Danstel

  What matters more (and less) than you think in long-term relationships The prom date vs. the life partner Many of us don’t date for long-term viability. I call this pursuing  The Prom Date . What’s an ideal prom date? Someone who looks great in pictures, gives you a night full of fun, and makes you look cool in front of your friends. Many of us finished high school more than a decade ago, and yet we’re still using the same rubric to evaluate potential partners. Do you really want to marry the Prom Date? To worry if your partner is going to help you take care of your aging parents? Or show up to your kid’s parent-teacher conference? Or nurse you back to health after contracting a case of Montezuma’s revenge?  Those probably aren’t the questions you ask yourself when you first meet someone. The answers have little bearing on whether you want to kiss the person or go out with them again. (And who wants to think about diarrhea on a first date!?) But when you’re looking for a long-term pa

  If your relationship has lost its passion and romance, there are ways to bring it back so that it can have the richness of gelato, yet be nourishing and fresh. Would you choose gelato over non-fat frozen yogurt? Most of us would say gelato, even knowing that it is an unhealthy choice. Long-term marriage versus an affair? Most would choose a good, healthy marriage over a fleeting affair. But that choice depends on many variables. Is your marriage healthy? Do you still have passion, romance, and intimacy? If your relationship has lost its passion and romance, there are ways to bring it back so that it can have the richness of gelato, yet be nourishing and fresh. Relationships begin with infatuation. A crush is mistaken for love because it is so powerful and ineffable, even though it is fleeting in the end. Romantic love leaves an imprint on the heart and psyche that is hard to shake. When love matures and the romantic sentiment fades over years of managing kids, chores, jobs, money, an

  Remember the poster with an adorable cartoon couple and the caption, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry?” Puh-leese! In my clinical opinion, the creator of that slogan ended up desolate and divorced. He or she was fifty shades of wrong. I’d say—and research clearly shows—that love means saying “I’m sorry” a lot.  And while “I’m sorry” is a good start, I argue that it is not enough. Let’s look at it this way. Say you accidentally spill a glass of lemonade all over the table and thoroughly splash your sweetheart. Then you say, “I’m sorry.” Are you done? Of course not. You will go on to clean up the mess so you can begin fresh. What’s more, if the two of you are in this together, your mate will gamely lend a hand to repair the mistake with you. What if we apply this to arguments, harsh words, or thoughtless actions? What if we make an agreement to clean up our marital messes together, regardless of who spilled the lemonade? One of the skills I teach the couples in my online pr

  Be intentional about showing how much you care “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  I’d say the road to relationship misery is paved with good intentions, too. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You intend to be more romantic, caring, sexy, or fun—you really do!—but then you forget. Why? Is it because you are a thoughtless oaf with the romantic aptitude of a sponge? Is it because you care about your work more than your mate? Is it because you are just too darn tired? No. It’s because you are a human with truly good intentions, but intentions are never enough. You may ask, “Okay Cheryl, how can I make my partner feel more important and loved?” By making an effort to DO something that makes them feel special each and every day. If you are like me, you need some help turning what you think you should do or would like to do for your partner into relationship results. And I have the perfect tool for you: set daily love aspirations. DAILY LOVE ASPIRATIONS I created this love ha

  The purpose of conflict is to more fully understand your partner. Does this sound familiar?  You think the conflict is about who is going to pick up your child after school.  It’s going to be a simple decision—it’s either you or your partner. But, somehow, there is no simple resolution.  The conflict seems bigger than that.  It feels like something deeper is going on for one or both of you. The conflict Let’s use this scenario as an example: Sam and Chris are discussing who is going to pick up their daughter from school.  Sam says to Chris, “I can pick her up after school today.” Chris says, “No, I’d like to pick her up.” Sam comes back with, “You’re so busy at work today and I have the day off.  I’m happy to do it.” Chris persists, “You should enjoy your day off.  I can fit it into my work day.” They go back and forth like this for a while.   When the resolution for the conflict feels like it should be easier than it turns out to be, that is the indicator that there might be some dr

Don’t wait for passion. Instead, choose to become passion. It’s a lazy Sunday morning. The kids are away. You wake up, enjoy a luxurious stretch, and then you lovingly reach for your tablet instead of your partner.  Remember when you first shared a bed with the person you desired? Back then when you drifted up to consciousness, you’d immediately notice the warmth of your snoozing sweetheart. Your thoughts would quickly turn to love, and your body would swiftly follow with arousal. You traced their spine with gentle fingertips, watching as they stirred awake. Your lover smiled and turned toward you with a sparkle in their eyes and a kiss waiting on their lips.  These days, instead of waking up thinking about making love, you’re thinking about making coffee.  And that is normal.  As you will see  there are actually two types of sexual desire. If you rely exclusively on the first type of desire, your lazy Sunday in bed will never turn into a sexy Sunday in bed. If you long to re-ignite lo

  Begin your life of love together. This June 2021, my partner and I celebrate our 16th anniversary together. That’s no small feat today. The even wilder part about our relationship is that we met on social media. We didn’t meet on Tinder. There was no “swiping right” in 2005. We didn’t meet on Facebook or even MySpace.  I met my partner when internet dating was brand new. We met on a site called “Friendster.” It was one of the first social media sites with profiles and photos, but not much else.  Here’s how it happened for me. A guy named Alapaki messaged me. He had gorgeous photos and a cool job (as a symphony percussionist). I was a music major in undergrad, so we had that in common.  I took a chance and here we are, still together, 16 years later. We’ve really learned a thing or two about relationships—mainly what it takes to make it past the tumultuous first year.  Here I’m sharing four tips we had to learn (the hard way) in the first year of our relationship so that you might not

  Do you have six seconds to improve your relationship? How long do you share a kiss with your partner? You’ve probably never timed it before.  Try setting your phone’s stopwatch to six seconds. Does it feel longer than you thought?  QUICK KISSES VS MINDFUL KISSES Most kisses shared may be short and sweet. Perhaps you are running off to work, in the middle of cooking, or about to go to sleep. Lengthening kisses to six seconds could be a key to a better relationship.  Dr. John Gottman says it’s long enough to make a moment of connection with our partner. It stops the busyness in your brain and puts your focus on your partner at that moment. Kissing can be a good exercise in mindfulness. There are a lot of Gottman principles we recommend using on a daily basis with your partners. I think the six second kiss is the easiest. There doesn’t have to be talking, listening, or problem-solving. It’s just a time to connect with your partner physically and feel close to them. It also accomplishes

  What emotional safety looks like in a healthy relationship Can I trust you to stick around through chemo and radiation treatments? Can I trust you to choose me over your mother? Can I trust you to respect me? Can I trust you to provide for our family? Can I trust you to have my best interest in mind? Can I trust you to support my goals? Can I trust you to not jump ship when things get hard? Can I trust you to be sexually faithful? Trust—a heavy five-letter word.  TRUST AND BETRAYAL Someone once told me that you could not have a relationship without trust, and they were absolutely right. At least not a healthy one, because trust is embedded in every fiber of a relationship. To better understand trust, we need to reflect on the opposite—betrayal. Often betrayal is thought of as this huge event that shakes the partnership to its core. Betrayal can be obvious, loud, and big. It can also be subtle, discrete, and ongoing, eroding the relationship over time.  You experience betrayal when yo

  If you want to stop arguing all the time, avoid these mistakes. They trudged into my therapy office, slumped down at opposite ends of my sofa, and glared at each other. This professional couple in their 50s had yet another fight on the way to their appointment. In theory, it was a continuation of something that started last night, but the truth was they had variations of the same row for the last five years.  “I’ve asked you to be kinder, but you speak to me with such contempt,” he complained.  “But you’re doing things that upset me,” she counter-claimed. “What am I supposed to do?”  They were at Gridlock and falling into three common mistakes made by couples with perpetual problems.   So what are these mistakes? Could knowing them transform your relationship? MISTAKE #1:   “YOU CHANGE” It is easy to have a long list of what your partner could do differently and a short list of your own. Perhaps yours is completely blank or full of hopeless ideas like “give up.” Unfortunately, pointi