Six Tips for A New Intimate Relationship
Here are six tips to start rebuilding your intimate relationship:- Make Time to Talk: Set a time and a place (not in bed) where you can talk openly, and share your concerns and desires. Listen carefully, without formulating a response before your loved one has finished speaking. Reflect what your partner has said, using your own words to make sure you understood what he meant. Set some goals to help you reconnect to each other.
- Restrain Your Inner Geek: Email is not a good way to discuss your intimate issues. But if talking is difficult, try writing a letter, using nonjudgmental language to express your concerns and desires.
- Stay Open-Minded: Withhold your judgement about each other’s performance and don’t make demands about how attempts at intimacy work out. You may prefer to make requests of your partner, so as not to pressure them into pre-treatment sexual perfection. Both of you have changed, so adjust your expectations and look for new ways to surprise each other.
- Set The Stage: Agree on a room that will be just for the two of you. Enforce your time of privacy for intimacy. Turn off your phones, pagers, televisions, and hire a babysitter if necessary. Dim the lights, put on romantic music, or do whatever helps both of you feel attractive and confident.
- Get Reacquainted: Start slowly -- kiss, hug, and cuddle. Express requests instead of making demands, using verbal or non-verbal communication. Try new ways to touch each other, remembering how you both have changed.
Sources: National Cancer Institute. Cancer Topics. Facing Forward: Life After Cancer Treatment (PDF document) Published: September 2006. National Cancer Institute. Facing Forward: When Someone You Love Has Completed Cancer Treatment. Intimacy. Updated: 11/30/2005.
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