Building Intimacy in Marriage: Lesson 2

You may like to read related literature on family management and management of married life on the following URLs:

(Family Management) http://family-harmony.blogspot.com/
(Marriage Counseling) http://marriage-counsel.blogspot.com/
(Mission statement for Families) http://marriage-counsel.blogspot.com/2011/03/mission-statement-for-families.html
(Life Management and Life Skills: Life Time Model) http://family-harmony.blogspot.com/2011/07/life-time-model-and-life-skills-life.html
(Do You Have the Right Kind of Skill Sets and Competencies to Run Your Marriage and Family Effectively?) http://family-harmony.blogspot.com/2011/03/do-you-have-right-kind-of-skill-sets.html
Give Positive Strokes to Your Spouse: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.net/index.php/2011/10/06/family-management-building-intimacy-in-marriage-lesson-1/
(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

Need for Tutorials in Building Intimacy in Your Marriage

(All the six lessons of tutorial on "building intimacy in your marriage/relationship are now available in a book form titled "The Romance of Intimacy". The book is already benefitting a good number of married couples and couples in relationships. You can obtain the book as eBook from the Nuubuu link http://nbuu.co/bi and as printed book from Amazon)

The fact of life is that you live with your parents and brothers and sisters for just about 15 to 20 years of your entire life. You live with your own children only for 15 to 20 years of your life. And you live with your spouse for around 60 years of your life if you got married at the age of 30 and you are going to live till your age of 90 years.

So isn’t it very obvious that you should invest more of your time and efforts in building up your married life? Don’t you think you need to do whatever it needs to keep up the relationship with your spouse and spruce it up further to new heights?

Over a period of time many of us get into a rut and forget what it needs to maintain and build up the relationship. So, here are some reminder lessons for you.

Here onwards each post on “Family Management” section of the blog will narrate one important lesson. Implement this lesson and practice it again and again till it becomes your habit and happens to you naturally.

The first tutorial “Give Positive Strokes to Your Spouse” was published at the URL: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.net/index.php/2011/10/06/family-management-building-intimacy-in-marriage-lesson-1/

Here is your second tutorial. Do your homework now.

Lesson 2: Demonstrate Your Love, Affection and Care towards Your Spouse

In putting this tutorial to practice, as the first step every married person should learn to give the following to his/her spouse in large bouts:

1. Love
2. Affection
3. Care

To love, to give affection and to care- all the three are verbs and you must learn to do them effectively and efficiently as much as you have learnt to walk, speak, read, drive and so on. You learnt these things on your own and with some help from other sources. Learning does not take place automatically- it does not happen to you. You have to put in considerable effort learning anything.

Do the same to learn to give love and affection to your spouse and to take care of her/him.

The second step is to start doing i.e. start giving love and affection to your spouse and taking care of her/him. Learning is one thing, putting what you learnt to practice is another thing. Doing is always more important than only knowing. So start:

1. Loving your spouse
2. Giving affection to your spouse
3. Taking care of your spouse

And do them demonstratively. Your spouse should start realizing that you love her/him, you are affectionate to her/him and you care for her/him. Therefore, what you do to her/him should be genuine and not fake or mere acting.

It will be a great idea to give hugs and kisses to your spouse out of routine or out of turn and surprise your spouse. Do express your love every now and then by saying passionately, “I love you lots.” Do use the endearments to each other in your conversations. And converse a lot with each other like great dates or friends do. Touch each other lots.

While you can kiss on lips to demonstrate your love, do express your affection and care by kissing your spouse’s cheeks or temple and assuring her/him by your embrace or touch to communicate, “I am always around. Never worry any more.” Your partner needs you more when she/he is sick or down financially or emotionally or there is sudden overload of professional and/or household workload etc.

Care and affection are well demonstrated when you support and help your spouse in his/her professional and household situations. Husband and wife can share the household chores like cooking, washing, grocery, looking after the kids etc. Let it not fall on only wife’s shoulder or only on husband’s shoulder. Also, when the wife has to do longer or odd hours of work at her office, the husband can take on the activities that wife normally performs at home and vice-versa.

Important thing is that your love, affection and care should be constantly felt by your life partner.

It requires both (husband and wife) to build up strong and intimate relationship in marriage; it cannot be a one sided affair to be done only by wife or only by husband. Therefore, both husband and wife should read this tutorial together and start practicing it simultaneously. Of course, it does not mean that if wife has yet not started husband should wait and not start it too or vice-versa.

For More Guidance, Assistance, Training and Consultation

Contact: prodcons@prodcons.com

Training in all the soft skills and various management functions/techniques is imparted by Prodcons Group’s Mr Shyam Bhatawdekar and/or Dr (Mrs) Kalpana Bhatawdekar, eminent management educationists, management consultants and trainers- par excellence, with distinction of having trained over 150,000 people from around 250 organizations.

Also refer: (Prodcons Group) http://prodcons-group.blogspot.com/, (Training Programs by Prodcons Group) http://training-development-function.blogspot.com/, (Productivity Consultants) http://productivity-consultants.blogspot.com/

Other Topics of Interest: Counseling: General and Psychological

^{(Anger Management) http://controlling-anger.blogspot.com/
(Children’s Behavior Problems) http://child-behavior-problems.blogspot.com/
(Cholesterol Control) http://controlling-cholesterol.blogspot.com/
(Counseling: Psychological) http://counselingfamily.blogspot.com/
(Counseling: Psychological) http://counseling-family.blogspot.com/
(Cross Cultural Etiquette) http://cross-cultural-etiquette.blogspot.com/
(Do This Today) http://do-this-today.blogspot.com/
(Emotions) http://emotion-feeling.blogspot.com/
(Executive Etiquette and Manners)http://executive-manners.blogspot.com/
(Exercises) http://exercises-plan.blogspot.com/
(Family Counseling) http://family-harmony.blogspot.com/
(Health: Homeopathy) http://homeopathy-medicines.blogspot.com/
(Life Management: Competencies) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/competency-matrix/6txz9nck6g3/4#
(Life Management: Effectiveness Management: HSoftware) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/management-in-life-profession-family/6txz9nck6g3/3#
(Life management: I Am Liberated)http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/i-am-liberated/6txz9nck6g3/6#view
(Marriage Counseling) http://marriage-counsel.blogspot.com/
(Ownership on Job) http://job-ownership.blogspot.com/
(Parental Responsibilities) http://parental-responsibilities.blogspot.com/
(Personality) http://human-personality.blogspot.com/
(Qualities of Spouse) http://spouse-qualities.blogspot.com/
(Quit Smoking) http://quit-smoking-plan.blogspot.com/
(Self Development) http://managing-self.blogspot.com/
(Self-confidence) http://self-confidence-improvement.blogspot.com/
(Spiritual Quotient/Intelligence)http://spiritual-quotient.blogspot.com/
(Stress Management) http://managing-stress-strain.blogspot.com/
(Stress Management) http://management-of-stress.blogspot.com/
(Success in Life or Success) http://success-achievement.blogspot.com/
(Success in Life or Success) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/success-in-life/6txz9nck6g3/14#view
(Swine Flu and Its Prevention) http://swine-flu-precaution.blogspot.com/
(Telephone Etiquette) http://telephone-etiquette.blogspot.com/
(Walking) http://walking-plan.blogspot.com/
(Winners and Losers) http://winners-losers.blogspot.com/}

In Praise of Women

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/ and "Leadership & Management" on http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com)


In Praise of Women

Whatever you give a woman,
she will make it greater.

Give her a house,
she will give you a home.

Give her groceries,
she will give you a meal.

Give her a smile,
she will give you her heart.

She multiplies and gives you something greater.

So if you give her crap,

be ready to receive a ton of it!!

Building Intimacy in Marriage: Lesson 1

(Note from the authors of the article: This post and the other posts related and linked to this post have become so popular with our readers that the authors have now written and published a book (in printed format as well as an eBook) based on these articles. The book is titled "The Romance of Intimacy". Anyone desirous of building intimacy with his/her partner in marriage or in any other relationship will love to possess this book and make use of it. You can buy this title "The Romance of Intimacy" online from Nuubuu http://nbuu.co/bi and Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007NGBBOI)

Need for Tutorials in Building Intimacy in Your Marriage

The fact of life is that you live with your parents and brothers and sisters for just about 15 to 20 years of your entire life. You live with your own children only for 15 to 20 years of your life. And you live with your spouse for around 60 years of your life if you got married at the age of 30 and you are going to live till your age of 90 years.

So isn't it very obvious that you should invest more of your time and efforts in building up your married life? Don't you think you need to do whatever it needs to keep up the relationship with your spouse and spruce it up further to new heights?

Over a period of time many of us get into a rut and forget what it needs to maintain and build up the relationship. So, here are some reminder lessons for you.

Here onwards each post on this blog will narrate one important lesson. Implement this lesson and practice it again and again till it becomes your habit and happens to you naturally.

Here is your first tutorial. Do your homework now.

Give Positive Strokes to Your Spouse

It's easy to criticize and so people do it often. The relationships start eroding if you keep finding faults in your spouse and pointing them out expressly or through your body language. It puts the other person off.

So, stop criticizing. You have not married the other person as his or her critic. You have married to enjoy the bliss of the married life. The bliss can never be complete without your life partner. You need to build up very strong relationship with her/him.

You might argue, "I do appreciate my spouse when I find or notice something really nice done by her/him but when she/he commits some mistakes I have to point them out."

Dear friend, do you know that your one negative comment has already nullified your 5 to 7 or 10 positive comments? So, stop being a judge and stop exploring defects in your spouse. First build up your bank balance of compliments and praises on your spouse to a count of few hundreds.

And remember it is not necessary for you to wait to praise or appreciate your spouse for her or him to achieve something big. You should praise her/him even without her or him having achieved anything. The praise or appreciation can as well be absolutely unconditional.

So, start praising your spouse now. Yes, do it now.

Tell you wife, "You are looking beautiful today." "Your new flower arrangement is fantastic." "But for you, our daughter could not have become so well mannered." "You work very hard, I want you to go slow and relax more." "You are so intelligent, it's rare to find intelligent wives around."

Tell your husband, "You are looking smart today." "Your advise helped me in doing my assignment better in my office, thank you so much." "I love when you hum my favorite tune while we go driving together." "Today you shared so many of the household chores, it was really thoughtful of you."

What did you lose in giving these compliments? Did it cost anything? Did you become smaller in stature? No, nothing. On the other hand you have added many points in your emotional bank balance towards your spouse. These points in turn will strengthen your relationship.

You should now set out a goal of finding something good in your spouse every day and give compliments. If you can find more qualities in your spouse or if you can find some more nice things done by her/him, find them out and then give more and more compliments.

Every person has considerably good numbers of strong points or qualities and so for the time being, ignoring her/his defects, shower your praises for those good qualities or strong points.

It requires both (husband and wife) to build up strong and intimate relationship in marriage; it cannot be a one sided affair to be done only by wife or only by husband. Therefore, both husband and wife should read this tutorial together and start practicing it simultaneously. Of course, it does not mean that if wife has yet not started giving praises or compliments, husband should wait and not start it too or vice-versa.

For More Guidance, Assistance, Training and Consultation

Contact: prodcons@prodcons.com

Training in all the soft skills and various management functions/techniques is imparted by Prodcons Group’s Mr Shyam Bhatawdekar and/or Dr (Mrs) Kalpana Bhatawdekar, eminent management educationists, management consultants and trainers- par excellence, with distinction of having trained over 150,000 people from around 250 organizations.

Also refer: (Prodcons Group) http://prodcons-group.blogspot.com/, (Training Programs by Prodcons Group) http://training-development-function.blogspot.com/, (Productivity Consultants) http://productivity-consultants.blogspot.com/

Other Topics of Interest: Counseling: General and Psychological

(Anger Management) http://controlling-anger.blogspot.com/
(Children’s Behavior Problems) http://child-behavior-problems.blogspot.com/
(Cholesterol Control) http://controlling-cholesterol.blogspot.com/
(Counseling: Psychological) http://counselingfamily.blogspot.com/
(Counseling: Psychological) http://counseling-family.blogspot.com/
(Cross Cultural Etiquette) http://cross-cultural-etiquette.blogspot.com/
(Do This Today) http://do-this-today.blogspot.com/
(Emotions) http://emotion-feeling.blogspot.com/
(Executive Etiquette and Manners)http://executive-manners.blogspot.com/
(Exercises) http://exercises-plan.blogspot.com/
(Family Counseling) http://family-harmony.blogspot.com/
(Health: Homeopathy) http://homeopathy-medicines.blogspot.com/
(Life Management: Competencies) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/competency-matrix/6txz9nck6g3/4#
(Life Management: Effectiveness Management: HSoftware) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/management-in-life-profession-family/6txz9nck6g3/3#
(Life management: I Am Liberated)http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/i-am-liberated/6txz9nck6g3/6#view
(Marriage Counseling) http://marriage-counsel.blogspot.com/
(Ownership on Job) http://job-ownership.blogspot.com/
(Parental Responsibilities) http://parental-responsibilities.blogspot.com/
(Personality) http://human-personality.blogspot.com/
(Qualities of Spouse) http://spouse-qualities.blogspot.com/
(Quit Smoking) http://quit-smoking-plan.blogspot.com/
(Self Development) http://managing-self.blogspot.com/
(Self-confidence) http://self-confidence-improvement.blogspot.com/
(Spiritual Quotient/Intelligence)http://spiritual-quotient.blogspot.com/
(Stress Management) http://managing-stress-strain.blogspot.com/
(Stress Management) http://management-of-stress.blogspot.com/
(Success in Life or Success) http://success-achievement.blogspot.com/
(Success in Life or Success) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/success-in-life/6txz9nck6g3/14#view
(Swine Flu and Its Prevention) http://swine-flu-precaution.blogspot.com/
(Telephone Etiquette) http://telephone-etiquette.blogspot.com/
(Walking) http://walking-plan.blogspot.com/
(Winners and Losers) http://winners-losers.blogspot.com/

In Lighter Vein

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/ and "Leadership & Management" on http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com)
 

Laugh it Out

Did you hear the following?:

• There are two times when a man doesn't understand a woman; before marriage and after marriage.
• Husband searching keywords on Google "how to tackle wife?" Google search result: "still searching".

Life Management and Life Skills: Life Time Model

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

Life Time Model

First and foremost, start building up your life time model- it’s the way you will like to be guided in your life. This model will be your basis for shaping up your value structure, thinking patterns, decision making, objectives or goals, road maps, skills, systems, technology, techniques, tools, tasks and actions etc.

At the core of the model comes your chosen value structure consisting of the fundamental principles that you will like to stick to throughout your life. While you may review these principles and add, delete or modify them, by and large these principles are more permanent than anything else in your life. They are the fundamentals and as you know, fundamentals do not change so very easily. The principles will be not more than 10 to 12 or so in numbers and they will seem extremely simple to articulate. Its another matter that at times these may start looking tough to follow. Tough they may be, yet, you need to be guided by them and not waver if you wish to lead an enriched life.

Some examples of these fundamental values or principles are (this is only an indicative list and not necessarily comprehensive):

• I will speak truth.
• I will not hurt or exploit myself and others emotionally and physically.
• I will respect myself and everyone else.
• I will not indulge in corrupt practices.
• I will love my wife, children, parents, brothers and sisters unconditionally.
• I will perform my professional activities as per the profession’s requirements and values.

Next come the major choices of your life: choice of your branch(es) of education and profession(s), choice of your spouse, choice of the geographical places where you will like spend most of your life, number of children you will like to have, choices of educational and career opportunities for your spouse and children, choice of manner(s) in which you will like to look after your parents in their old age, choice of house(s) you will like to live in etc.

Around the above-mentioned cores, you can now start setting up your life time goals. You may also look into your immediate goals, short term goals, medium term goals and long term goals. As you start moving towards achievement of your goals, you may feel like revising your goals and that is perfectly OK. You will have to work out your goals for your personal, family, professional and social life. The goals will have to be achieved on a time line. Your goals need to be quantified as much as possible and should be measurable so that at any point in time you can check back if you are moving ahead towards achieving your goals as desired.

Goal achievement will demand that you decide on the tasks and activities that need to performed by you and others. You will like to outsource certain tasks and activities and you may like to do certain of them by yourself. Accordingly, you will have to acquire the required and necessary knowledge and competencies/skills.

Along side you may have to decide on the selection and use of appropriate systems, technology, techniques and tools. These may consist of hardware and software. You will have to acquire necessary knowledge and skills to get the best results out of these.

The above-mentioned description allows you to construct a life time model that specifically suits you. There is no generic solution for such a model.

Mission Statement for Families

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

In effective, successful and happy families, husband and wife implicitly or explicitly talk about, discuss and deliberate and at times write down on what kind of mission statement they should formulate for their family. The mission statement then provides them the guidance they need to run their families. It is always a good idea to write down the mission statement so that it has the required clarity and it can be shared with family members easily and correctly.

Given below is an elaborate or comprehensive specimen mission statement for families (you need not copy it for your family but definitely can pick up some clues from it to work out the mission statement for your family).

-        (Unconditional) love, affection, care, consideration, concern, respect, decency, decorum, trust (no secrecy or ulterior motives), right kind of values- the foundation principles (no compromise on them).

-        Promoting, facilitating, innovating and nurturing emotional, intellectual and physical intimacies between husband and wife and developing short term and long term friendship, companionship and camaraderie (the three words may have similar meanings but just to heighten the importance of this aspect of husband-wife relationship, all the three are used). However, despite being intimate, discourage development of familiarity between the two- give each other the deserved space in adequate measures (at times you may feel free not to share few thoughts and things with each other; it’s OK so far as you are not being secretive).

-        Creating, developing and maintaining physically comfortable and hygienic environment and constantly improving it.

-        Creating, developing and maintaining decent emotional, intellectual and meaningful environment and constantly improving it.

-        Emphasis on higher levels of education with superior academic performance and constantly sharpening it- for each family member.

-        Facilitating constant growth of every family member in many directions.

-        Changing for the better continually- shed rigidities and practice flexibility in thinking, behaviors, manners, habits, actions, living style, use of technology etc as appropriate with changing situations and time.

-        Emphasis and constant attention on family health and improving overall health status of all the family members.

-        Creating and maintaining financially sound status (immediate and long term)- desire and efforts to earn more and acquire and utilize the resources prudently with no wastage.

-        Open communication, empathy and cooperation (no resentments, no sulking, no competition or no need to prove to each other or to evaluate/judge/criticize each other or to constantly correct each other, readiness in apologizing and forgiving) among husband and wife and children- promoting  overall positiveness.

-        Facilitate creating an environment where each family member can develop an eye for recognizing others’ qualities and learn to appreciate and praise the other family members generously and yet genuinely- pretensions and fakeness to be kept away and no politics please.

-        Giving family a decent social status. (Therefore, doing a socially respectable and meaningful profession- self employment or otherwise- becomes important. Meaningful jobs, good organizations, good designations, good perks etc).

-        High level of attention to the rightful growth of/achievement by children so that they become excellent human beings, superior professionals and capable of nurturing their own families in the best ways when they start one of their own.

-        Help develop right kind of maturity (of thoughts, ideas, reactions/responses and actions) in each family member.

-        Having full faith and confidence in the overall soundness of family without any need to strike comparisons with others/other families/societies of the world- developing absoluteness and not comparisons (do comparisons only for the purpose of learning from others and not for competing or for feeling inferior or superior after comparisons).

-        Creating and maintaining overall happiness for all the family members as individuals and family as a whole (the togetherness).

Do You Have the Right Kind of Skill Sets and Competencies to Run Your Marriage and Family Effectively?

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

On the topic of competencies we suggest couple of very good articles on the URLs given below:

(Competencies- Life Management) http://shyam-bhatawdekar.blogspot.com/
(Competency Matrix) http://competency-matrix.blogspot.com/

(Soft Skills) http://soft-skills-competencies.blogspot.com/

(Soft Skills/Competencies: Details of Each Competency) http://soft-competencies-skills.blogspot.com/

(Life Skills) http://life-skills-competencies.blogspot.com/

(All the six lessons of tutorial on "building intimacy in your marriage/relationship are now available in a book form titled "The Romance of Intimacy". The book is already benefitting a good number of married couples and couples in relationships. You can obtain the book as eBook from the Nuubuu link http://nbuu.co/bi and as printed book from Amazon)

Isn't it true that you invest a lot of your efforts, time and money in acquiring and maintaining your skill sets and competencies to become and remain effective in your chosen profession? And it is never
been a one time job for you. As the profile of your profession changed with time and due to technological advancements and many other factors, you made sure to acquire those extra skill sets and competencies that your profession demanded.

You could have never become an effective software engineer if you had not acquired the proficiency
in coding in various computer languages. You acquired knowledge and then used that knowledge by actually writing the programs that finally ran well. And it has been a never ending job- acquiring knowledge and putting it to test.

The  same is true with any profession. Every profession requires certain technical and human skills and competencies and you make conscious efforts to acquire them. You you do it over years and years.

Now ask yourself a question. Did you do the same thing when you entered into your marriage and then started your family? Does starting, maintaining and building up a great married and family life not
need or demand some specific skill sets and competencies for you to become an effective spouse and a parent?

Did you identify those skill sets and competencies? Did you introspect if you possess them- are you good at them? If you did not have them already, did you take actions to seek knowledge about them, acquire them and then put them into practice again and again so that you became proficient in them.

Can you really lead a great married and family life without doing so?

If you have not done it till now, nothing much is lost. It's never too late. Start now.