Get past Cheap and Cheesy this Valentines Day

Valentine’s Day is 1615 years old. Beyond the lame cheesy gestures  Valentines Day offers the chance to acknowledge and affirm the importance of ones relationship. As a seeker of meaning and a maker of ritual, I see beyond the lame cheap sparkly stuff to Valentines Day being a day to foster an even stronger bond in my marriage.

Yeah, I get Dan some of his fave Lindt chocolates. How could I not? But we like to spend time on Feb 14th to talk about how we’re doing in our quest to towards cultivating deeper meaning and emotional intimacy. We have lots of rituals in our couple life… from the hilariously mundane to those that are much more spiritual. Here are some areas that you can explore for your own love relationship:

1. Couple time – What activities do you enjoy doing together? Sex, cooking/eating, sports, film etc.
2. Daily routines and tasks – How do the two of you like to get up in the morning, come home, go to bed? These are your daily rituals.
3. Communication rituals – Do you have satisfying means of sharing your feelings and experiences, supporting each other, and working through inevitable anger and frustration?
4. Symbolic rituals – Big range here, from the nicknames you have for each other to the ways you enjoy marking birthdays and holidays.
5. Intimacy rituals– What are the ways you connect emotionally and physically?
6. Spiritual connection – Do you find being in nature together spiritual? Attend faith-based events? How do you connect with one another’s spiritual self?

This Valentines Day, by all means get sappy! But also think about making it a day to build an even deeper and more meaningful relationship. This works if you are a fledgling couple, an engaged couple, or old married farts. (hehe I can say that!)  Make time to be together and share what is important to YOU. Doesn’t matter what society tells you should be important, or what your friends etc say. It’s about what works for the two of you. Here’s an example:

For a long time, Dan and I felt a tinge of shame that we like to sit on the couch and eat our dinner. And that we eat different things! Cultural norm is that the ‘right’ thing is to eat a shared meal at the table. But you know what? That just doesn’t work for us most nights. We cook together once or twice a week, sometimes sitting at the table. But our bodies crave and need different kinds of food. So we do it our way now, and have made our own ritual out of the evening meal(s).

You will create your own meaningful rituals by sharing with each other what is important to you. Make time to sit down with your partner to explore what rituals you currently enjoy and share in your relationship and what new rituals you can create together. Listen to each other’s needs and weave those needs into the ritual to make it fulfilling. Being specific helps:

•  How do you envision the ritual?
• How will you actually do it?
• When will you do it?

Valentine’s Day is just one day in a year. But you can use it as a catalyst to cultivate a meaningful connection all year long by practicing your very own couple rituals on a regular basis. Reading the paper on Saturday mornings together… making morning coffee for your partner… 10-second welcome home kisses… date nights… it’s the little things that help us develop closeness and create shared meaning. Make Valentine’s Day a year-long event!

Vancouver and Whistler’s most Modern Celebrant, Michele Davidson works with newly engaged couples to create transformational and totally custom wedding ceremony experiences. She helps couples expand their vision of their ceremony AND their engagement. It’s a one-in-a-lifetime folks… make it sing!!! Email Michele at Michele@moderncelebrant.ca for Vancouver + Whistler wedding ceremonies.  She also travels internationally for ceremonies! Bali anyone?

You just got Engaged! Relish the Simple Pleasures!

A big part of a respectful loving engagement and marriage is enjoying simple lovely moments together. There are ways to nurture romance that require little time or money. In fact, it is most often the small gestures that we see as the true treasures in life, not the big and grand.  A little ingenuity can go a long way to keeping your love alive and well.

For instance, Dan and I do “$10 dates” where one person has to figure out how to take the other on a cool date and spend just $10. We remember some of these dates more than fancy dinners out!  Don’t let tight schedules keep you from being romantic. Get in the habit of making time NOW or you will begin to take each other for granted.

HERE’S YOUR MISSION -

Make a list of ideas of what you could do for your partner. Don’t edit yourself. Use your creativity! Write down as many as you can. Make a goal of filling one entire page with ideas big and small, free, inexpensive and once-in-a-while treats.

Stuck for ideas? Here are some to get you started.

• Create a CD with music your partner likes.
• When your partner comes home from work make them a cup of tea or pour them a glass of wine while you make dinner.
• Write and hide simple love notes.
• Bring flowers for absolutely no reason and put them on your partner’s bedside table.
• Pour your partner a bubble bath complete with candles and maybe champagne.
• Read poetry or erotica aloud to each other. (Nice!!!)

Vancouver and Whistler’s Modern Celebrant Michele Davidson works with newly engaged couples to create transformational and totally custom wedding ceremonies. She helps couples expand their vision of their ceremony AND their engagement.  It’s a one-in-a-lifetime… make it sing!!!   Email Michele at Michele@moderncelebrant.ca for Whistler wedding ceremonies and Vancouver wedding ceremonies.  She also travels internationally for weddings!  Bali anyone?

You just got ENGAGED! How to use a Conflict Journal

What the heck is a CONFLICT JOURNAL + WHY?

When a conflict or problem doesn’t get resolved in the way one or both of you wished for, write about it in your couple Conflict Journal. Over time you will see patterns and find you are having the same conflict many times over. NOW is the perfect time to begin learning from your conflicts by using a Conflict Journal.  FIRST TASK:  Get out there and buy a journal. Choose one with a cover that inspires you or buy a plain one and collage the cover. This will be your ‘Conflict Journal’. You may decide you want to call it something else, such as ‘Our Hard Times’ or ‘Life Lessons’.

NOW:  Around an issue of conflict, ask yourselves these questions. Each of you can write your own answer.

•  What could I have done differently?
• What would have worked better? (Remember that you can only change one person – yourself. Focus only on what YOU could have done differently.)
• What did I learn from this conflict? (Again, this is not about what you think your partner should have figured out.)

You may still be pissed off at your beloved after writing about it. That’s okay. The goal is to try to look deeper to see what this conflict has stirred up in you and to gain insight into what its roots might be. Don’t just shove things aside and tell yourself to think positive. Take time on your own and together to reflect on what really bugged you about that conflict. Usually there is a connection to past hurts or fears. Share these with each other in the way you learned about yesterday: use a timer, let each other speak uninterrupted, and really listen deeply with a curious mind.

If you liked this tip, stay tuned every day this week when Wedding Celebrant Michele Davidson will share tips to help you thrive during your engagement and learn tools to create an emotionally fulfilling marriage.

You just got ENGAGED! Couple ‘loveshops’ a deux.

Yup. One of the first things you should do when you get engaged is to — Book your own Engagement Loveshop.  No, I don’t mean go to a love-shop, though that could be spicy.  I mean ‘Loveshop’ as in ‘Workshop’. But Loveshop sound much more fun.

Here’s what you do to create your own Loveshop / Workshop just for the two of you.

Your first task is to agree to spend one day together once a month doing working on your relationship and preparing for your marriage. It should be a full day, e.g. beginning at 10 am and finishing at 6 pm. Yes, you can take a break for lunch. And you can wear your pajamas, for all I care! You need to decide on the day. YOU NEED TO BOOK IT!

Here’s the thing: No phones, no TV, no texting, no distractions. You can’t bail because you were up too late the night before. In case you’re wondering, there is a good reason for creating a firm structure like this. Being disciplined about it shows that you’re willing to make time for important things together. It also demonstrates that you will step up to the plate when the going gets tough (and believe me it will). Dedicating this time means you matter to each other.

If your engagement is a YEAR long, awesome! You will have 12 days to explore, discover, and plan for marriage. Think about how much time and research goes into planning a month long trip. Since marriage will be a life long journey, twelve days of planning sounds like a good start to me!  If you are getting married in 4 months, you might want to book 2 days a month for the next four months.  SOONER… book a weekend – STAT! (And eek, you might actually want to get going on planning that wedding!)

Topic for your First Workshop – Assumptions & Expectations

We all have expectations that we’ve been carrying around since childhood about what married couples do and do not do. What a Wife does and doesn’t…How a Husband should and should not behave. If you don’t start talking about these things now, when they happen both of you will be surprised! This is a fantastic topic for your first Engagement Workshop, which you booked into your calendar yesterday. Right?

Ready set go: Separately, write down a list of your assumptions around ‘should and should not’ behaviours. Brainstorm. Some will be serious, e.g. boyfriends can go to a strip club but Husbands shouldn’t. Others will be fun or even humorous, e.g. a Wife should never call her Husband ‘Daddy’. Who knows?  Sit down and read them to each other. Be forewarned, some may be difficult or you may disagree. Keep your curious mind and seek to understand.

You have the rest of the day to talk them through. Use a 2-minute timer for the difficult ones. The person who is explaining can talk uninterrupted while the timer is running. The other person must listen until they are done before asking questions. If conversations get heated, use that timer… over and over!

You can also talk about things like:

• What are your expectations of each other when one of you is sick? What kind of care/babying/fussing/food?
• What are assumptions around family and couple rituals around significant holidays? Christmas, Hanukah, Diwali, etc.

If you liked this tip, stay tuned this week when Modern Celebrant’s Michele Davidson will share tips to help you thrive during your engagement and learn tools to create an emotionally fulfilling marriage.

*** Don’t forget to SHARE THE LOVE by tweeting, liking, loving and forwarding this post!!!

You just got Engaged! Now what?

“Ready set go!” Sometimes I imagine that newly engaged couples hear a voice in their heads telling them to get their running shoes on for a race to book a venue, photographers, officiant, caterer, planner… well, you know the drill.  These things are important of course, but most important is YOU. The excitement, romance, and emotional euphoria you feel in the early days of your engagement are feelings that are almost impossible to recapture once you get going on planning the logistics of your wedding. It’s a rare and special time, never to be repeated (one hopes) during the course of your life.

Want to hear my #1 advice to newly-engaged couples?  Here it is — take a couple of weeks to just enjoy BEING engaged!!!

Give yourselves a few weeks and then begin the process of planning. Remember that the original intent of engagement was to focus on getting to know each other at a deeper level and building the foundation for a lasting relationship. Please don’t make the mistake of reducing your engagement into merely a planning and logistics management exercise.

I love working with my couples to expand the emotional aspect of the months prior to their wedding. ( check out this FAB article. )

Over the next week I’ll be sharing a Daily reflection with ‘homework’ for couples on the path to marriage. We’ll focus on some FUN & JUICY ENGAGEMENT EXERCISES over the next few days. Don’t forget to tune in and please share with your own networks so we can elevate the engagement experience of as many couples as possible. That’s what friends do!

Happy New Year and Happy Engagement!

Michele Davidson, Master Celebrant