EP 434: How to Create More Romance in Your Relationship with Joey

This is episode number 4 34, how to Create More Romance in Your Relationship with Joey. Welcome to Overwritten and on with it. I’m your host Christine Hassler, and for over a decade I’ve been a life coach, speaker and author. Each week you’ll hear me work directly with a caller as I coach them through a goal they wanna accomplish or an obstacle they may be facing.

I’ll provide a blend of practical and spiritual advice, as well as tangible actions you can apply to your own life. Now let’s get on with the episode. Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I hope you enjoyed my New Year’s ritual, part one and part two. Part one was all about releasing the past year and part two was about stepping into this new year.

It’s not too late to go back and do it if you haven’t yet. I have many people that message me and say it’s just been such a great process for them and they look forward to it every year and that it really supportive and really works. So if you haven’t gone through the ritual, definitely go back and check out those episodes. So today,

the title, how to Be More Romantic in Your Relationship. Well, this isn’t about suggestions for romantic evenings. It really is more about guess what? Doing your own work and not expecting your partner to bring all the romance to you. One of the most romantic things we can do in relationship is fully accept our partner for who they are and not expect them to be any different and at the same time express our needs and teach them how to treat us through our own actions.

We’ll dive into this more with Joey. Before we dive into more, I wanna speak to all of you who have the intention to get coached this year by an amazing coach or who have some goals or intentions on your list for 2024. And really maybe question how you’re gonna get there or feel like, wow, I could, I could really use some coaching on this.

Well, as you may have heard me talk about Elements and Coaching Institute is the coaching certification program that I co-founded and run. And as part of Elementum, we have a program called CIT, which is our coach in training program. And this is where we match our coaches in training that are supervised by myself and our staff with clients just like you at a very affordable price.

It’s six sessions. You are personally matched with your coach. It’s not a random process. It’s highly curated and you get so much positive feedback from it. The Elementum trained coaches, yes, they’re in training, but they’ve, most of them have been coaches before they even got into Elementum. And they’ve been in this program since September and they have done some incredible works.

They are ready, they are excited, and they are looking forward to coaching you. So if you want to apply for this, go to Elementum Coaching Institute slash ci. That link will be in the show notes. The application is there. You’ll get personally matched with someone. It’s a six month coaching package. It’s a very affordable price and we love supporting people in this way.

So check that out. Elementum coaching institute.com/ci. All right, as you’re listening to this coaching call with Joey, consider are you someone that wants more romance and passion in your relationship? Do you want more emotional intimacy in your relationship? Do you have abandonment wounds which have made you more avoidant in relationship? And finally, are you willing to actually accept your partner for who they are and see that as the most romantic thing you could ever do.

So keep those questions in mind as you listen to my coaching call with Joey. Joey, welcome to the show. How can I help? Hey Christine. So what’s on my heart tonight is gaining some clarity on how to create more space for emotional availability and intimacy in my marriage. Okay. Can you be more specific? Yes. So my husband Craig and I have really come full circle.

We’ve done a lot of conscious healing work these last two years. I very much have been healing and looking into my own abandonment wound from childhood and some of the unconscious codependent ways that we’ve found in our relationship to support that abandonment wound from my childhood and of course his own wounds as well, but mostly mine. ’cause they’ve really stirred things up and with all this healing and bringing stuff to the surface over the last two years we’ve really changed a lot in our lives.

So we’ve left our corporate jobs behind. I’m moving into coaching full-time and he’s very much on a journey of finding out what’s next for him in life. And one of the things that I find I still, well now that I’ve done so much healing, I feel that I have more capacity to really show up for him differently and be available to him in new ways that I wasn’t able to be there for him before.

And I wanna know how to create more space for that because my complaint is he’s not emotionally available and connecting with me. But I don’t know if that’s really the truth. Perhaps it’s more that I’m not comfortable with my own emotional availability and intimacy to a point that I can really be that and bring that to our relationship. Okay, awesome. And an amazing awareness in all of this.

So I’m gonna ask a basic question and I want you to answer this in the least evolved, aware place. I just want you to be super direct, basic with me. Okay. What do you want from him that you’re not getting Romance, I think. And what does romance mean? Passion. Okay. And what does romance and passion mean and look like to you?

Mm. The first things that come to my mind, strangely enough are something like, like dancing together. Being more sensual with one another. And was he romantic and sensual with you? In the beginning, Partly yes. But if I look back on our relationship, he’s not really a very romantic guy. I think there was some wooing at the beginning and really like charming me.

But that could have also just been, from my perception coming across as more romantic than what I perceive him to be today. Right. And how long have you been together? 10 years. 10 years. It’s been a while. Yeah, it’s been a while. And most men aren’t really that romantic the way most women would like them to be. Yeah.

Unless they’re, you know, we can look at love bombing and narcissists can be very romantic and very charming in certain ways, but especially culturally, men aren’t really conditioned that way. They’re conditioned to protect, provide, go out and and like do something in the world and maybe be romantic when they’re wanting to get the woman. But not so much within the relationship.

And I’m not making a blanket statement against all men. I’m sure there are many men out there, I know many men out there who are very romantic. I can think of too, just off the top of my head. But often that archetype of man isn’t as driven in other aspects of life. Again, this is a huge generalization, but I think we have to temper expectations and not project what we would want onto somebody else.

And we’ll unpack that a little bit more. I just wanna ask you a couple more questions. Sure. What is your husband passionate about in his life? Hmm. Great question. So he loves to play golf. He is a avid golfer. He is very passionate about wildlife. That’s something we really share. Health and fitness is incredibly important to him.

Those are like of his top values in life. And with that comes food, I guess. Making food, preparing food planning around food, everything to do with nourishing his body in a healthy optimizing type way. Alright. I’ll give you an example from my own marriage. So I’d love this for my husband too. I think every woman would, and he was like that more in the beginning,

but it’s just not how my husband’s exactly wired. But health and fitness is a big thing for him. So last week I said, Hey, let’s go to an F 45 class together. And we, they put you in pairs, we got to work out together. And that was romantic. That led to passion, that led to intimacy, that led to deciding we were gonna spend the whole day together.

And it was great because I wasn’t expecting him to be romantic through, I don’t know, a candle at dinner and writing me poetry or whatever it may be. But I like found a way to connect to him through something we both enjoy and was really present and made that really fun. I share that with you because I think part of what is gonna help you in this situation is knowing that when we have a fear of abandonment,

the bar we set for someone is even higher in any aspect because there’s a part of us that’s always waiting to be hurt. When we set the bar that high, they can never achieve it. And there’s a part of us that’s like, oh, well I won’t be abandoned because I’m ever actually gonna get what I want from this person. Hmm. That makes so much sense.

That really, really resonates for me. Yeah. Yeah. What part of it resonates for you, in your own words? The setting the boss so high that I have a reason to push him away. Right, right. Yeah. So you’ve, you’ve gotta work with what is, and this is some of the best marriage advice I could give, is that when we accept our person,

partner for who they are and don’t expect them to be a fantasy version, more like an ex more like parts of ourselves that we aspire to be but aren’t stepping into when we don’t project anything on them and just work with what is, that’s actually intimacy Because we’re interesting, Truly accepting. Like I would say that the biggest thing that leads to passion and romance and intimacy and relationship is accepting your partner for who they are.

Because then we aren’t projecting, projecting just leads to distance. It just creates walls between us and it just reinforces all of our wounds. So, So for you, if you are wanting more romance and passion one, you can create that which is gonna be a, a stretch for you. It’s gonna be a little bit of edging for you because with the fear of abandonment comes the fear of rejection.

And so putting yourself out there in any way may bring a little like, ooh, you know, how is this gonna go? But then taking the responsibility and getting excited about creating that in your marriage in a way that you think he’s gonna say yes to, or that that actually is going to excite him as well, you’re gonna get much better results.

So do you golf? No, no. I, I walk along, I, I go along for the great, for the nature and the walking. Beautiful. And the exercise of it. Yeah. Then beautiful. Next time you go golfing, make sure you guys go to lunch, just the two of you. And like Steph and I went to dinner the other night and I said,

you know, I’d really like to come up with our family values. We have our personal values, but we haven’t come up with our family values. Let’s talk about it. And I come with ideas of, of things to talk about so we’re not just talking about Athena and work and if we wanna move and you know, just the normal kind of everyday stuff that couples can get into talking about.

So come with some ideas of what you wanna talk about, not about like how are we gonna have more intimacy, but just something that excites both of you to talk about, to dream about and acknowledge the heck out of him whenever he does anything remotely sensual, remotely intimate. Like if he walks by and I don’t know, touches your arm or brushes your shoulder or pulls your hair back off your neck,

just be like, oh, that felt so good. I love that. Like, really nourish and encourage the little bits. What were you gonna say? Yeah. That, that so resonates and, and just having this conversation is allowing me actually to see that he does do that. He, he really does all the time mention my body or brush up against me,

even just in the everyday life, like the normal small moments. But I think, yeah, I think it’s so easy to actually overlook that by being married to someone or being with someone for so long they become the normal, right. So Yeah. Right. They become the normal. And also when we get into, you know, you’re in Elementum,

you’re going into coaching work, we have super intimate conversations when we’re in coach training and we’re in personal development and we’re in those containers and expecting that level of depth with our day-to-day partner, like a lot of the time is like expecting to be in a personal development course together. So Yes. Yeah. So really like allowing room for just the everyday allowing room for the lightness.

So we’re allowing room for the more shallow end of the pool and then when the depth needs to be there, it can be there. So one of the things that Terry reels talks about in his five rules for having a great relationship is that one of the noss is unbridled self-expression. And what he means by that is like your, your romantic partner probably shouldn’t be the person that you explore the depths of your soul with.

Even though that sounds super romantic and amazing and sacred uniony, it’s better with a therapist or a coach, you know, every thought, every feeling, every depth of emotion maybe shouldn’t be in our marriage. Yes. Having deep conversation, letting someone know us very intimately, letting someone see our most shameful, deepest, darkest places, that’s definitely part of conscious relationship and sacred union.

But we also need to make sure we have space outside of relationship to get that need filled so that the lines of intimacy don’t get blurred and push us more into that like, personal development, exploring every nook and cranny, unbridled self-expression place of us. Does that make sense? Ah, so much Christine. And just having you say, this is such a permission slip because I think it’s so easy,

you know, as a new coach to project also onto our mentors and especially mentors that are doing this in partnership, that they are having that, that detailed relationship all the time with all the, the deep conversations and talking about every single feeling when you’ve just confirmed to me that it, that’s, that’s not necessarily where one one is hoping to get. So yeah,

thank you for your honesty and transparency on that. That really, yeah. That just brings so much relief to my heart. ’cause in some way, shape or form, I’ve, I’ve really thought that my relationship, there’s something really missing because I’m not having those very detailed conversations all the Time. Yeah. Believe me, you don’t wanna be having those detailed conversations all the time.

It can lead to a mesh and codependence. Yeah. And you know, I’ll, I’ll reiterate again ’cause I, I, I hear you hearing me, but I just wanna make sure that people listen hear me as well. Yes. I would say Steph is the person that knows me most intimately out of everyone in the world. I mean everything from seeing me give birth to my lowest moments,

to knowing my family, to knowing my childhood, to, you know, seeing me on stage and seeing me on my bathroom floor crying like he’s seen all versions of me that said, I make sure we both make sure we have our therapists outside the relationship and that we aren’t expecting this like deep conscious we’re intimate and like in it all the time because that’s just not sustainable.

So with yeah, this fear of abandonment, I wanna go back to that for a second. So one of the things that you’re learning, and you know this, I’m just gonna maybe say it in a different way or reiterate things that, you know, when we have that abandonment wound, we often end up with an insecure attachment. And so you’re learning how to do relationship,

you’re learning how to do it, and survival strategies are gonna come up. So one of the things that will help you just naturally have more intimacy in your relationship and more passion and more connection. Because one of the things that kills passion in a relationship is when either especially both partners are in survival strategies because it shuts down our heart, it puts us more in that reptilian part of our brain or nervous system isn’t regulated and it doesn’t lead to intimacy.

So a question I’d have for you is because of wounding and because there probably is some subconscious patterning and belief that relationship isn’t safe, what are your survival strategies? What are the things that you do you, you mentioned a little bit in the beginning, but I’d love to know more. What are the things you do that move you away from intimacy? Great,

great question. It’s definitely finding fold. So very much becoming very resentful and expectant of what he’s not doing in the relationship, which then in turn creates an opportunity for me to create conflict, fight and disconnect as you’ve mentioned. And in other words, push him away. A another survival strategy that I’ve recently come face to face with is a fantasy world.

So really escaping into a fantasy reality where I idolize another man outside of our relationship and form like a fantasy bond relationship with like a affair. And that has really taken a toll on me and my marriage over the last two years. ’cause that seem to have come to the surface. And I’ve really come full circle with that to realize that it’s, it’s a way that I escape.

It’s not real. It’s a way that I’ve kept myself safe in childhood. Exactly. And it’s a way yeah. That my mind creates this illusion and it’s not, it’s not reality. So yeah, those would be the two main ways. Yeah. And what does that, especially the survival strategy of fantasy and what does that give you? Oh, the highest highs.

It’s so and thrilling. It’s all the passion. It’s living life on such a high while that fantasy is alive in my mind, it getting last for for days and yeah. Until I then come out of it and crash and realize that, ooh, this is painful. What I’m, what I’m playing out here. When we don’t have consistent and reliable love and safety as a child,

we aren’t really getting the chemicals in our brain the way we need to. And because of trauma, the brain can also often look for more places where it can get dopamine because the nervous system is used to being dysregulated. It’s wanting that feel good feeling because there wasn’t, see if when there isn’t that consistency of love and safety and joy and all those things and security and childhood,

we have to look for those highs because the lows are so low. So wanting that dopamine hit is one of the ways your brain has tried to get what it needs, if that makes sense. Yeah. So what will be super useful for you moving forward is like how can you create a more sustainable place of contentment? Because oftentimes what someone who’s looking for the high is really wanting is just contentment.

And how much as a child would you have loved consistency of love and safety? Mm. So much. Right. You would’ve traded that for any high. Yeah. Yeah. So when you’re craving that high, I just want you to remind yourself of, oh actually what I really need is consistency and stability. And that’s what my husband provides. Oh yes.

And if you can, Yeah. And if you can lean into that being exciting, that’s great. And then in your sex life, if you wanna bring that element of fantasy in, that’s a great place to explore it. Like if you love that part of you and that’s part of your turn on, I’m not saying squash it, I’m more saying use it in a way that serves your marriage versus pulls you away from it.

Mm. I love that Bringing the fantasy into relationship. That’s real intimacy. Having the fantasy outside of relationship that’s avoidance. Yeah. And escaping and keeping that chaos alive in, in so many ways once I crash from it and come down from it. Right. But what you’ve just said really hit home as well is with bringing the fantasy into my relationship.

Because I think so far I’ve, I’ve done a lot of work in healing that, but I’ve almost shunned it like I need to get rid of it. No. Whereas what, what you’re bringing in now is the element that I can actually still utilize that and make that work in my marriage. Never thought of it like that before. Yeah. Yeah.

And the last thing that I’ll say is one of the things I have learned about men over the years is they’re so good with following directions. They really love being told what to do, not in a controlling way. They, especially in healthy relationship, men really love pleasing their lady. They do. Yeah. And I think we could say the same thing,

like, I love it when Steph tells me this is exactly what I would would like. And I’m like, I can do that. I love it when anyone tells me, like when someone tells me this is what I’d like for a gift or this is how I’d like you to help me, I’m like, amazing instructions are great. So, but in then especially often they don’t know and see things that the female brain can’t.

So if there’s something specific that you want, be really clear. Sometime within the next month, I would love to come home to can like candles and a bath. I don’t care what day it is, I would just love that here’s where the candles are, here’s the bath thing. That would really mean a lot to me and I’d love you to join me in it if you want or if you want it alone,

whatever you want, I want you to try again because of that fear of rejection that comes with abandonment. We often have trouble asking for what we want and then blame the other person for not being sensual or romantic or passionate enough. So I want you to take a little more responsibility for really being clear with what you want and specific, not vague, like saying,

I’d like you to do something romantic for me is very different than I’d like a candlelight bath with this music playing. Yeah, yeah. I hear you. I really hear you on that. The specificity and the detail is important and, and he always delivers when I do do that. But you’re right, I I don’t really, I’m, I’m quite vague when I ask because yeah,

I think that is, as you said, tied to my childhood and my fear of rejection as well. So yeah. And testing him like, are you really gonna do it? Are you just gonna be someone else that hurts me? Hmm. Yeah. Giving give, setting him up for success too and Exactly. Yeah. Really allowing him the opportunity to be connected and emotional,

emotionally available and intimate. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yep. Is this help? Has it been helpful? So helpful. You know, it’s, it’s these, these conversations are, are really the stepping stones in unfolding the, the bigger questions that we exactly have on our hearts. And yeah, I just really appreciate all the things you said and shared and your knowledge and wisdom around your own marriage.

So thank you so much Christine. Yeah. And as you know, marriage is, you know, it’s, it’s not a consistently fill in the blank all the time. It’s too humans. Do you have children? No, not yet. Okay. Well it’s she, well that adds a whole nother layer. It’s two humans bump a egg up against each other and all their inner child stuff and their attachment styles and their moods and their hormones and whether or not they slept and like all kinds of things.

It’s a lot. It’s a lot. So I think again, with the abandonment moon, sometimes we look at the marriage to replace what we didn’t get from a parent and a parent-child relationship is so much different than a lover lover relationship. And so when we project our unmet needs of our parents onto a partner, they will never live up to that because it’s a different kind of love.

Yeah, yeah. That makes so much sense. And that’s very much what we’ve been undoing over the last beautiful few years. Beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful. You are doing great work. I, I hope that you enjoy his homecoming and getting to see him again. And maybe there’s something that you can do to bring some romance in. Yeah, you’ve got my creative juices flowing now.

I’ve got amazing, I’ve got a lot of things on my mind to, to bring and spice up things and yeah, I’m excited. Thank you so much. So thank you to Joey for being so coachable and being open to maybe perhaps a different perspective. I could hear that Joey has done a lot of work on herself, has a lot of awareness and so really the opportunity here wasn’t to dig deeper into that,

to dig deeper into the why. I mean we touched on it a little bit in the sense that she may be subconsciously testing her partner as a way to protect herself. ’cause that’s something we do when we just expect to be abandoned. We then kind of push someone to the place where they might either abandon us or reject us in in some way. And so we talk about that subconscious programming.

But what I really wanted to support her with is reframing how she looks at romance, passion, and intimacy. And I think we all are programmed by movies and books and all the things we see about what romance and passion and relationship looks like. And especially we all can relate to that initial stage of relationship where it’s just so hot and heavy and you can’t get enough of each other.

And then it’s like, alright, but 10 years later, how do you sustain that? And you can’t, you cannot sustain the initial hormonal rush that happens when you first get together with someone. You just can’t. Now what you can do is grow the passion because you grow intimacy. You know, when you initially meet someone, even if it’s your soulmate fireworks go off,

the kind of intimacy you have with someone after you know them five years, 10 years, 20 years is much deeper. And unfortunately that cannot be so hot sometimes because you know someone a little too well. However, if you can reframe how you see that, it’s like, wow, I really get to know this person and see all of this person.

Like can that be a turn on? And also can you find the things that light them up romantic? I gave the example in the show of Steph and I going to a workout class. Now most people wouldn’t say an F 45 class is exactly romantic, but that’s such a zone that Steph loves and that he thrives in. And so that was romantic.

You know, my brain that grew up on romantic movies and rom-coms and all of that. Might not have picked that, might have picked something else, but I know my husband, I know what lights him up and that was intimacy. So connect to your partner in a way that lights them up instead of expecting them to romance you and seduce you in a way that you think you need or in a way that you’ve seen in the movies or in the way that your friend’s partner is doing it.

And let that build the passion because when you’re constantly on someone to be more romantic and more passionate, more emotionally available, do you think that’s a turn on for them? No. But when you really take interest in what they love, then that’s gonna light them up and you are gonna get that back as well. I promise. Inviting stuff to that workout and just being in his world with him.

And I like working out too, don’t get me wrong, that it came back to me. So I think sometimes we overthink what intimacy and relationship can look like. I also mentioned Terry Rio talking about the, you know, unbridled expression and every moment of every day with your partner does not need to be this deep, intimate, we need to like discuss everything kind of thing because then it becomes more like your interpersonal development program together and that’s not super hot either.

So I hope this gives you some rational perspective on especially long-term relationships about what romance and intimacy can really look like. And I’ll say it again, that the most romantic thing that we can do is fully accept our partner for who they are. Hold lots of room for them to grow, but not expect them to change. Sending you so much love and many blessings.

Until next time, thank you for listening to Over it and on with It. I love hearing from you. So please post your comments or questions at christinehassler.com/podcast. That’s also the place you can sign up to receive coaching from me in an upcoming episode. And if you love this show, please share it and subscribe in iTunes. You can find all my social media handles and sign up to be part of my community at christinehassler.com.

Until next week, here’s to getting over it and on with it. Much love and many blessings.