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Dating, Getting Your Ex Back, Relationships, Sex

Why Being Together Is Not the Same as Being Present

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Why Being Together Is Not the Same as Being Present

The strange loneliness of a room with two people in it.

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

— Mary Oliver

It is entirely possible to spend an enormous amount of time with someone and have almost no contact with them. Couples do this for decades. They share a bed, a kitchen, a calendar and a mortgage; they are in each other physical company for thousands of hours a year; and they are, in every sense that would matter to either of them, alone. Nothing has gone wrong. There has been no betrayal and no fight. There has simply been a slow, unremarked substitution of proximity for presence, and the substitution is so nearly invisible that most people never realize it has occurred.

The confusion is understandable, because togetherness looks like presence from the outside and it is measurable in a way that presence is not. You can count the evenings spent in the same house. You can point to the holiday, the shared meals, the fact that you are together nearly all the time. What you cannot count, and what the counting therefore quietly obscures, is whether either of you was actually there.

Proximity Is the Easiest Thing to Mistake for Intimacy

Physical presence has an enormous advantage in this confusion: it is legible, it is verifiable, and it feels like it ought to be enough. If you are in the room, you are there. If you are there most evenings, you are a present partner. This logic is so intuitive that it is almost never examined, and it allows an entire relationship to be conducted on the basis of a metric that measures none of the things that actually matter. Two people can accumulate a thousand hours of shared physical space in a year and generate, in all that time, perhaps forty minutes of genuine mutual attention.

The reason this passes unnoticed is that both people are usually doing it, and a shared illusion is much harder to see through than a private one. Neither party feels neglected, exactly, because neither party is expecting more, because the current arrangement is what being together has come to mean for both of them. It is only when something forces the question – an illness, a crisis, an enforced week without devices, a conversation that unexpectedly goes somewhere real – that both people feel a strange jolt of recognition, and understand that the thing they just had for twenty minutes was something they have not had for years and had entirely forgotten was available.

The Specific Loneliness of Being Unseen by Someone Nearby

There is a category of loneliness that has nothing to do with being alone, and it is considerably more painful than solitude. A person by themselves in a quiet house is not necessarily lonely at all. But a person sitting beside someone they love, saying something that matters, and watching that person eyes move to a screen is experiencing something that a person alone never has to endure – which is the direct, immediate evidence of not being chosen in the very moment they reached out.

This is why so many people in long relationships describe a loneliness they feel guilty about, since by every external measure they are not alone. But the guilt is misplaced. The loneliness is entirely rational, because it is not a response to an absence of people. It is a response to an absence of attention from a person who is right there and could give it, which is a fundamentally different and much sharper experience. Solitude is neutral. Being unattended to by someone within arm reach is not neutral at all. It carries a message, and the message is received in full, no matter how kindly the person delivering it would have wished it otherwise.

Why Shared Activity Is Not the Same as Shared Attention

Couples who sense that something has gone thin very often reach for activity as the remedy. They plan more. They book the trip, take up the hobby, fill the calendar with things to do together, on the reasonable assumption that more shared experience will produce more connection. Sometimes it does. Very often it does nothing at all, and the failure is bewildering, because they did everything right and came home feeling exactly as they had before.

The reason is that activity is not attention, and can in fact be an extremely effective way of avoiding it. A busy shared schedule provides a continuous supply of things to focus on that are not each other – the itinerary, the logistics, the meal, the view – and it is entirely possible to fill a week with wonderful experiences during which neither of you looks directly at the other for more than a few seconds at a time. The couples who recover something usually do so not by adding activity but by removing it: by sitting in a room with nothing to do and no device to reach for, which is uncomfortable, which is meant to be, and which is the only condition under which two people who have drifted have any real chance of finding each other again.

Presence Is a Decision, Not a Location

The distinction that saves relationships is the recognition that presence is something you do, not somewhere you are. It has a behavioral signature that is entirely observable: you put the thing down, you turn your body, you look, and you stay looking while the other person finds their way to the end of a thought. It does not require a great quantity of time, and this is the genuinely good news, because most people cannot supply a great quantity of time. Fifteen minutes of real presence outperforms an entire weekend of proximity, and it does so reliably, and anyone can find fifteen minutes.

What it does require is that you stop counting the wrong thing. Stop measuring the hours in the same house and start asking, honestly, when the last time was that you gave the person you love your entire and undivided attention for a sustained stretch, with nothing else running. For many people in long and outwardly happy relationships, the honest answer is months, and the honesty of that answer is uncomfortable precisely because nothing is wrong and everything is quietly thinning. You are not failing to spend time together. You are spending a great deal of it, and almost none of it is landing, and the difference between those two things is the difference between a relationship that lasts and one that also stays alive.

 

💡 Key Takeaway

Proximity is the easiest thing in the world to mistake for intimacy, because it is legible and countable in a way that presence is not – you can measure the evenings in the same house, and that measurement quietly obscures whether either of you was actually there. Two people can accumulate a thousand hours of shared space in a year and generate perhaps forty minutes of real mutual attention, and the reason this passes unnoticed is that both are doing it, and a shared illusion is far harder to see through than a private one. What it produces is a specific loneliness that is sharper than solitude, because being unattended to by someone within arm reach carries a message that being alone never delivers. The instinctive remedy – more shared activity, more plans, more trips – frequently fails, since activity can be an extremely effective way of avoiding attention while appearing to invest in it. What actually works is the recognition that presence is a decision rather than a location: you put the thing down, you turn, you look, and you stay looking. Fifteen minutes of that outperforms a weekend of being in the same room, which means the resource you are short of was never time.

 

 

Dating, Getting Your Ex Back, Relationships, Sex

Why Divided Attention Feels Like Rejection

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Why Divided Attention Feels Like Rejection

What the people you love actually experience when you are physically present and mentally elsewhere.

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

— Simone Weil

There is a particular expression that crosses a person face when they realize you have not been listening. It is not anger. It is something quieter and more damaging than anger – a small withdrawal, a slight retreat, a decision made somewhere below the level of thought that this is not a person to whom the real thing can be said. You will usually miss it entirely, because you were not looking. And that is the whole problem. The moment in which someone discovers that your attention is elsewhere is the moment they begin, in a way neither of you will ever discuss, to expect less of you.

Most people believe that divided attention is a minor discourtesy, roughly on the level of interrupting or being a few minutes late. It is treated as a manners problem, a matter of etiquette, something to apologize for lightly and move past. But this badly underestimates what is actually happening. When you half-listen to someone who is speaking to you, you are not committing a small rudeness. You are transmitting a message about their relative importance, and you are transmitting it in the only currency that the human nervous system fully trusts. They may forgive the words you said. They will not fail to register where your eyes went.

This report examines why divided attention lands as rejection rather than as inconvenience, what the brain of the person being half-listened-to is actually doing while it happens, and why the damage accumulates invisibly across years rather than announcing itself in a single confrontation. Understanding the mechanism will not make you a perfect listener. It will, however, make it considerably harder to keep believing that being in the room is the same thing as being there.

Tip 1: Understand That Attention Is Read as a Statement of Value

Human beings are exquisitely calibrated to detect where other people are directing their focus, and they have been for as long as there have been human beings. Long before language existed, the direction of another person gaze was one of the most important pieces of social information available – it told you what they were interested in, what they considered dangerous, and crucially whether they considered you worth watching. That machinery has not been retired. It is still running, quietly, underneath every conversation you have, and it does not care about your explanations. It reads the raw data. It notices, with total reliability, whether you are actually looking.

This is why the excuse that you were listening, that you can repeat the last sentence back, that you were only checking one thing, never quite lands. You are arguing with the conscious mind of the person in front of you while their far older and far more confident subsystem has already reached its verdict. To that subsystem, attention is not a courtesy that can be offered or withheld without meaning. Attention is the behavioral evidence of value, and there is no other evidence it fully trusts. What you say about how much someone matters to you is information. Where you point your focus is proof, and when the two conflict, nobody in the history of the species has ever believed the words.

Tip 2: Recognize the Difference Between Hearing and Being Received

It is entirely possible to hear every word a person says and leave them feeling completely unheard, and this fact confuses a great many well-meaning people. They defend themselves by demonstrating retention. I heard you, they say. You said the thing about your sister. And they are telling the truth – the audio was captured, the information was logged, and if tested they could reproduce it. What was missing was not the data. What was missing was the sense, on the other side, of having landed somewhere. Of having been taken in by another mind rather than merely recorded by one.

Being received is a different experience from being heard, and people can tell the difference instantly even though they usually cannot articulate it. Reception has a texture. It shows up in the question you ask next, in the fact that you paused rather than immediately responding, in whether your face changed when the difficult part arrived. These are small signals, and they are involuntary, and their absence is what someone means when they say that talking to you feels like talking to a wall despite the wall clearly having heard them. If your listening consistently produces accurate summaries and no sense of connection, you have been performing a transcription service rather than a relationship, and the person on the other side has almost certainly noticed long before you did.

Tip 3: See Why Partial Attention Is Worse Than No Attention

There is a counterintuitive truth buried in the psychology of attention, and it is worth sitting with because it overturns a defense that most people rely on. If you told someone plainly that you could not talk right now, they would be mildly disappointed and they would go away intact. Nothing would have been damaged. But if you allow them to begin – if you let them start the story, invest in it, reach for the vulnerable part – and then they discover mid-sentence that you were scrolling, you have done something considerably more harmful than a refusal. You have let them open, and then you were not there when they arrived.

This is why partial attention produces a wound that outright unavailability does not. Unavailability is a boundary; it can be respected and worked around. Partial attention is a betrayal of an implied contract, and it happens at precisely the moment the other person had lowered their guard. Over time the effect is that people learn not to lower their guard around you. They keep the story shorter. They give you the headline instead of the substance. They stop offering the parts that require care. And you will experience this as your relationships becoming somewhat simpler and less demanding, and you will not connect it to anything, because the withdrawal is silent and nobody will ever tell you that you were the reason.

Tip 4: Notice What Your Face Is Doing While Someone Talks

A great deal of what people call listening is actually a facial performance, and it is a performance that fools almost nobody. The nodding that is slightly out of rhythm with the sentence. The smile that arrives half a beat late. The eyebrows that go up in an expression of interest that the eyes underneath do not support. Human beings are extraordinary readers of micro-expression, and the gap between a genuinely engaged face and a politely simulated one is not subtle to the person watching it, even if they never consciously register what tipped them off. They simply come away with a feeling. The feeling is that you were not really there.

The uncomfortable implication is that you cannot fake this. You can fake the words, the responses, the follow-up questions pulled from a mental script of what an interested person would ask. But you cannot fake the involuntary movements of a face that is genuinely tracking another mind, because those movements are generated by the tracking itself. The only reliable route to looking like you are listening is the tedious and unavoidable one of actually listening. This is bad news for anyone hoping to optimize the appearance of presence while retaining the freedom to think about something else. It is good news for anyone who was hoping the solution might be simpler than they feared, because it is: there is only one, and it works every time.

Tip 5: Understand the Cumulative Arithmetic of Small Dismissals

No single instance of divided attention ends a relationship. This is precisely what makes the pattern so dangerous, because each individual event is defensible and none of them is worth a confrontation. You were tired. It was a busy week. The message was genuinely urgent. Any one of these is true, reasonable, and forgivable, and the person you love will indeed forgive it, and they will forgive the next one, and the one after that. But forgiveness is not the same as no effect. Each small dismissal deposits something, and the deposits do not evaporate simply because nobody made a scene about them.

What accumulates is not resentment, exactly. It is something closer to recalibration. Slowly, across hundreds of unremarked moments, a person adjusts their expectation of what you are available for. They stop bringing you the small things because the small things were the ones that got the half-attention. Then they stop bringing you the medium things. And by the time you notice that your partner or your child or your closest friend does not really tell you anything anymore, the recalibration is years deep and there was never a single event you could point to as the cause. The relationship did not break. It was slowly taught, by evidence you supplied daily, to expect less.

Tip 6: Watch for the Moment Someone Stops Bothering

There is a specific and observable moment in the decline of a relationship that almost everyone misses, and it is not an argument. It is the moment a person begins a sentence, glances at you, sees where your attention is, and quietly abandons the sentence. Never mind. It was nothing. It can wait. They will say this lightly and mean it to sound like nothing, and it will be the single most important thing that happens in your relationship that week. Because what has just occurred is not a postponement. It is a withdrawal of the thing they were about to give you.

The reason this moment is so easy to miss is that it costs you nothing at the time and appears to be a kindness. They have let you off. They have decided not to make demands. And so you take the reprieve gratefully and go back to whatever you were doing, and you register no loss whatsoever, because the loss consists entirely of a thing that did not happen. If you learn to catch this moment – to hear the abandoned sentence, to notice the never mind, to put the phone down and say tell me anyway – you will be recovering the exact material that most relationships are quietly hemorrhaging. The never minds are not nothing. They are the relationship, in the act of being withdrawn.

Tip 7: Stop Treating Attention as an Unlimited Resource

People tend to talk about attention as though it were free – as though it could be given generously to everyone, spread across a dozen inputs, offered to whoever happened to be in front of them without any real cost. This is comprehensively false, and the falseness of it is the root of a great deal of relational damage. Attention is strictly finite. It is more finite than money and considerably more finite than time. Every unit of it that goes to a screen, a worry, a work problem, or a background hum of low-grade anticipation is a unit that is not available to the person speaking, and no amount of good intention creates more of it.

Once you accept this, the moral character of divided attention changes. It stops being a lapse and becomes an allocation. When you half-listen to your child while managing a work thread, you have not failed to concentrate; you have made a distribution decision, and your child has received the smaller share, and they know it. The value of framing it this way is that allocations can be examined and altered in a way that vague failures of focus cannot. You can ask, honestly, who is currently receiving the largest portion of your finite attention, and whether that distribution matches what you would say your priorities are. For most people the two answers are so far apart that the question is uncomfortable to hold. It is also, for exactly that reason, worth holding.

Tip 8: Accept That You Cannot Compensate Later

A common and comforting belief is that attention is fungible across time – that the presence you failed to give on a Tuesday evening can be repaid on a Saturday, that the weekend away will settle the account, that a big gesture can offset a hundred small absences. This belief is very widely held and almost entirely wrong. Attention is not a debt that can be serviced retroactively, because the thing it delivers is not a quantity of hours. It is the experience, in a specific moment, of mattering to someone who was right there. That moment does not queue up and wait to be honored later. It happens or it does not.

This is why the grand compensatory gesture so often lands strangely and leaves the giver bewildered. You booked the trip, you cleared the calendar, you made the effort – and somehow the gratitude was thinner than you expected. What you have missed is that the person was not short of trips. They were short of being seen on an ordinary Wednesday when they said something small and hoped you would look up. The ledger you are trying to settle does not accept the currency you are offering. There is no substitute for the thing itself, delivered on time, in the unremarkable moment where it was actually wanted, and the sooner you stop believing you can pay it off in arrears, the sooner you can start paying it at all.

 

💡 Key Insight

Divided attention does not register as a minor discourtesy in the mind of the person receiving it; it registers as a statement about their value, delivered in the only currency the human nervous system fully trusts. Long before language existed, tracking where another person directed their focus was how we determined whether we mattered to them, and that machinery is still running underneath every conversation you have. It does not accept your explanations. It reads where your eyes went. This is why hearing every word and still leaving someone unheard is entirely possible, and why partial attention is in fact more damaging than honest unavailability – unavailability is a boundary that leaves the other person intact, while partial attention lets them open and then is not there when they arrive. The damage is never a single event. It is an accumulation of small, individually forgivable dismissals that slowly teach a person to expect less of you, until they begin abandoning sentences mid-way with a light never mind that costs you nothing and takes from you everything. And it cannot be repaid later with a grand gesture, because what attention delivers is not a quantity of hours but the experience of mattering to someone in a specific ordinary moment – a moment that does not queue up and wait to be honored on a more convenient day.

 

Fast Action Steps

These steps are designed to make your own attentional habits visible to you, and to recover the material that the people closest to you have quietly stopped offering.

Action 1: Count the Never Minds

For one week, keep a private tally of every time someone close to you begins a sentence and then abandons it – the it can wait, the never mind, the it was nothing, the visible decision not to continue. Do not intervene at first; simply count, and note who it was and what you were doing at the time. Most people are shocked by the number, and more shocked by the consistency of the trigger. The purpose is not to induce guilt but to make visible a category of loss that has been invisible precisely because it consists entirely of things that did not happen. You cannot recover what you cannot see, and until you count them, the never minds are simply part of the background noise of your life.

How many sentences were abandoned in your presence this week, and what does it tell you that you had never noticed a single one of them before you started counting?

 

Action 2: Audit the Allocation Honestly

Sit down and write out, as a rough percentage, where your finite attention actually went yesterday – not your time, your attention. How much of it went to work, to screens, to a background hum of worry, to genuinely being present with a person. Then, on the same page, write out the priority order you would say out loud if someone asked what mattered most to you. Put the two lists side by side and look at them without softening the comparison. The exercise is not designed to make you feel bad; it is designed to convert a vague sense of being stretched into a specific and therefore correctable set of allocations.

What is the distance between the way you actually allocate your attention and the way you would describe your priorities, and who in your life has been living on the wrong side of that gap?

 

Action 3: Give One Person Fifteen Undivided Minutes

Choose one person you have been half-listening to and give them fifteen minutes of genuinely undivided attention – phone in another room, no task in progress, no waiting for a gap in which to say your own thing. Do not announce that you are doing an exercise. Simply be entirely present, ask the second question rather than only the first, and let the silences sit. Then notice two things: how difficult it was to sustain, and how noticeably different the other person became. Most people find both results startling, and the second one is the more important, because it reveals how much of the person you thought you knew has been withheld from you.

What did the person in front of you say or reveal in fifteen minutes of undivided attention that they had not said in months, and where has that material been going all this time?

 

Recommended Reading

These books examine attention as a psychological and relational resource, the mechanics of being genuinely heard, and the ways in which modern life has quietly degraded our capacity to be present with the people we love.

Recommended reading:

Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle

You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy

The Lost Art of Listening by Michael P. Nichols

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari

The Relationship Cure by John M. Gottman

Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson

The Art of Communicating by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

Dating, Getting Your Ex Back, Relationships, Sex

Getting Your Ex Back

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With the increasing number of divorce cases, people find it harder to maintain a happy marriage. Marriage is a two-way thing that requires love and support from both sides. However, marriage does not just involve two people; it involves a family, and sometimes relatives from both sides. Get all the info you need here.

 

Tying The Knot Only Once!

Marriage tips on getting it right the first time

 

Chapter 1:

Happy Marriage Basics

Synopsis

 

There are many secrets to having and maintaining a happy marriage:

 

The Basics

 

Respect one another. 

Do not easily pick on each other’s bad habits or weaknesses. Give each other chances for improvements. Also, pay attention to what your spouse speaks of or when they dress up. Your spouse needs you. A slight nod or a smile with some proper conversation may uplift his/her spirit.

 

Consider each other’s privacy. 

Do not interfere too much with the privacy and space of your spouse. Being overly conscious and curious about what your spouse does will cause strains in the relationship.

 

Do not always expect your spouse to treat you better. 

Do not be calculative, in the sense that expecting your spouse to give you more than you give to him/her. Do more for your spouse, helping and supporting each other in times of need.

 

Speak positive to your spouse. Say nice words frequently to motivate your spouse for what he/she did- this will enlighten your spouse and make him/her happier. Focus on what happens presently or in the future yet not looking back at mistakes made. However, learn from your mistakes.

 

Do not be too close or flirt with the opposite sex other than your spouse. This may threaten your spouse’s feelings and cause distrust towards each other. Flirting with others may form habits, and it can be harmful to the spousal relationship over time.

 

Marriage bonds two, but not always two becoming one. Being too close or understanding each other too much may also trigger annoyance and tension whenever things turn ugly. A separation can increase the desire to be with each other and a feeling of having to cherish each other. Of course, do not separate too much. 

 

 

 

Chapter 2:

Work At Being Friends And Lovers

Synopsis

 

Marriage needs long-term maintenance. Respect, love, and patience are some values that couples share to hold the marriage together. Working at being friends and lovers is an objective and responsibility that a couple should hold onto to have a happy marriage.

  

 

It Takes Work

 

Stop having bad fights. This is crucial and you must avoid this to avoid turning things worse. Friends know what a bad fight is and a good fight. Do not start a quarrel with your spouse when a small problem occurs. Even doing so, do not delay to apologize. Settle the matter immediately so that it will not grow into bigger problems that are hard to resolve.

 

Spend time enjoying each other. Do not neglect your spouse’ need to be with you at times just because you have something else to busy do. Spend some time with each other even for a small conversation about family managing, or a work situation that you are involved with. Spending some quality time together can also build friendship, thus preventing divorce.

 

Develop love and intimacy rituals. Here is how you could improve intimacy between husband and wife. Do not take everything for granted, or as a habit. Even little things like greeting your spouse when you just arrive home will affect the intimacy levels. Greet your spouse the same way you greet your friends. Show that you are so happy to see him/her. It will also channel positive energy to your children.

 

Give pleasure instead of pain. What you or your spouse does changes situations; either into a better one or a worse one. Do not expect your spouse to act positively first, you should also do something to change the situation. You would not want your best friend to turn away from you, betray you, and leave you alone, right?

 

Chapter 3:

Learn How To Have Good Fights Instead Of Bad Fights

Synopsis

 

Anger sparks bad fights. Bad fights may tear a marriage apart. Bad fights can be fights involving physical abuse, verbal abuse, or silent fights meaning not approaching each other for a period of time. 

 

Learn This

 

Do not accuse. Do not use the word “you” most of the time during arguments or fights. Focus on using words that express how you feel. Do not criticize your spouse for everything. Examine yourself first for your mistakes.

 

Do not bring back past issues. Stick to the current issues you want to discuss with your spouse. Ugly past issues will trigger greater tension between a couple. If it is past, let it be. Forgiving is a great way to cherish one another.

 

Choose the “right” topics. Do not fight over tiny matters. Fighting just because of fighting is harmful over time for a marriage. If you are unhappy about your spouse’s bad habits or weaknesses, let him/her join you in resolving the issues together instead of keeping anger to yourself.

 

Find a suitable time to fight. Do not raise unhappy issues when your spouse is under work pressure. Do not argue when your spouse is extremely exhausted or tired after a long day of work. 

 

Control your tones and actions. Do not raise your voice easily towards your spouse. Do not start name-calling or fighting in front of your children. These affect your spouse’ emotions and lower his/her self-esteem. Walk away if you must to avoid aggressive fights.

 

Be flexible to cure fights. Learn from your mistakes. Be able to take in good observations from your spouse. Try to help your spouse in things or events that he/she feels they lack from you. If possible, resolve matters or fights before going to bed. 

 

Chapter 4:

Develop Rituals For Intimacy

Synopsis

 

Intimacy is essentially important for a married couple. Intimacy brings closeness and togetherness between a couple, either through the feeling of love or sexual relations. Therefore, developing rituals for intimacy is a form of responsibility one must have towards his/her spouse. These are some rituals you can consider developing.  

 

Closeness

 

Stay attractive. Do not be boring to look at; make yourself attractive to seek attention from your spouse. Try something special on occasionally. Dress smartly when going out with her your spouse one day. Put on light make-up even just taking him a lunch.

  

Send each other love messages during the day. At work, take some time to call up your spouse to say a few nice words. Send some love messages through texts or e-mail to tell him/her “I love you”. This positive act will surely gain admiration from your spouse.

 

Exchange massages. After a long day of work, it would be fun to have your spouse give you foot rubs or a massage on the back. Hence, do the same for your spouse. Meanwhile, you can share stories or thoughts with your spouse, where intimacy comes along the way.

 

Carry out recreational activities together. Take a short walk together. Go for a jog together. Cycle together. Exercising not only benefits you in maintenance of your physical health and relieves mental stress; it also bonds a couple closer together, as you are able to have your spouse join you in your daily routine.

 

Cuddle each other when watching television. There will be times when you and your spouse choose different television programs or follow different program schedules. Still, be there with your spouse. Sit with your spouse, try to understand the program he/she is watching, and cuddle with him/her. This creates a feeling of warmth between a couple. 

 

Chapter 5:

Learn To Be Kind And Caring

Synopsis

 

Being kind and caring should not go only towards others; your spouse needs it most. Tying the knot only once is what most people wish for, but sometimes life does not go your way. There are three major rules for a happy marriage: trust, respect, and love. When you follow these three rules, you will find yourself learning to be kind and caring for your spouse.

 

Be Sweet

 

Be available for your spouse. You are important to your spouse. Your spouse may rely on you for many things or ask for your opinion on almost everything. Be there for him/her. Care and do not neglect his/her needs.

 

Do not take your spouse for granted. Do not let out your anger easily or throw tantrums with your spouse because of irrational reasons. Do not abuse; either being physically, verbally, or sexually. Being kind and caring also means understanding how he/she feels if you did mean things to him/her.

 

Forgive. Be kind and generous to forgive your spouse for whatever he/she had done in the past. Leave the bad past behind. If there is no forgiveness, there is no hope for a greater future together. This is the greatest love act of all and brings great benefits for a long-lasting marriage.

 

Why Is Being Kind And Caring Important?

 

It leads you to a positive marriage life. Being kind and caring to your spouse brings greater intimacy towards each other. Being caring makes both of you happy, too, as your spouse starts to appreciate you more in daily life. 

It fulfills your spouse’s emotional needs. As you are being kind and caring, you become more observant towards your spouse’s needs. Thus, you become more careful and alert in order to help your spouse in times of need.

 

 

 

Chapter 6:

Why It Is Important To Keep Your Marriage Together

Synopsis

 

Marriage is a lifetime commitment. In reality, marriage can be hard to keep together when one or both are not committed enough, or did not manage to change some of the bad situations. However, marriage does not just involve two people. These are some reasons why it is important to keep marriage together.

 

Important Info

 

  1. Think of your kids. Getting married means settling down and starting a family. If a marriage turns sour, and did not work out well, it forms the greatest impact on your kids. Your kids may not understand the actual situation; they will feel lost and empty, especially when both parents only care about their own feelings and not for each other or neglected the kids.

 

  1. Honor.  When you still have your wedding ring on, and are married to your spouse, you are highly respected by others. Especially for women, you will not easily succumb to sexual harassment with your wedding ring on as others respect you for your loyalty towards your husband. 

 

  1. Reduce health risk. When you are loyal to your spouse and keep your marriage together, you will not have sexual relationship with another. Thus, it will prevent having physical health problems relating to sexual intercourse with more than a partner such as AIDS, HIV, syphilis, etc.

 

  1. Contentment. Life is easy and content when you have your spouse stay with you no matter what happens. When you are facing stress, your spouse will always be there to give you great advice or suggestions to improve yourself.

 

Wrapping Up

 

Keeping a marriage together gives support to each other, helping one to be successful. With love and care to uphold a marriage, emotional, mental or physical support can be given to each other, which direct and help each other to be successful in life.

Getting Your Ex Back, Sex

How Testosterone Affects a Man’s Sexual Health

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How Testosterone Affects a Man’s Sexual Health

Testosterone is well known as the male sex hormone. This hormone is responsible for the sex characteristics of men and also plays a role in libido as you get older. Unfortunately, many men have low testosterone levels that are affecting them negatively.

Testosterone is actually present in both men and women, just as both men and women have estrogen in their bodies. But in men the levels of testosterone tend to be much higher than those of women.

You need to learn how testosterone might be affecting you without even knowing it. And you also need to learn a few things you can do to improve your testosterone levels.

Libido

The thing that most men are concerned about when it comes to testosterone is libido. If you’re struggling with sexual desire, chances are your testosterone levels may be low.

Men with low testosterone report becoming disinterested in sex, even if they had been very interested in it during another period of life. Low testosterone can also make it difficult or even impossible to maintain an erection or orgasm.

When men have erectile dysfunction, they often turn to drugs like Viagra that improve circulation. But if your testosterone levels are low, that’s what needs to be addressed for treatment.

Fertility

Men with low testosterone levels also tend to suffer from fertility problems. You may have a low sperm count if you don’t have enough of this hormone to help keep your sperm production high.

If you’re trying to conceive and are having trouble, low testosterone levels could be the culprit. Make sure to talk with your doctor about testing these levels to find out if they are low.

General Health Problems

While not directly related to sexual health, low testosterone can cause many health problems that can eventually lead to problems in the bedroom. For example, men who have low testosterone often have fatigue.

When you feel fatigue, it can lower sex on your priority list. And when you do have sex, fatigue can keep you from having the stamina you need for pleasing your partner.

Low testosterone levels can also lead to hair loss. This is a condition that causes many men to feel embarrassment and can lead to problems with relationships and dating. Not only might you lose hair on your head, you might also notice a decrease in body hair.

Your muscles can also suffer when you have a lack of testosterone. This hormone helps to maintain strength and muscle mass. When you start to feel your body weakening, this can affect your confidence and sexual stamina.

Men with low testosterone levels are also more likely to have high cholesterol. This can directly affect your circulation. In fact, men who have erectile dysfunction are often experiencing the first symptoms of heart disease.

If you’re having difficulties with any of these aspects, it’s a good idea to speak with your doctor about your testosterone levels and determine if they’re in the normal range for your age group.

Getting Testosterone Tested

It’s easy to get your testosterone levels evaluated. Your doctor will need to order this test, which can be done through the blood or, in some cases, saliva. Your doctor may ask you to have this tested in the morning when your levels are at their highest.

Testosterone levels can be either too high or too low. If your levels are too high it could be signal of testicular cancer or adrenal cancer. If your levels are too low it could be a problem with the testicles, a sign of illness, or a symptom of unhealthy lifestyle choices.

Once your results come back you can speak with your doctor about your levels and what they mean. In some cases, your doctor may decide that you need further testing. In other cases, you may be able to design a program to help boost levels.

Causes of Low Testosterone

When you have low testosterone, it’s important to understand the cause of it. In many cases there are lifestyle choices you can make that will improve your levels. In other cases, you may have underlying health conditions that need to be addressed.

When it comes to lifestyle choices, your testosterone levels can be affected by stress, excess alcohol consumption, and obesity. Changing your lifestyle to manage stress, eliminate or reduce alcohol, and lose weight can help restore your testosterone levels.

If you’re undergoing chemotherapy or radiation for cancer, it can also cause your testosterone levels to plummet. Genetic conditions like Klinefelter’s Syndrome can also lead to low testosterone levels. This is a condition when one has an additional X chromosome.

If your iron levels are too high, you might also have low testosterone. And just about any chronic illness can lead to a loss of testosterone levels and sexual health. It’s important that you identify any underlying causes before just adding testosterone to the body.

Medical Treatment for Low Testosterone

If you have low testosterone, you may want to seek medical treatment. This usually involves some form of medication containing the hormone. It can be delivered as an injection, a patch that’s worn on the body, or tablets.

There are also testosterone gels that are added to the skin where they’re absorbed into the bloodstream and there’s even a type of medication that’s rubbed onto the gums. But you can also try natural remedies before going with medical hormone replacement.

Hormone replacement doesn’t address the conditions that are causing your low testosterone levels in the first place. Natural remedies can help your body start producing adequate amounts of testosterone on its own.

It also carries some side effects such as acne, decreased testicular size, and an increase in mood swings and aggression. You might also have higher cholesterol or changes in your sperm count with this treatment.

It’s important to consider all of the possible side effects before choosing to participate in medical testosterone replacement therapy. However, it can be a good solution for some men with this problem.

Natural Testosterone Boosters

There are many ways you can help your body to naturally raise its testosterone levels without medication. Trying a few of these solutions could make a big difference in your libido and improve your sexual satisfaction and that of your partner.

Try to lose weight. The first thing to consider is weight loss and exercise. When you have extra fat on your body, those fat cells produce estrogen. Having an imbalance of estrogen can make testosterone levels plummet.

When you take off the excess pounds, you actually can improve your testosterone levels. The best way to do this is through eating a healthy diet and moderate exercises including cardiovascular training and strength training.

It’s important, though, that you don’t lose weight too fast. This can actually cause your testosterone levels to shut down. Stick to losing one or two pounds a week for the best benefits.

Enjoy morning sex. Testosterone levels are improved when you have an erection. When you have sex in the morning, the time when your body produces the most testosterone, you’re more likely to have higher levels all day.

This is usually the time when men have the highest sex drive due to natural hormone fluctuations. This is probably the most enjoyable way to increase your sex drive naturally.

Limit or eliminate alcohol use. Alcohol use can cause testosterone levels to go into decline. This is especially true if you’re abusing alcohol or are an alcoholic. If you’re concerned about testosterone levels, it’s best to limit alcohol to one or two drinks a day.

That’s easier said than done if you’re dealing with alcohol dependency. If you fear this may be the cause of your low testosterone, it’s important to talk to a professional who can help you with issues of addiction.

Add zinc to your diet. Zinc is an important nutrient that helps your body make needed testosterone. It’s found in many common foods such as red meat, liver, oysters, and peanuts.

Adding a few of these foods to your diet on a regular basis can help you to have higher testosterone production naturally. You can also take a vitamin supplement that includes zinc.

Don’t skip the fat. In this day and age many people are strictly limiting their fat intake. But you need to have fat in order to make hormones. Your diet needs to have at least 30 percent of its calories from fat.

It’s best if that fat comes from plant sources such as olive oil, vegetable oil, avocado, and coconut oil. But some saturated fat is acceptable and you’ll get it from the red meat that you eat to raise those zinc levels.

Get some sleep. Sleeping is important for rest and rejuvenation. When you don’t get at least eight hours of sleep each night, you could be causing your body’s natural hormonal cycles to be interrupted.

Make sure that you’re getting plenty of sleep. Try going to bed at the same time each night and waking up at the same time each morning. Having one or two off nights isn’t going to cause problems. But being consistently sleep deprived can knock your testosterone levels down quite a bit.

Perform high intensity exercise. Short, intense bursts of exercise have been shown to improve testosterone levels. A typical testosterone boosting workout might include a short five minute warm up, followed by a burst of intense exercise as hard as you can for 30 seconds, and a 90 second recovery.

You’ll want to repeat this cycle at least six or seven more times in order to boost testosterone levels. You can complete this entire interval-training workout in less than 20 minutes to get the best results.

Take vitamin D supplements. Vitamin D Supplements are also important for helping to develop testosterone, boost your sex drive, and improve your fertility. This is a vitamin your body makes naturally when exposed to sunlight.

However, most people spend too much time indoors and aren’t getting enough of this important nutrient. The best way to get this is from the sun, so if you can get outdoors more that will help the most. You can also take an oral supplement.

Reduce stress. Stress can cause many problems in the body mainly due to the overproduction of the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is the hormone that tells your body you’re in an emergency situation.

Unfortunately when this hormone is around in levels that are too high for a long period of time it can cause you to have a decrease in testosterone. It can also cause problems with inflammation and weight gain in the body.

Learning to manage stress can help you to raise testosterone levels. It will also help you to get better sleep and reduce excess belly fat – this also will help you to increase testosterone levels.

Take male enhancement supplements. There are several male enhancement supplements on the market. These are generally formulated with herbs designed to raise testosterone levels.

These are often marketed as penis enlargement supplements or treatment for erectile dysfunction. They can help to increase your sex drive and improve your sexual satisfaction. Some may also help with fertility.

Say goodbye to sugar. Refined sugar actually causes a decrease in testosterone after it’s consumed. This is because sugar causes your insulin to spike. Try to avoid foods that contain added sugar such as soda, candy, breads, and pastas.

If you’re craving something sweet, look for natural sources of sweetness such as fruit to help quench your cravings. Make a plan to reduce how much sugar you eat a little at a time if you feel that you’re a sugar addict.

Don’t forget to look at added corn syrup and fructose in processed foods. These are simply forms of refined sugar that cause the same problems even though they sound like they come from more natural sources.

The best sweeteners to try include honey, agave, stevia, and maple syrup. These are sweeteners that aren’t refined in the same way as sugar. They can help you feel the satisfaction of sweets without the harmful effects. These still need to be consumed in moderation.

Dating, Getting Your Ex Back, Relationships, Sex

How to Please a Woman in the Bedroom

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How to Please a Woman in the Bedroom

Many men take time to research ways they can meet women. They study pickup routines and hot dating spots. But meeting a woman and pleasing her in the bedroom are two separate issues, and you don’t want to sabotage your pick up efforts with a bad sexual encounter.

Never Underestimate the Seductiveness of a Kiss

Whether this is a woman you just met or someone you’ve been dating for awhile, you have to perfect the art of a kiss – and use it frequently. There’s nothing that turns a woman off more than a guy who simply rips off her clothes and tries to have sex with her without any foreplay.

Closed-mouth kisses aren’t the kind of arousing make-out session she’s wanting, though. Women want the kisses you provide to linger on for what seems like forever – even while your hands are working elsewhere.

She wants you to French kiss her – sometimes softly and sometimes aggressively. But you have to know how to work your tongue – and make sure you’re not simply thrusting it inside of her mouth, choking her.

If you notice she’s pulling away, then you might need to work on your kisses. It might be your style or it could be an issue like halitosis. Women will notice hygiene in a man – including his brushing habits.

Kisses aren’t just for her mouth, either. You need to learn how to kiss all of her erogenous zones, including:

* Her neck
* Her breasts
* Her stomach
* Her thighs

Many women get turned on by the all-over body kisses. It can be a major turn off if a man hops into bed and instantly takes her panties down for sex. She won’t likely climax this way – and you won’t be getting a second chance to prove you know what you’re doing.

Learn how to nibble as you kiss. Nibble her earlobes, her breasts (softly), and even gently bite her bottom lip – no pain, just softness. Your hands should be either framing her face or exploring her body.

Don’t resort to a teenage boy’s methods of grabbing and yanking on body parts. Grown women want to feel your strength as a man, but know that you understand that breasts can be sensitive. A titillating stroke goes farther than a pinch and a pull.

Use the Right Kind of Sex Talk

Women love to hear you whisper sexual and romantic things in their ear during lovemaking. What they don’t like is for you to try to make your session a porn movie in the first 2 seconds you land in bed.

Especially if she doesn’t know you very well, you watch for signs of what he boundaries are on that. Some men make the mistake of not watching what they say, so they simply get repetitive – saying, “you’re so sexy” over and over again.

Sure, a woman likes to hear that she’s sexy – but don’t keep mumbling it. And don’t blurt out, “I love you” if this is a woman you just met tonight. She won’t be impressed – she’ll think you’re creepy.

Some guys start using phrases like, “Who’s your daddy, little girl?” which can also make her feel unnerved. You have to get to know a woman’s style of sex talk before you engage her in it.

Learn the difference between soft core talk and hard core talk. Start with soft and if she responds, you might move it up to the next level and see how she reacts then.

Things to start out with include:

* Telling her how beautiful a particular body part is (her breasts, her stomach)
* Telling her she makes you extremely aroused
* Telling her how good she is at whatever foreplay she’s engaging in with you

Level up by getting more explicit in what you want her to do and what words you use. Understand that while you might have heard words like, “cunt,” “whore,” or “bitch” in porn videos, many women won’t like that because they’ll feel it’s disrespectful. Then again, some women might respond favorably to that.

It’s important that you know what her language is. Pick up on clues and see how she responds to what you say and what words and phrases she uses, too. You can mirror her sex talk so that you’re saying exactly what she wants to hear.

Keep in mind that some women aren’t into talking much at all. They’re more into quick, heavy breathing, moaning and other noises. Don’t try to force your woman to talk dirty to you in bed if she’s not comfortable. Over time, she might loosen up and attempt to meet your needs in that department.

Learn How to Please Her Orally

Oral sex is very important to a woman. It’s the stimulation she needs to orgasm with you during sexual intercourse. Some women don’t need it, but there are very few who would complain about getting it.

Some men are very selfish in this department. They expect a woman to go down on them and give them head, but won’t return the favor. That’s not the way to gain a reputation as being good in bed.

If you’re more than willing to go down on a woman, but don’t know if you’re doing it right or wrong, there are some tips that can help you get the job done to the best of your abilities.

First, don’t be the energizer bunny. Some guys go about it like they’re in a race. You should help her build up momentum. If you’re using your tongue on the exact same spot, extremely fast from the very first second, it’s not going to help her get aroused.

Women like it when you start out slow and build up into a frenzy with them. Explore her vagina with your tongue – and stop to kiss her mons pubis – that area of skin covering the pubic bone – or kiss her thighs. You want to make her ache for you to return your tongue to her clitoris.

Some men make the mistake of getting too rough down there. While soft, gentle nibbling is one thing, biting and pulling is another. Don’t get too rough (unless she’s into that sort of thing).

Always please your woman before you ask or imply that she should please you. No woman wants her man to cum before she does, because in many instances, that means the night of sex is over and she’s left unsatisfied.

If you can bring her to orgasm through oral and manual stimulation before you have sex, then it should be easier for her to orgasm while you’re having intercourse.

You might also want to use sex toys in the bedroom if this is someone you feel comfortable doing that with. Vibrators used to stimulate the clitoris can be used intermittently with oral stimulation to bring her to a higher climax.

Using sex toys doesn’t mean you’re any less of a man in the sack – in fact, it means you know how to please your woman by giving her exactly what she wants.

Don’t Be Afraid to Get Aggressive

Some men worry about being overbearing in the bedroom. They actually become too tame in bed, and women today might not like the tame types. They like a take-charge kind of man – but that doesn’t mean you have to get scary.

Some women like it when a man grabs her by the wrists, turns her around and presses her down over the couch, pushes her legs apart and has sex with her from behind. Not every encounter needs to be a soft, romantic lovemaking session.

If this is a woman who you’ve been dating for awhile, you can switch things up and use a slight show of force. That never means harming a woman or doing something against her will. If she responds negatively, back off!

But don’t be scared to use rose petals and romantic music and candlelight one day and catch her off guard for a quickie in the laundry room the next. This is what keeps things hot in your relationship!

And if you’re strong physically, use that mass to get her turned on. Pick her up and have sex with her against the wall while holding her up. That kind of strength is very sexy to a woman.

Fulfill Her Sexual Fantasies

Contrary to popular belief, men aren’t the only ones who have sexual fantasies. Women (even those who don’t read romance novels) have them, too. And if she’s willing to put on a Snow White lingerie outfit for you, you’d better be willing to dress up like Thor for her, too.

For women, sometimes there’s role playing involved, and sometimes not. Don’t pressure her to tell you her sexual fantasy, but you can bring up the conversation and share yours with her and ask if she has any that you could fulfill.

Maybe she’d love to dominate you for a night. She may or may not be at the level where she wants to engage in dominatrix behavior, but she might want to be in control without you having much of a say for a night.

Maybe she’s into one of the usual men’s fantasies – wearing a schoolgirl outfit and getting spanked by you. Find out, then buy her the outfit and have it waiting for her one night.

Some women take it to a whole new level of fantasies, bringing in another man or woman as a third participant or becoming a voyeur of the sex between her and her partner. It’s never a good idea to assume this is something she’d want – ask first, because most women would say no, but some wouldn’t!

Stimulate Her Clitoris While Penetrating Her

Part of the reason women roll their eyes when men harp about how big their dicks are is because size doesn’t matter. It’s all in how you use your penis that determines whether or not she’s going to get any pleasure out of it.

Of course size does help if you’re trying to achieve the exclusive G-spot orgasm. That requires deeper penetration, and doggie style is a good position to help with that. But many women have never experienced that, so most men need to concentrate on clitoral stimulation before anything else.

A woman’s clitoris isn’t right at the spot where her vaginal opening is, so your penis isn’t rubbing up against it unless you work hard to get in a position where it’s being stimulated directly.

Some men just assume that if they have a big penis, she’ll be satisfied. It has nothing to do with that. You want to make sure her clitoris is being directly stimulated during intercourse – either through the touch of your penis or your fingers.

If you’re approaching her from behind or doggie-style, for example, then you’ll need to reach around to her front and rub her clitoris with your fingers while you penetrate her.

If you’re doing it missionary style, it will help if her legs are positioned in an almost closed manner with your weight shifted upwards so that your penis makes contact with her clitoris as you enter her and bring it out.

When a woman has sex with you where she’s on top and in charge of her movements, it is easier for her to rub her clitoris against your skin and ensure she’s building to a climax.

Pleasing a woman in bed consists of three things. First, make sure you pick up on clues from her – looks, pulling away, or seeming to get into something vigorously.

Second, you want to be willing to ask and get feedback about what she likes. Women today aren’t shy about telling you, and if you don’t take it personally, you’ll enjoy getting better with her tips.

And third, keep the focus on her until she puts the focus on you and you’ll become a better lover in an instant. Women are more sexually liberated now – they’re familiar with sex toys, positions, fantasies and role playing. They’re not afraid to be wild in the bedroom, so open her up to a world of possibilities and she’ll thank you for it!