To sustain the loving attachment we need similarities to our partner these could be
culturally socially or emotionally yet if we're too similar and we don't have our differences
the relationship will stagnate so that's a paradox about love and an issue with love is that we all
have our own definitions hello I'm Chris BookTube I'm a doctor I'm summarizing this book for you
so what do you do if your partner or you want to say to your partner I love you but I'm not in love
with you that's what the author tried to address and really people who are more likely to say that
would often describe themselves as best friends or having a brother-sister relationship
without the incest i.e. their friends they're having sex not much else is happening and often
there's actually a lack of spark there's not enough arguments there's often no arguments and
that's because somebody is fearful to voice their own opinions which can mean that the relationship
cools down over time and there's this tendency for two partners to grow more alike and at times this
this phrase I love you but I'm not in love with you will come out after a big life-changing event
such as perhaps bereavement and that could be a trigger for somebody to re-evaluate their life
so the two main culprits would be neglecting the physical intimacy and also not allowing
each other to be different enough and when there's so much pressure on people to be with each other
share friends even share tastes there's not enough room for people to be an individual in that couple
intimacy is clearly important you could say it's made up of three components that would
be vulnerability good verbal communication and physical closeness which seemingly only 30 percent
of that is made up through sex and these three key ingredients need to be balanced so that and if you
can get that balance with you and your partner you will always feel loved and desired according
to this book anyway the seven steps mentioned in the title are understand argue target play
take responsibility giving and learning but if you're in a relationship which many of you will be
just think are you somebody who's criticizing or complaining and the key thing is that if you're
having a complaint you'd often say I whereas if it's a criticism it would be you so for example
I wanted us to go to bed at the same time would be a complaint a criticism how you could say the same
content would be you didn't come to bed on time in essence if you're being critical to your partner
i can tell you now you're being annoying and you may not have your partner for that much longer
let's go back to these paradoxes then so that is of love that we all actually
want and need to be loved and the more you love somebody the more important that person love is
to you and it means that you're more frightened about potentially losing that love so that when
we actually then worry about losing that person and then it it means that the relationship
is actually disturbed because of that some people who fall into that I love with you
not and but not in love with you trap may try and just adopt the same standards and attitudes
because every relationship actually faces this problem and in part it can be the opposites
attract so you may have chosen somebody who has qualities that you don't have that you lack
and in the best case scenario then you work as a team and you both synergistically help each other
however the the flip side of it is that you may think ah this is annoying they're doing this and
you could create friction and instead you may even try and control your partner with good intent
often unconsciously and you're trying to do that to protect them from the pain
or what you're thinking of is trying to fit in with your partner and you're subsuming your
personality into theirs these are then in attempts to get over that paradox to keep hold of the love
but the other development of this paradox is that actually what you're doing to try and protect
yourself from pain is actually more likely to cause pain in your relationship so how do you
train your partner it does sound a bit like training a dog I don't condone bestiality
what the book suggests is positive reinforcement so if you look back over the last 24 hours how
many times have you criticized your partner's behaviour or annoying habits and how often did
you praise them and which came out on top what you want to do is stop giving negative attention
and instead give positive attention to the things you want to encourage
because positive in reinforcement is built around gratitude and compliments don't overlook either of
these and also don't take your partner for granted so think of putting this into action you may want
to write down a list of the top three things that you're grateful for your partner for or
requests positive requests that you can undertake and then you could try and actually get goals
to make these occur more frequently psychologists you'll have heard talk about body language being
really important I've summarized a few books and body language I'll stick them there I've got
written summaries in the content i don't know if I actually did a vlog summary of about body language
but the point is it's important and if you just say to your partner I love you occasionally when
you're leaving or very busy and not fitting the timing they may not believe that now this book
that was written by a relationship counsellor says that quite often one party will come in and say I
feel taken for granted it's not working out and the other person will look completely mystified
at a loss and say yeah I tell you I love you and the point there is that you're meant to show this
with action as well as just words particularly if they're on the fly so successful couples also
often will take small risks and that could include upsetting your partner I know it
is valentine's day coming up BookTube I wouldn't suggest this tactic but you can do it if you want
but more importantly bigger ones that you're also taken together a big risk could be somebody
undertaking additional education or a new job or a new hobby and these couples who are taking risks
perhaps will thrive more the ones who are trying to play it safe are the ones that
will fall into this I love you but I'm not in love with you trap and get bored of each other
when you think about this there's a bit of analysing of your relationship you could do
and don't over analyse because you could clearly be thinking about the past i.e. what has happened
to understand the relationship to that point or the future what you may or may not want to do
together and then equally there's the present which from marriage counselling point of view
is the next few days so what you really want to do is have a mixture of all of these things because
if you're in the past too much you're prone to depression if you're in the future too much
then actually you may burn out and crash and burn equally if you're too much in the present although
you may have less problems you may have some kind of hedonistic um pleasure seeking uh desires
that an illnesses will wind up to be pointless remember over time your relationship will change
typically you could break it down into this blending phase year to 18 months that's when
you're getting together nesting potentially moving in together self-affirming years three or four
and this is um when the couples who were stressing their their kind of similarities
are now really encouraging their differences they're trying to see the eye as well as the
we in the relationship and be confident enough to take undertake those activities
separately then there's collaborating which is a longer period typically five to 15 years adapting
and this is when 15 to 25 years down the line when you're adapting too often challenges that life
is throwing at you I there's loads I won't name them and we'll all face them then you've got
renewing this is if you've been fortunate enough to be in a relationship for a long time we're
talking about 25 plus years and that almost goes back to the beginning where people are content
enjoying spending time with each other only the difference is instead of thinking what they will
do together they're more thinking about what they've done now obviously these are just stages
but trying to know which part you're at if your relationship is in difficulty you can put a
little bit extra focus on that particular phase of your relationship obviously as well things
aren't written and life changes so it may be you have a child relatively early in your relationship
before getting to this um nesting phase and things and then you just have to adapt and do what you
both feel is best so if you lose intimacy in your relationship the book suggests there are 12
steps in the road to intimacy and you could ideally take them as a couple or you as an
individual could do these yourself and perhaps by leading by example you would create a knock-on
effect to positively influence your relationship so let's go to these 12 steps validate each other
that would be complimenting grab congratulations to talk I mentioned earlier about that i love
you in a passing thing you really need to make time and number three would be setting aside
quality time to talk and that would be focusing on your relationship uh four is confide a secret
that actually creates a bond between you five would be touching your partner and reintroduce
touching six would be feeding and sharing things so feeding out the same bowl for example seven
set in the scene you may want to have a look at the bedroom and think is this a passion killer
seemingly you want to make the warm the room warm enough perhaps with candles and a lock on the door
um it depends who you want to join you I suppose another book I have summarized is about polyamory
you may or may not want a lock um the next bit is to slow down your love making intimacy needs time
and it suggests after a while sometimes people's sex lives can stagnate the man
just wants to finish quickly and the woman also just wants to get out the way
and the man to finish quickly which clearly isn't that fun which brings one on to number nine
which is to find new erogenous zones I don't know quite who this is targeted at
um but probably not the people who are in the uh 25 year plus in their relationship at 10 again I
wouldn't recommend it this is skipping sexual intercourse 11 actually is make initiation
a shared responsibility and 12 is experiment try bringing something new into your relationship
and by that I don't think they're referring to polyamory which I have just shamefully plugged
before so let's just summarize on one hand as a couple you work hard together
to overcome obstacles to love the anger hurts cynicism and impossible expectations yet
on the other hand as an individual in a couple you also need to just step back and let go I wish you
all the best in your future relationships and look forward to seeing you next time
you