So now we're moving to Utah to Richard. Hi Richard. How many we help you today?
Okay. I have a very different question. Um,
I've been listening to the podcast, love it.
I bought the reconciliation toolkit,
love that I've been talking to my wife and we've been answering and asking
questions that we don't get normally in therapy. So
well above what's going on in normal situations. So I love information.
Here's the question.
How important is that?
N be in love feeling and if it is important,
how do we develop it? Healthily in a healthy way? Not limerence,
but the actual healthy version of say, limerence I say,
excellent.
Or you want me to go first?
As he was saying it, I was like, Joe's the person to ask
because just starting with it. It's well,
the feeling of being in love is different for everyone, everyone.
So how do you even start defining that?
And there's research that we refer to in the workshops that we do in different
things from there, but Joe, you take it away.
You're throwing the joke. Richard. I think it's an excellent question.
I really do.
And Kimberly is right in the sense of when we talk about feeling in love,
we're not sure that everybody is actually describing the same thing.
So here's a recommendation. You can get this on Amazon Barnes and noble,
whatever. There's a book called Cupid's arrow. Cupid's arrow. It's my Sternberg,
Robert Sternberg. And I think it's like 15 bucks or something. Now,
if you get that book and I got, of course, I get no royalty out that book.
This is just, you know, it's not a commercial. If you get that book in there,
he actually has a way to measure love when it comes to relationship
and they measure three things,
they measure the commitment that you have to each other.
They make sure the intimacy you have with each other.
Now intimacy here is not describing sex intimacy here is describing
into me. See, in other words, openness, transparency,
vulnerability that trust those kinds of things.
And then it also measures passion. Now, passion,
while it has a sexual dimension here, it's still not totally sexual.
It has to do with a craving for one this,
how much do I miss you when you're not in the room?
What do I think about you now? You and your bride.
If you decide to get that book and take this thing, uh,
go through it the first time and you'll be answering there's 15 questions.
You're waiting on a scale of one to nine. I'm sorry.
There's 45 questions on a scale of one to nine and you'll go through writing.
What do I wish I had? Okay. That's the first thing I do. What do I wish I had?
And on a scale of one to nine,
then you go back through the second time and you rate.
Here's what I believe I have. So the first one is what I want.
The second one is what I believe I have now.
Now the book will instruct you on how to draw some triangles from that.
And if you draw those triangles,
you can get a real idea of now both you and your wife would be people who do
this. And so let's say I'm not going to dry trial and Yola, well,
I'll draw one in the air here. Can you see that? If you have a triangle,
then what you looked for is where is the biggest gap between what I want and
what I believe that I have. And so let's say it was passion. Like not,
there's a big gap there between what I believe, what I have and what I want,
or it could be intimacy or it could be a commitment,
whatever you and your wife look, you and your wife, not wives.
That's not a good thing. That's poor you and your wife,
look at those things and go, okay. Now how,
how can we work together in a relationship to develop more of
that? So to develop more passion, to develop more intimacy.
And so rather than saying, wow, I don't know if we feel in love or not.
This actually gives you a path, right? Like this is the thing we can work on.
We can work on this or that. Now when you get to that,
you may still have a question. Like,
I'm not sure how to work on increasing passion or not sure how to work on
increasing intimacy. And if that's the case,
call us back because we can definitely give you suggestions about them.
For example, there's a, there's a product online.
This is primarily a sexual product, but,
but it can help you develop both intimacy. And by that, I don't mean just sex.
I mean, openness, transparency, vulnerability,
because of what you were talking about just a minute ago,
it's the thing that gets you to talk about a lot of things. And it's called, uh,
the spark. And there's a website for that. I can't remember the spark,
your marriage.com spark your marriage.com. I'm sorry.
I wish I could remember that. I actually did that series. It's, uh,
along with a bunch of other people, hope, I mean on that, for example,
I'll teach on there and then we'll have an actor,
couple talk things out to kind of demonstrate things for you. Nope,
no sex on the video, someday teaching and actors talking. And it goes,
if you go to all of it,
it ends up being seven and a half hours note in little pieces, of course.
And there's also some evaluations. They're like,
how do I evaluate your sexual compatibility? How to evaluate, um,
all kinds of things, your own sexuality, et cetera, et cetera. Now,
Paul is primarily a product about sex.
It develops more intimacy because of the conversations you have when you're
talking about that.
And so you can go smart your marriage.com and find that out there.
It's not a product of marriage helper. It's another company that has that. Uh,
I did it for somebody else is what I'm saying. And you can go from there.
But first I would recommend the $15 book.
And if that helps you get where you want to go back,
showing you where the gaps are. Awesome.
Then I would recommend that if you want to get more passion and intimacy,
you check out spark your marriage.com.
You know, I also did a video that I can't remember the title of it,
but I'm hoping Jesse can find it real quick,
where I talked about these three tenants.
So I didn't talk about the gaps in it and things like that. But you know, we,
what we start seeing and especially where this question stemmed from is,
you know, I have the, this commitment to it.
And the question that was written on our page that said how important is feeling
in love versus having the duty and honor, and again, in our society,
there's kind of this thought of, well, if you don't feel it,
then move on and find someone that you feel it for.
And it's all based on feelings. So in this video,
I go through why that's not the best way to evaluate whether or not you've
married the right person. And then I talk quickly about the commitment,
the intimacy, the passion, why that matters, you know,
how we at marriage helper can help you to get those things. But here's my,
my warning is if you go through the 45 questions,
like Joe said,
be aware that there might be large gaps and it's okay.
So don't panic.
If you look at your wife's score and she has a one four commitment,
you might freak out, right?
But it's all fixable is what is what it is, what we're saying.
And so you can develop,
it might not be those feelings of butterflies in your stomach. Again,
like you had the first time that you dated or were in limerence. So to say,
or anything like that. But the feeling that you can come out of this with,
with what your relationship has is something deeper and stronger.
That will last a longer time.
And isn't going to fluctuate based on a day to day basis.
And that's a good point because,
because the butterflies in the stomach kind of thing,
that's what the media pushes. Now. I don't mean the news. I mean, TV shows,
movies, romance, novels,
all these kinds of things like Christmas or anytime of the year.
And it's all about, Oh,
you're going to pay these amazing things in life in life.
You do feel those things, but you typically don't feel them every day.
Now in a young law, what I mean is it's fresh.
It hasn't been that it has been going on that long.
Those feelings tend to be more intense, but as you go through life,
as you get older and live together longer,
then the intensities of those emotions tend to decrease a little.
But the death of those emotions becomes much more powerful.
So it's not like I'm having an excited a moment right here,
but the depth of what I feel is so blooming powerful and connecting to the other
person. And so though we oceans themselves you're right.
Absolutely will change with time. Okay.
So yeah, if you do that, and that's a good point, uh, if you go take that thing,
don't freak out on the scores, just use it to go, okay.
Here's what we need to do next.
[Inaudible].