YOUR MARITAL HEALTH/GETTING FIXED UP SEXUALLY: THE CYCLE SIG
Couples fall into patterns, obligatory daily cycles that can destroy intimacy by boring it away. This opportunity requires a time-schedule change. Couples are asked to’ ‘find an hour for intimacy.” My interviews indicate that the day-to-day requirements of living in our society either erode opportunities for intimacy or numb us to them. I ask the couples to schedule intimacy as follows:
1. You must find one more hour, either by getting up earlier or going to bed later, or taking more time from work, or from wherever and however you can steal an extra hour.
2. Circle days on the calendar that will be scheduled sexual-intimacy days, These times don’t mean intercourse necessarily. On these days, except for illness, nothing will prevent holding, touching, and intimacy. It may not be at night, but it will take place.
3. Let the kids know it. The calendar does not just have to be by the bed, it can be on the refrigerator. You come to behave as you feel, so behave intimately. If you don’t schedule it, it will not happen over time.
4. Always, but always, rise together and go to bed together. Eat breakfast together if possible. There is no such thing as too much intimacy. Ignoring the development of a mutual cyclicity will eventually lead to marital lack of coordination, a relationship clumsiness that ends in separation either in fact or by circumstance. This rising and going to bed at the same time was one of the most difficult of tasks for the couples, but one of the most important. It is not necessary for a good marriage, but it is basic to a super marriage.
5. Spontaneity will take care of itself.Just because you schedule intimacy does not mean that extras can’t happen. It is not unromantic to schedule intimacy. Loving and sexuality is as volitional as it is emotional. Getting on a sex cycle together will help you to find your own sexual Tao.
“What a thing this is,” stated one husband. “I was used to sleeping in an extra hour. Now I get up two hours before I have to just to have breakfast with her. But you know, it has added one whole day a week to our marriage. We have gotten kind of arrogant about it and we like to tell our friends. They can’t believe it.”
His wife added, “He’s right. We don’t talk much. We mumble and stagger around. He reads the paper, I get ready for work, and we both yell at the kids. Actually, we take turns yelling at the kids. But now there is that early time for just us to say hello.”
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