, they will not feel romantic and intimate. They will feel far more romantic if they spend a few minutes together and that few minutes is filled with the intimacy that comes from being open hearted and emotionally connected with each other. If two people hug goodbye in the morning and the hug is perfunctory with their minds already elsewhere, that hug will do nothing to foster romance later that evening. But if the hug is filled with love, warmth, tenderness and caring, that hug can do much to sustain the romance through the day to be further expressed in the evening.

The question is, what determines the quality of energy between two people? What makes one hug filled with romantic potential and another hug empty and meaningless?

The quality of the energy between two people is determined by their intent:

* If your intent is to have control over getting love or avoiding pain, the hug will be empty and depleting, regardless of your partner’s intent.

* If your intent and your partner’s intent is to give love and share love, the hug will be fulfilling and energizing.

There is a vast difference between the intention to get love and avoid pain, and the intention to give and share love.

When your intention is to get love, you are coming from an empty place within and wanting your partner to fill that place for you. You will be giving the hug in order to get filled – giving to get. Your touch will energetically be a pull on your partner’s energy to fill you up and make you feel lovable and worthy. Since it doesn’t feel good to be pulled on energetically, your partner may hug you from a withdrawn state, with the intention to avoid the pain of being pulled on. If one of you hugs with the intent to get love, and the other hugs with the intent to avoid pain, the hug will not feel good.

If both of you are coming from an empty place within and both of you are hugging with the intention to get love, there will be no love to share and the hug will not feel good.

If one of you hugs with the intention to give and share love and the other hugs with the intent to get love, the giver will end up feeling unfilled. He or she may enjoy giving love, but there will be no sharing of love, and it is the share of love that is truly the highest experience in life.

If both of you are already filled with love within due to taking personal responsibility for your own feelings and wellbeing, and to being spiritually connected to the Source of love, then your intent is likely to be to give and share love. When you both have the intent to give and share love, the hug will be a wonderful expression of your love and will be very fulfilling. Starting your day with a few minutes of sharing love sets the stage for sharing love at other times. Even if your time together is very limited, romance can be sustained when two people have the intent to give and share love.

Moving out of the intent to get love and avoid pain and into the intent to give and share love is a personal process of inner growth. It takes both people desiring to learn how to fill themselves with love so that they have love to share to create and sustain a fulfilling romantic relationship. As parents with limited time to spend with each other, doing this inner work is essential for the relationship with thrive.

BONUS : Swinger Couples

Swinging, also called the alternative or 'alt' lifestyle, seems to be increasingly popular among mainstream, middle-aged married couples in America. With this increasing number of people who are into the lifestyle there is also a growing need for interactive ways to meet similar thinking couples.

They find the internet to be the ultimate way to interaction. Distance is no longer an issue to meet similar thinking others because of the increasing number of lifestyle lovers who join worldwide swingers community online.

According to swingers, the lifestyle can be a solution to (sexual) crises in relationships provided that the emotional bonding is still in tact. According to King (1996) one of the things that normally occurs in a relationship is sexual habituation. This will lead to changes in how we interact with our partners.

It will take about three to seven years into a relationship when partners need to increase the levels of stimulation, to obtain the same level of sexual interest in each other. This can be a stressful point in marriages, changes of infidelity are increasing and the divorce rate peaks. Couples who find a way to reconnect both physically and emotionally are more likely to make it through this period. Therefore swinging may be a creative solution.

Scientific studies show consistently that swingers bond better in a relationship than monogamous couples. Another interesting outcome of research is that swingers are happier in their relationships than the average person.

60 Percent of swingers said that swinging improved their relationship. Also swingers rate themselves happier (59% against 32% very happy). Overall they consider their lives much more exciting (76% against 54% exciting) than couples who don't consider swinging as a lifestyle.

The origin of swinging goes back to the 1950's when California military couples gathered at so called key clubs. Here husbands tossed their keys into a large bowl and the wives then drew a set of keys and the owner of those keys became her sexual partner for the night.

The media soon gave a name to this key swapping and described it as wife swapping. This early swinging lead in the 1960’s to the opening of the first organization for swingers, the "Sexual Freedom League” at Berkeley, California.

In later years up until the present swinging evolved to a widespread style of living. The uprising of the internet gave swinging an impulse. People from all over the world meet through the world wide web.

One of the most popular sites among swingers is http://www.sdc.com