Wellness Counseling Center

Helping People Connect

Couples Counseling Articles

Intimate

The Perfect Lipstick

| By

When you buy lipstick at a big box store, you’ll likely pay under $10 for a well-known brand made in a manufacturing plant somewhere far away.

If you go to a posh department store you can buy a deluxe brand for under $50 – likely made in that same plant.

When Neiman Marcus and Christian Louboutin offer up a Rouge Matte Lip Colour in a beautiful black box, they’re not selling you a $90 lipstick. They’re selling memorable, significant and over-the-top-notice-me.

And if you really want to scramble your brain you can go to Amazon and buy a Maybelline, drugstore brand, lipstick for over $165. (Nope. That is not a typo.)

The important thing to know is that within a fraction of a percentage point, all lipsticks contain the same ingredients. It’s not about where you buy lipstick or how much you pay, It’s about the story we tell ourselves and what we believe.

In the drawer, is one lipstick really better than the other? Is there really a right choice? It depends….on what texture and color you like, your skin tone, what you’re wearing that day and where you’re going. Maybe even your mood.

We choose. And because there is no absolute ranking, ‘preference’ is different than ‘right’.

This applies to just about everything in life… including intimate relationship.

How we use language, choose our words, our tone of voice, the conversations we decide to engage in…and whether or not we bring our best selves to the table.

Having an open heart and being in sync with our partner is always a choice.

What Are You Creating?

| By

For as long as I can remember, most people I know fell in love and started creating the wedding. Who and how many to invite? Find the right venue. Live music or DJ? What kind of food and when do we taste the cake? Get these questions answered then swing into action.

The profits around organizing and implementing weddings are huge. It’s an industry that’s not going away. Just a quick Google search reveals there are more than 2.5 million weddings in the US annually valued at well over $50 billion. Yes. Billion.

Today, there’s a new kind of creating going on.

Over time, it’s likely to have more dominance and prestige because you cannot buy or duplicate it: Creating an intimate partnership that works.

How do we create an intimate partnership where we are doing great things AND still accessible, responsive and emotionally engaged with each other?

How do we show up in relationship in ways that serve our partner AND the world?

Happy couples of the future, the ones that want to be close 20 years from now, are asking these questions. If you’re aspiring to a happy 20+ year marriage, consider organizing an intimate partnership.

If you’re planning an average life by working harder, longer hours and making more money to build a bigger house, consider the alternative: gifting your partner and humanity with your brilliance.

Star Stuff and Love

| By

We dream of stability and permanence. What shows up is confusion and paradox.

Sometimes being in an intimate relationship means choosing between compromise/conformity and taking a powerful stand for uniqueness instead; two people on separate and individual journeys – together.

One is riskier and means moving from what we know to what we don’t know.

Kind of like when the ancients suspected that Earth was not the fixed center, and was moving at unimaginable speed beneath their feet. It took thousands of years to prove this theory and in 1929, Edwin Hubble, established that we live in an ever expanding Universe.

Continue Reading Star Stuff and Love

Join us in 2018 for a Hold Me Tight® Couples Workshop

| By

Maybe things have been perking along between you for years…. and they still are.

But recently, you’ve noticed things changing and you feel a shift calling you toward a deeper connection. If you want a close intimate partnership….. and you’ll settle for nothing less…. this is your invitation.

It’s time to peek behind the curtain and explore what’s possible.

We’re getting ready for our new couples workshop starting in January and I hope you’ll join me there.

It’s a wonderful way to start the new year and this workshop is designed especially for people like you who want more out of their relationship.

If you’ve ever asked the question: What’s the ONE thing that would make life easier? The answer is usually pretty simple but hard to implement.

Hold Me Tight Couples WorkshopThis Hold Me Tight® Couples Workshop provides you with new perspectives on love and the world of relationship. It’s interactive and will give you and your partner fresh insight and tools you need to shape a loving bond and a closer connection.

Continue Reading Join us in 2018 for a Hold Me Tight® Couples Workshop

Are You Over, Under or With?

| By

Partnership is reciprocal. It’s a two way street. You talk, play, listen and engage with a partner.

Control is another matter. You are either under someone’s control or you apply control over them.

We live in a culture that endorses freedom, and at the same time, teaches people to seek out and admire the powerful. We reward powerful teachers, coaches, CEOs, celebrities and authority figures who tell us what to do. Not always consciously. It’s just the way it is. Familiar and easy.

Until it seeps into our intimate relationships and we find ourselves over or under. But not with. Blaming. Accusing. Defending. Insisting. Do it this way. Not that way. How could you? Why would you? You should…… You shouldn’t……

Continue Reading Are You Over, Under or With?

Can I Be Sure?

| By

05-24-15ArticleIntimate partners who want to spend a lifetime together usually profess unconditional love.

They long for it too – wanting certainty and affirmative answers to questions like:

  • Are you in?
  • Can I count on you?
  • Will you be there for me when I need you?

Problem is, certainty is binary and requires 100%.

Open / Closed
Up / Down
On / Off
In / Out

Continue Reading Can I Be Sure?

Wellness Association Logos