When you’re living in what I call the “simmer zone” you’re feeling loved up and connected. In this space sex is both less important as you’re already feeling so good together yet also easier because you are feeling so good together! It’s a wonderful paradox that normally does lead to regular quality lovemaking throughout life.

Let me recap my ‘thermostat’ model of relating in case you’re not familiar with it, so that this term makes sense. It’s how I conceptualise sex and intimacy in a committed relationship.

Imagine you each have a thermostat of connection, which indicates how connected you are feeling. Zero degrees (this is Celsius for the Americans reading this) is being disconnected, because your mind is elsewhere, you’re not focused on your partner; and 100 degrees is in the throes of glorious lovemaking, ultimate connection.

Now, you don’t want to get physically intimate, and certainly not genitally intimate, until you are at least at 70 degrees. You need to already be ‘simmering’. That is, you need to be feeling good about each other, feeling connected, with no bad feeling between you and in a good space yourself. It’s beyond being good teammates in the logistics of life, those are the lower temperatures of the thermostat; it’s beyond feeling like good friends who really like each other, which are the middle temperatures of the thermostat; it’s getting into that ‘lover’ zone, where you’re really sharing your love energy that’s been potentized by your vital life force sexual energy. There’s a palpable, positive energy between you, one that goes beyond just “I love you” to “Mmm, I love you!”.

If you’re not in the simmer zone you’re not ready for sex, not physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually. You might still be able to do it, but it won’t feel great. It might be functional, you might hit some quantitative KPIs, but probably it will feel disconnected, lonely, and even invasive.

So, learn to get into and stay in the simmer zone!

It starts from the moment you wake up and have a positive interaction. It’s all the micro-connections, what I call ‘relationship vitamins’ – the smiles, glances, touches, positive comments throughout the day. It’s creating spaces in your life where you can enjoy each other’s company, from a daily chat over a cup of tea or glass of wine, through to shared hobbies, dates and trips away together. It’s about actively and consciously investing in your relationship so that it stays strong and connected. And it’s about learning to manage challenges so they don’t blow up, and learning to repair well when they do.

To live in the simmer zone, you need to learn the skills to be relational and hone those skills. Then you’ll find that you’re investing in your relationship and creating a great love life, all life through and all life long!

We like to think that we are mature rational people, and that we let the front part of our brain make decisions for us. This is the part of the brain that thinks and cogitates. It looks after the ‘executive’ functions of the brain.

But…actually, we can slip quite easily into the ‘primitive’ part of the brain, the part that responds to threat and danger with attacking and defensive responses. These responses can be intense, with raised voices, aggression and name-calling; or they can be withdrawn, shutdown, with stonewalling, absence, silence. Neither type of response is using the ‘executive’ part of our brain, both are responses governed by the ‘primitive’ part of our brain, in response to a threat.

And there is no one more threatening than our beloved! That person who is supposed to be there for us, who understands us, looks out for us, who keeps us safe and secure in the world. If they are in some way threatening to us – and those can be very little threats, a look, a tone, a gesture – then it means a lot.

Our nervous system is ancient, and it is blind. So, when it gets triggered, it doesn’t know if the threat is a sabretooth tiger about to leap out and eat us…or our partner saying ‘we need to talk’ with that look on their face… The response is ‘yikes!’ and we can very easily slip into that primitive protective mode.

You don’t want your relationship to be ruled by the primitive part of your brain. You don’t want to be triggering each other to respond from that part of the brain. You want to keep the executive part of your brain engaged, particularly when things get wobbly.

This means that as individuals we need to do our best to soothe ourselves, to stay calm. We can do that with breath, with consciously relaxing our body, with catching thoughts and feelings that reinforce the danger and the primitive response. And choosing to respond differently. Definitely, we should learn to do that and do our best.

However, that can be challenging when something has arisen between the two of us. It is a relational issue. So, to keep the dyad calm, it helps if we are being relational. That means that we are not just seeking to manage our own response through staying calm, which is called self-regulating, we are also seeking to help the other stay calm. This is called co-regulating.

When we are co-regulating, we are simultaneously self-aware and other-aware. We are seeking to keep ourselves and our partner regulated. When we are both doing this then it is more effective than each trying to regulate themselves.

So, you are doing your best to ensure that how you are behaving will not be threatening to your partner, that you are helping them to stay calm, even if the topic is challenging. We do this through eye contact, gentle touch, proximity, even tone of voice, using terms of endearment (such as sweetheart or babe). We also make sure that we don’t say too much in a rush and that we give our partner space to think and respond.

Essentially, we are seeking to keep each other safe and keep each other connected. That ensures our nervous systems stay regulated and we operate from the executive part of the brain.

Partners who master this skill can discuss all kinds of challenging topics and do it well. It’s a great skill to learn. In fact, I think it is an essential skill in order to create a truly supportive, loving, mutual, interdependent relationship.

Regular readers will know I use a lot of metaphors to describe a relationship – a tripod, a thermostat, a couple bubble, a garden. One that I particularly like is that your relationship is like a boat that carries you through life.

It’s not ‘you and me’, which can too easily turn into ‘you versus me’. It’s you, me and us. We are both IN the ‘us’, IN the relationship, we are both IN the boat. If the boat is good, we’re good.

Now when the weather is fine, and the sailing is easy - you’re drinking your champagne and sunbaking on the deck or drinking a cold beer while fishing off the side. No problems there. But it’s when the weather turns bad and the ocean is rough, that’s when the boat really matters. If you’ve got a boat that’s not shipshape, if it springs leaks and falls apart, then you’re not going to make it safely through to calm seas, and if you don’t have the technical skills and knowledge to sail your boat, then you might not make it through either. In fact, if you don’t know how to sail you might not ever leave the dock and enjoy even the fine weather.

So, to have a ‘boat’ that carries you well through life, you need two things:

1. You need your boat to be shipshape. You need to look after it, make sure it’s strong. This means cultivating a strong relationship, investing in the relationship, prioritising it, doing the things that make it strong.
2. You need to know how to sail the boat. This means you need to know how you two tick, you need to be experts on each other, you need to know how to be relational and put that knowledge into practice.

Sadly, too often people think their relationship should “just happen”, they shouldn’t need to invest in it, or learn from experts about how to make it great. You just ‘fall in love’ and live happily ever after. Nope, that is a recipe for disaster. Like anything else in life, whether it be career, health, wealth, parenting, sport, hobby, if you want it to be good you have to focus on it. It’s the same with relationships. When you look after your boat and sail it well, then you really can live happily ever after.

Sometimes relationships are so bad it’s clear you need to run a mile – there’s violence, coercion, repetitive cheating, they’ve gambled your life savings away… But actually, even in the worst of relationships it can still be hard to end them. There’s often the remembrance of when it was good, the magical thinking that if only, not to mention the fear of what’s on the other side of separation.

So, when a relationship isn’t right, but isn’t horrendous, it can be even harder to end it. You like each other, you get on well most of the time, but you’re not a great match. Maybe your values are different, maybe your wants in life are different, and you get in negative patterns that aren’t anyone’s ‘fault’, but they repeat over and over and over.

In those situations, you are even more likely to get stuck in an endless weighing up of the good and bad. As the title of an excellent book by Mira Kirchenbaum puts it, it’s too good to leave too bad to stay.

Some people get stuck, others do something interesting, generally unconsciously: they force a crisis. A client came to this realisation in session the other day. She was stuck in a relationship where they are both good people, but they want different things in life. She had been working with me to clarify what she does want in life and in a partner, and it had become clear that this relationship wasn’t it. But even with this realisation, she was still compelled to engage in the relationship even more, to move in with the partner, even though she knew it would be a disaster. It didn’t make logical sense.

Then the light bulb moment hit – she realised she was trying to force the relationship to explode. If the relationship became so toxic, so unbearable, it would be easy for her to end it. But while it would be easier, it would also end with bitterness and hurt and probably a good deal of trauma to deal with after! She realised it would be far better to end it now, maturely, with love and respect.

When you read it here, you’d think that it’s obvious that we should end relationships before they get so bad, before you’ve become bitter and twisted. But humans being the fallible creatures that we are, it’s hard to break strong bonds with another, and it’s scary to have to face the unknown on the other side.

It takes courage to end a relationship well. You have to let go of the future you’d planned, athe hopes you’d had. You have to let your heart break. It’s hard and it’s scary. But it’s not traumatic. And in being brave you are also giving yourself freedom to live the life you want with someone who is a good match – and you’re giving your partner the same freedom. So, if you're in this situation, and therapy hasn't worked, be brave.

So many people are looking for love, seeking it as though it is something outside of them, separate from them. 

Singles trawl the dating apps, date after date, hoping that this time it will be the one who will bring love into their life…

Couples engross themselves in their individual lives, becoming complacent, losing their connection. They feel the lack of love and seek it through work, children, or external lovers…

Yet the love is already there. It’s within us and it’s around us. Single or partnered, know yourself, love yourself. We need to do the psychological and spiritual work to clear negative patterns, to develop understanding and compassion for ourselves. It can be hard, and a life-long process, but so rewarding. We come to realise that ‘I’m ok’. We learn to let down the barriers, remove the armour that we created to keep us safe from the large or small hurts and neglects we experienced as children, to deal with the conditioning we received even though it didn’t feel right – ‘boys don’t cry’, ‘be a good girl’ – the message that we aren’t good enough unless… that we aren’t loveable unless….that we aren’t lovable.

Yet humans thrive on love, we are a bonding species, we need to connect to others, and to have stronger bonds with small numbers, particularly with our parents as children and then with our partner as adults. It is hard-wired in us, our evolutionary drive was to bond so as to raise our helpless slow-growing young and therefore survive as a species. Our human evolutionary drive has always been love.

The more we are able to love ourselves, the more we can let ourselves open to the love that is around us. Having that internal sense of self-love gives us strength to be vulnerable and authentic, allowing others around us to be the same, allowing us to connect as the fragile, beautiful people that we are, bumbling along in life the best we can. Single people then meet those who are a good match to their true selves and the love flows. Couples stay attuned to each other, really knowing each other and through that supporting and loving each other through life.

With the self-love you feel the external love. The experience of life is inevitably challenging, yet with the love it is experienced as safe, joyous and fulfilling.

You are always going to have differences, you’re always going have challenges, there are always going to be things that you don’t like about your partner…you are always going to need to have difficult conversations, including when you have a complaint about your partner.

So, an essential skill in having a quality relationship is being able to communicate complaints effectively.

Couples with undeveloped communication skills will deal with complaints in one of two ineffective ways:

• They’ll pretend the problem doesn’t exist and sweep it under the carpet… where it will fester unresolved until it re-emerges down the track in much worse form.

Or

• They’ll go into full-on confrontation mode, with aggressive accusations… leading to full-blown war and generally no resolution, only, at best, capitulation.

Neither of these approaches are effective ways of communicating complaints. So how do you do it well?

If you are the person with the complaint:

• Be gentle, make sure your partner is in a receptive mode and not distracted or busy, ask if this is a good time to talk and if not, when would be.
• Start the conversation with a positive comment, use ‘us’ language. Then share what behaviour is causing you problems and why it is a problem for you. Keep in mind the issue is not the behaviour, it’s why it’s a problem for you. So, no accusations or telling your partner what they’re doing wrong, instead, share how you’re feeling about it.
• Allow them space to reflect back to you what they are hearing and to ask questions to clarify that they understand you.

If you are the person being complained about:

• Woah, that’s hard! It really is! No-one likes hearing their partner say they’re not happy with you. But it is necessary, so take a deep breath and go in with open-heart and open-mind.

Now, there are five likely responses you will feel when you hear the complaint. Be prepared for this so that you can have the self-awareness not to succumb. The five are:

• Going on the offensive and attacking back

“How dare you, you do it too, in fact you’re worse than me, blah blah blah”

• Going on the defensive and explaining yourself

“Well, what do you expect, I’m busy/tired/etc, I can’t blah blah blah”

• Dismissing your partner’s concerns

“Don’t be ridiculous, that’s not important, it doesn’t matter.”

• Fixing the problem

“Right, what you need to do is blah blah blah”

• Apologising for the problem

“Oh, you’re so right, I’m such a terrible person, I’m so sorry blah blah blah”

Now, there might well be a place for apologising, fixing, explaining and even letting your partner know they do it too. But not too soon. Find out what the problem is first, not the behaviour but why it’s a problem, and once you are sure of that, then you can if necessary apologise, fix, explain or point out that they do it too and then address that side of things.

There is never a reason to dismiss. That’s the worst thing you can do. You can defer a conversation if you’re not in the right space to discuss then – as long as you set a time to discuss and honour the timing. But never, ever dismiss.

When you can manage these reactions, when you stay curious and seek to truly understand your partner’s experience of what’s bothering them, then you can stay calm, co-regulate, and understand and resolve even the most challenging of issues.

That’s what makes a great relationship.

Download Audio: How to Express Your Emotions Without Being "Emotional"

Some people are labelled as ‘emotional’, as if it’s a bad thing. Well, you know what, we’re all emotional. All the time. We are all, every one of us, at every single moment, having an emotional experience. Experience, which is the state of being alive, is felt through our feelings, our emotions.

So being ‘emotional’ is being alive. 

Being able to be in touch with our emotions, to feel them, to know them and to express them is a very important skill in life. Particularly in relationships. 

A lot of us aren’t good at that. Some of us grow up thinking emotions are ‘bad’, particularly negative emotions. The message you get is: It’s bad to be feeling bad, so don’t feel bad. Um, so what you are supposed to do with those feelings? Well, either you suppress them, pretend they’re not there, and just let them fester. Or you become overly ‘emotional’, intense and not being able to express cleanly. 

It’s actually a little healthier to be overly expressive in your emotions than to suppress them. At least they are getting out and not festering. But if they are not being expressed well, they get violent or abusive and that is not at all good. That’s out of control. 

So how do you express feeling without suppressing or getting out of control? 

Firstly, take some time to identify what you’re feeling, yourself, internally. Be as clear as possible to yourself before you speak. If you’re the type of person who processes outwardly, that can be confusing to your partner, it’s messy and unclear to them, so try to have processed as much as possible before you speak. Conversely, if you’re the type of person who processes inwardly before speaking, make sure you don’t take too long as that could be upsetting to your partner too. At least let them know you’re processing so they don’t think you’re supressing or ignoring an issue.

Secondly, make sure your partner is in the right state to engage. There’s no point trying to talk with someone if they are busy or distracted as they can’t be receptive. It’s better to postpone to a time when they can listen – but do set a time and keep to it.

Thirdly, speak cleanly, being aware of both keeping yourself calm and paying attention to your partner. You need to be co-regulating, making sure you support each other so that neither of you gets triggered and dysregulated. That means breathing well, looking at each other, using a kind tone of voice, touch, allowing space for the other to take in what you’re saying. If you notice your partner is getting a little dysregulated then focus on calming rather than pushing your point harder. If you notice yourself getting dysregulated then breath more deeply and slow down a little, ask for a hug or a break if you need it.

Remember this isn’t easy, it’s a skill that needs to be practiced and mastered both as individuals and as a couple. The better you get the better you can express your thoughts, feelings and emotions without it getting overly ‘emotional’. You’ll get understanding and through that you’ll get resolution.

Download Audio: Q&A: We're Time Poor - How Do We Add Some Zing?

It’s so easy to become complacent in relationships. Hey, we’re busy people, we’ve got a lot on, we’re tired, we don’t have the time or energy to invest in our relationship, there are other priorities…

 And so, without the nurturance, it withers and dies…

 Like everything in life, if you want something to be good, if you want it to be a part of life that supports and enhances you, you need to focus on it. If you want to be healthy you have to focus on your health, if you want to be wealthy you have to focus on your finances, and if you want to be loved-up you have to focus on your relationship.

 If you get complacent you stop being consciously engaged with your partner and even with yourself and revert to subconscious beliefs and patterns, such as poor parental role-modelling, limiting cultural beliefs around relationships, unhelpful myths about sexuality.

 When you pay attention though, you learn about yourself and your partner and through that you develop a better dynamic. With that awareness you make better choices. If there are tensions or blocks, you work on them. You admit where you lack knowledge or experience and get help and learn. Then you practice, together, and keep developing what you learn. You constantly, consciously cultivate a life-enhancing relationship.

 At first this might take a lot of effort, but over time, with positive feedback and results, being conscious becomes easier, more habitual. And because you are doing this together you have the added benefit of positive feedback and reinforcement between you.