Nine Simple Practices That Strengthen Relationships (Episode #99)

There's something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and.

Laugh when you laugh, something's around you. Welcome to the human intimacy podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Michaelis, licensed clinical social worker. Marianne, as we get ready to close up the year, we're doing our 99th podcast. Next week will be our hundredth podcast. But today at Play on Words, you came up with nine things you can do to strengthen your relationship, improve your relationship, however you want to term that. Here's nine things for couples that they can do to improve the relationship. So, Marianne, do you want to get us started today? Number one, what's the top thing you can do?

I remember two years ago in February when you said, hey, I'm going to start this podcast. And I'm just looking back to that and saying, like, wow. And it started one episode at a time. And so today we are talking about nine things that we can do as we're celebrating our 99th episode. But nine things we can do. But they all start out with small and simple efforts. We started out with one podcast, and 98 podcasts later, here we are. And so just want to put that foundation out that nine things you can do to strengthen your relationship or have better relationships. These aren't going to all be automatic. We want to invite you, as you're listening to these, to just listen to what comes up in your mind, what you branch off of, and go, oh, here's something I could do for this. Listen to that and do that. Because it starts with something small, it starts with one thing. So to get to 99, you got to start with the first. That's where I want to make sure we're at least starting from today. Now we can go into your question. One of the things that I have learned from you throughout the years that we've been working together is everything always starts with safety. So we've always got to start. Number one, we're not relational if it's not safe. So if people can't approach me and feel safe with me, we're not going to have a very good relationship. We're going to close off, we're going to get offensive, we're going to back away. And so I think the first thing is to really start and notice how am I showing up? Am I showing up in an open way? Am I showing up in a way that people feel comfortable coming to me? Or am I maybe really sarcastic? Am I my walls up? So this is a self reflection, noticing what's going on for me emotionally Am I safe to be around? Am I creating safe spaces for others to engage with me?

What about for you and for me? As I often say, from a polyvagal perspective, our bodies, autonomic nervous system will not let us connect if we don't feel safe. So human intimacy in the context of high stress, anxiety, it rarely happens that way because we really don't allow people in when we're overwhelmed or we push people away when we're angry. So we need to create a place of safety. So for me, emotional safety first. And if you listen to all of our podcasts, that's really a critical thing to really begin with is I've got to create a safe environment. And I want to be clear here. It's. We're not just talking about physical, like, I'm. It's not necessarily physical abuse or physical conflict. Safety is an emotional feeling safe in each other's presence. It really is an environment where we create safety in so many ways. And I think when we hear the term safety, a lot of us initially go to not a physical threat. Am I creating an environment where people are comfortable in my presence?

I think that can be our tone. It can be our face. You walk in a room and you see somebody and you're like, ooh, they're kind of grumpy right now. I'm not going to approach them noticing what's coming out of my mouth, what, what is my demeanor looking like? Just doing some checks and noticing how am I showing up for other people? This is just a quick, am I approachable? Am I open? Is this a safe place for other people to put down their walls and be vulnerable?

All right, so number two is what we're going to refer to as blame versus ownership. And when I find that we look at our past podcasts, we had a whole podcast on ownership and taking ownership for our thoughts and our feelings and our behaviors. It's really natural for us to really find fault elsewhere. That's not necessarily hard to do because other people can let us down. It can be saying, I'm going to do something and not fully doing it, or I can be late, or a thousand things I can find to shift the responsibility elsewhere. But ultimately, we need to be owners of our own emotions and in relationships. This is really critical because if I shift the blame elsewhere, I'm not looking inside of myself to say, what am I bringing to this situation? And what can I do to communicate even more effectively? And that's ownership. I want to communicate effective. I want to be open and honest and Transparent. Am I owning that part, or am I again shifting that blame elsewhere? In our field, we use the term gaslighting a lot, and we've used it a lot in this podcast. If I'm shifting the blame elsewhere, I'm not taking personal responsibility. And so, number two, own what's yours, but don't own what's not yours.

Yeah. If we're looking through a betrayed lens, this can be really hard, because when we've been hurt by someone else, when we've been victimized by someone else's choices that we didn't agree to, we can already have our defenses up. We can already be looking at the world through a place of, you are an aggressor, you have hurt me, you're going to hurt me again. And so it can be really easy to blame. It can be really easy to interpret your behaviors as, like, attacking. And so our interpretation may be a little bit off. And this is. I know we've talked about this before, but I come back to this over and over again. John Gottman talks about a positive sentiment override or a negative sentiment override. And so looking and saying, am I looking through my lens of positivity? Am I looking through my lens of negativity? Because I'm giving the benefit of the doubt. But this blame shifting and this ownership, I think is really important. I might need to really own my own expectations. So oftentimes we feel frustration, we feel hurt or disappointed by other people in our lives, by their choices, by the things they say or they do, because they don't meet my expectations. I expected you to do this. I expected you to be home at this time or to call me at this time or to complete X, Y, Z. This thing that you said you did, these are my expectations. Even taking that time to step back and say, I need to own that was my expectation. That's part of the ownership as well. Owning my emotions, I might feel frustrated. How do I own my emotions in this moment versus blaming you or lashing out at you? So I think this is an important component as well.

Yeah, sometimes we don't communicate with ownership. So honest feelings, honest thoughts, they can overwhelm us and others. So, for example, when there's been conflict, fighting, sexual betrayal, we often hear statements like, yeah, I'm in the relationship, but I'm not sure I love my partner anymore. I don't feel those feelings that I used to feel. And I'm afraid to own that because they'll create conflict. And I think that type of honesty in some situations is really important because I find that sometimes people will stay that state of, we're not moving forward, we're not going backward. I don't know where I'm at right now. I don't know what I'm feeling right now. I'm scared. I'm afraid. I haven't felt this way before. My feelings of love, I'm not feeling them right now. And that concerns me because I've never felt this way. That type of transparency and honesty lets your partner know exactly where you're at.

If I can just add one last part to this, I think is really important and you touched on it. It's. I feel. So if you're saying, what's my takeaway from this topic? I would say if you can start to use more. I feel. I feel I'm experiencing. This is what's going on for me right now that does such a good job. Those I feel statements help us not to blame, blame or shame other people. I feel hurt right now. I feel frustrated. I feel disappointed. I feel sad. Yeah, I'm worried about this. This is keeping it all on me, not pushing it off onto you. And that's going to help us be more relational. Because if I'm saying you make me or you or anytime that I'm pushing out, it moves my power away and makes me more of a victim. So that emotional ownership is owning my own emotions.

All right, number three, you want to introduce it?

Yes. Number three, we're talking about consistent attunement. And anytime we say attunement, because I'm a musician, this the one that, like, I just automatically think I have to tune my cello every time I sit down to play it. I have a. An app on my phone that I hit the piano. Whatever I'm tuning to, I hit that, find their note, and then I tweak my instrument, I go up or down to make mine match the piano. So we're playing the exact same note in every string. I have to do that sometimes, depending on whether it's hot or cold or once my strings are warmed up, I have to consistently go back and go, oh, this is a little bit out of tune. Let me tweak a little bit more. It's gotta go higher, gotta go lower. So when we're talking about attunement, it's really about connecting. We've got all these mirror neurons in our body. The. The. Especially the front part of our body where our body is looking out and going like, are you safe? What's going on for you? Checking out our Environment, kind of when we walk in the room and go, ooh, there's a creepy feeling in here. This is our attunement. There are conscious things that we can do, but it's constantly occurring within our body. And so as we seek to attune, we're seeking to figure out where is this other person and how can I match them, how can I connect with where they're at and see into them. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts. Where do you go with with consistent attunement?

Dr. Skinner, we read each other all the time. In every relationship that matters the most to us. We read body language, eye contact, lack of eye contact, facial expressions, tone of voice. We read each other. That's what we're from birth on. That's what we're doing, is we're reading one another for emotional cues or feedback. And as we become attuned to each other, you know, when your spouse, children, loved ones are having a hard day, but the misattuned us gets so inner focused that we don't see the need, the concern, the fears, the worries. And dare I say, when we're in addiction or in trauma, we become misattuned to the people around us. In the context of I'm in so much pain, I don't attune as well as I could. Not that I'm not reading you or trying to read you, but I might be missing and interpreting why you're suffering or why you're having a hard time. And so for me, attunement is actually in a curiosity. Are you okay? Something feels off. Am I missing something or a simple request when you're having a hard time. It would help me if you could just give me a cue because I want to be there for you. I just don't know if I'm always reading what you're experiencing. So even there is an invitation of I want to understand. But again, we don't. How much do we really know the people around us? How much do we really attune to them? And so for me, this is a skill. It is a learned skill to learn to attune to other people. And when we are attuned, people feel felt in our presence.

Dr. Skinner, as you're talking about this, this reminds me of a story 20 plus years ago. I had one of my kids, was very young, and I remember I was on the phone. And for any of our listeners who are parents, especially moms, we have this finely tuned sense that we're kind of listening to what's going on and noticing what's happening with our kids. We hear their noises in the background and we know, are they okay? Are they not okay? I still remember I was on the phone or I was busy, and all of a sudden I went, where's my child? I can't hear my child. It's gotten very, very quiet. And when I went and found my child, they had dumped out the entire shampoo bottle on the room floor. And this is attunement. I wasn't tuning into my child. My child had a need that whatever that need was, they were exploring the shampoo bottle. But what a classic example of, I was misattuned to my daughter, but I noticed something's wrong, something's not quite right. I don't hear noises from my child. They're being very quiet. So tuning back in, I realized, oh, this is where my child is. And she was making some poor choices at that time.

So some point in 2026, I would like to create an attunement questionnaire to have our listeners listen to just maybe a self reflection of our personal attunement level to the people who are in our lives. A few years ago, I wrote what was called a parental attunement questionnaire, called the paq, and it's designed to help parents understand how attuned they are to their children and their needs. Anyway, just my point is I'd like to do that in our relationship. So maybe a project for me next year, Marianne, number four is that we take time together and it's not negotiable. These are simple things that I find many couples struggle with. When do we spend time together? And as I talk with couples who are having hard times, sometimes they don't want to spend time together, and sometimes one wants to and one doesn't because of the fighting and the conflict. And so non negotiable is, let's spend time together and let's work on being attuned and let's work on being consistent and being present with each other. And so for me, spending time together isn't necessarily the answer. It's how we spend that time together.

Marianne, I'm so glad you said that, because I'm thinking about, you know, if. If you are in conflict, if you've recently been betrayed, if the relationship is really painful, it can be really hard to be listening to this saying, oh, you want me to spend time together? I don't really want to spend time with that person because I'm really upset. I'm hurt. It doesn't feel safe and as you may know, sometimes like doing projects because my, my, my mind went well, we could talk about doing projects together, gardening, building something. And sometimes that's when things get really bad. Sometimes we don't always think the same way or do things the same way. And so I would say I think we don't play together enough. I think we often get busy with the humdrum of life and the things that we have to do that we forget to just play. And so finding time to say what's something neutral we can do together, whether it's doing a puzzle, whether it's playing a game, whether it's doing something sports wise, something that, where we are interacting, where we can laugh and have fun because I think we forget to have fun together.

And that time together might just be having conversations. And so I'm going to offer something to our listeners today. And this is something that is related to Today's podcast. It's 50 questions you can talk about related to this podcast. And so if you go to our podcast notes, the show notes Human Intimacy podcast show, you will, it's free, you can sign up, but I will put in there 50 conversations that you can have around today's topic that you and your spouse can talk about.

No, it's fantastic. If I can add just one other thing. One of the tools from a couple's recovery workbook that I have talks about spending some time, get your kids to bed, take care of whatever, set a time each night just to turn on some soothing music and you know, like after the dishes are done or whatever, and take 10 minutes to sit down, maybe with a calming beverage, like some tea or something, and just sit down and talk for 10, 15 minutes just at the end of the day. And couples that are working on recovery can create rituals of how do we connect each day? How do we connect each night? What are we going to do? And maybe it's on Sunday or Monday, you know, one night each week saying, how can we plan time intentionally this week to connect? And I would also add into that if you have a sexual relationship with your partner, sometimes we say, when will we fit this in? It's a busy week. More important to me. And our, even our sexual relationship is important. When can we both set aside some time so we can have some sexual intimacy together? And not just emotionally, but also the sexual intimacy as well.

And I think that's often overlooked because we get so busy, we sometimes don't take time for that part of the relationship. So taking time for each other is The Gift Last podcast, we talked about the gift of your presence. And I think that this is really reinforcing that we want to be present and how do we give our time and our energy to the people who matter the most around us? All right, Marianne, moving on. This is build trust in small but repeated ways. And building trust, whether there's been betrayal or not, building trust is something that we need to consistently work at in all relationships. So where would you lead our listeners today on that topic?

Anytime. I'm talking about building trust. My simplest view on that is you do what you say you're going to do. You show up when you say you're going to show up. In order for people to trust me, I have to be dependable. I have to show up and do the things that I say I'm going to do. But if I don't have that. This is the basis of our. As you talk about in your intimacy triangle, where we're talking about the different levels of intimacy, the psychological intimacy as a foundation, and that's, can I trust you? Are you there for me? Do you have my back? And this is the basis of every relationship. We've got to have this. Doing small, simple things each day to let my partner know, I'm here. I'm here for you. I've got you. You can depend on me. You can rely on me. I'm invested in this relationship. This is important to me. Whatever that looks like. I think we need to be intentional about it.

Yeah. And a friend of mine once said something, let your spouse catch you doing lots of good things.

I love that.

And I think that's just one of those things that we just, you know, whether it's a small act of service, you know, you're out and the house needs vacuumed, or the dishes need to be done or the trash needs to be taken out. And it's just doing something. Letting your spouse know, maybe that's a one of the roles that they typically take on and just doing something small like that. But I think then trust comes even more in. I am a person who, what you see is what you get, that WYSIWYG term that we've talked about. So again, I'm one way in private, and I'm the same way in public.

Okay, we got back up. You just said wysiwyg. I do not know what a wysiwyg.

You've never heard of a wysiwyg.

I can't move on. I'm not the only one.

Okay. It's A computer term. What you see is what you get.

Okay?

And a WYSIWYG is somebody that's just predictable, reliable, dependable, because what you see is what you get. They're not. They're not saying this in public, but doing this in private. So trust is built when I'm congruent. My friend called it. This is what the real definition of integrity is, is a wysiwyg. You know me, you see me. And what you see here, you're gonna see in private, and you're gonna see this. If you are watching me, this is who I am. To me, that's the ultimate way that we build trust.

This is just really congruency. I'm congruent with who I am. Complete.

Yeah. If you see me, this is who I am. Anyway. To me, that's a powerful way to build trust.

There you go, folks. A wysiwyg.

A wysiwyg. All right, so let's now move on to number six. And this is learn to regulate before you communicate. Where would you like to take us with that one, Marianne?

Oh, I think that most of the work that we do, Dr. Skinner, is related to emotional regulation. When we act out in behaviors that we're not proud of or our partners do, it all comes back down to how am I regulating my emotions? What's my driver? Most of the time, we have the most shame about behaviors that we have or actions that we take because we're not regulating our emotions. And I would say this is one of the hardest. I think one of the hardest parts of humanity, of being a human, is things happen to us, and our body reacts. We have emotions that show up and react, and our emotions are trying to help us navigate. Am I safe? Am I not safe protecting myself or not protecting myself? And it's often such a subconscious. We have these subconscious reactions. And learning to attune with myself, learning to slow down, learning to manage my own emotions, this is hard work.

So much more effective is our communication when we have slowed down to really consider what we're wanting and trying to say. Far too often in our most important conversations, we do it as if we're winging it somehow. I'm going to be able to just tell you what I'm feeling, tell you what I'm thinking, and do it in a way that's not emotionally intense or overwhelming to you or me. And so regulating our own emotions is. If it was a thermostat, it would be turning it down a little bit and saying, what am I really Trying to communicate here what is happening inside of me, what's happening inside my mind and my body. I'm overwhelmed, I'm stressed, I'm angry. But what are really, what am I trying to say here? So to me, the gift you give your relationship and your spouse here is you slow down and say, what am I really trying to say here? And do I have the courage to say what I'm really feeling and thinking in a productive way? If I say, you, you, you, you did this, this, this, that's not going to really get me to where I want to be. But if I, in contrast, said, when we're communicating like this, I feel like I just want to pull away. And the first thing I want to do is I want. Part of me wants to rip your head off because I'm so angry. But that's not effective, and that's not really what I want to say. What I'm really trying to say is I'm hurt or I'm scared when this happens, and that's when I pull away. Because when I'm hurt or scared, I realize I'm. I don't want to be around. I don't want to be here with you in this moment. That's just a model or an example of how we could do that. But we've thought through that to get to that space where we could communicate that way. Marianne, it doesn't happen on autopilot, right?

And I think you're talking about responding rather than reacting. And when something happens that's unexpected, that surprises us, that we weren't anticipating, of course we have a reaction, but we've got, as you said, we've got to slow down and say, hold on a second. I want to choose to respond rather than react. And what I mean by that is I think our reactions are that visceral response, like that immediate, unfiltered. Here it is coming out of me. Whereas if I can slow things down and take a couple of breaths, a response is something that's actually coming through my prefrontal cortex. And that's my part of my brain that says, this isn't a good idea. It's my judgment, it's my reasoning, it's my breaking, slowing down, saying, like, hold on a second. And so if I can just take a couple of breaths, that helps engage my parasympathetic nervous system, lets me sort through it for just a minute, and then I can give a different response in that immediate reaction, which oftentimes we are prone to just have that immediate reaction, which Pushes people away. And that takes us back to, am I safe for other people to respond to if I'm constantly reactive without that slowing down doesn't create safety. It doesn't create ability for people to trust me because they never know, am I going to get hot Marianne, who's reactive or thoughtful, curious Marianne, who's regulating her emotions.

All right, moving on to number seven, Marianne. Resolve conflict. Don't just move on. Throughout this podcast, we've talked about the concept of the Zeigarnik effect. And if you are new to this podcast or haven't heard the concept really quickly, we spend up to 90% of our time thinking about unresolved issues. So in marriage, when we have unresolved fights, arguments, something that's tense between us and we just shove it under the rug, we don't deal with it. We're not resolving that conflict. And that usually leads to pent up frustration that some time in the future will come out, it's going to explode, it's going to be ugly. So we don't just ignore conflict and hope it goes away. Learning how to have important conversations, learning how to do it in an effective way, much like what we were just talking about. Emotional regulation, learning to be attuned to our spouse, creating a safe environment. These are principles that we're all tying together. Now, when we do it properly, we can resolve conflict, Marianne. But we need to make sure that we're not just ignoring them. I find so many times when I ask couples how they resolve problems, I often hear statements like, we just shove it under the rug. That's what we want to avoid in our healthy approach to relationships. When we're healthy, we're going to have these hard conversations and we might say to each other, I don't know how to solve this right now. I see this is the problem. I'm concerned. I don't know what to do, don't know what to say, but I'm willing to learn. I'm willing to sit in here and figure this out with you because we matter. But right now, I'm not going to ignore this anymore.

So you're saying we want to avoid avoiding.

Yes, we want to avoid avoiding. Very well said.

There is a why behind this that I know you didn't touch on. But if our brain is working on trying to resolve this, it's not always conscious. I'm not always thinking for 90% of the time about this thing, but my brain's working on it because it's not resolved. But when that's occurring, my cortisol levels, my heart rate, my stress levels, everything that's going on inside of me internally, it impacts my health, it impacts my well being, it impacts my mental health, it impacts my mood, it impacts my relationships, it impacts how I respond to things. Once again, I might be more reactive if I've got unresolved conflict that's underneath the surface. And so not only is it our relationships, but it's even our physical health and our well being. And so this is a really important one, recognizing we need to resolve our conflicts that we're carrying and that that takes work. And this is once again, we're talking about broad, broad topic here. And there's a lot of very small bites. And so to our listeners and viewers, look at, I'd love to invite you to look at what relationship do I have that what's maybe one thing that I can do to improve this relationship and start there for whatever came up for you with that question.

And if you find that you can't, there are certain issues that you don't know how to move on from that you're stuck in. That's where professional help comes in. And that's when I do intensive, especially when I do couples intensives. Let's go to the unresolved that you're stuck in because if you continue to do the same things, you're going to get the same results. So really we need to focus on finishing the story, as we say, in resolving the zygonic effect. Learn how to resolve things that are holding us back from deeper connections.

Right.

All right, number eight, Marianne.

So number eight, we're talking about strengthening relationships and positive interactions. So as we are just coming off of number seven, talking about the health effects, the mental health effects of carrying conflict, I think this really just drives us right into looking at strengthening the relationships we have. And I think we've talked in each of these, we've talked in different ways about this. Strengthening our relationships is about being intentional. It's about attuning, it's about creating safety, it's about being open and being accessible. And I think there's also intentionality here. I have to look and say, how do I want to strengthen this relationship? What do I value in it and what do I need to do? Or what's something that I can do to make it better? What do I want it to look like? It won't just happen. And I think it's important, especially there's some research that my husband shared with me while he was working on his counseling degree that said, for Adults, it's harder for us to create relationships. We need about 40, I think you said 40 to 80 hours of just spending time together with somebody to get to a point where it's like, okay, I think that we could be friends. I think that we could kind of get that connection there. Kids are in a classroom together, they're in school together, kids are spending time on sports teams together, they have lots of opportunities to create friends and to interact as adults. That's a little bit harder. We're not in school with the same kids every single day in the same setting. And so we don't have necessarily those same experiences or opportunities. And so this is where I think we have to say, I need to be intentional. I need to open my doors, open my heart, bring people in, reach out, reach outside of myself and figure out what are some things I can intentionally do to reach outside of myself to improve this relationship or create more relationship.

And for me, a term I learned many years ago is called intimate interactions. And I think this concept of intimate interactions can be as simple as a small note, a smile, a hug, act of service. The more intimate interactions we have, the more intimate conversations we have. And when I use the word intimate, I'm not talking sex, I'm talking about being intimate with another human being where I'm lifting them up and I'm also sharing a part of me having a meaningful conversation. So the more positive interactions we have, the more we want to grow with this person, the more we want to spend time with them because it's positive. So I would encourage you to think about the nature of intimate interactions in your relationship. Because as we develop those, as we create those experiences, who doesn't want to be in an environment where it's, it's enjoyable and fun and uplifting and we're connecting on a deeper level. That is where we trend towards a deeper intimate relationship in more intimate, more intimate interactions. That would be my encouragement. Find ways to increase the intimate interactions, positive intimate interactions in your relationship.

As you say that, I think about my friend Jill. She's from the Philippines and she is just the most loving person I think I've ever met. And she just is like, someone needs a hug. She's just giving you a hug. She's just, hey, come to my house, come be with me. And she creates this warmth and the safety. But I also think about John Gottman talks about the six second kiss. He says that when we kiss somebody, when we kiss our partner, we need to have about six seconds there. And he says that's a kiss with possibilities. But rather than just that quick peck on the cheek or peck on the lips, it's like, hey, let me be here for just a second. And there's also, I don't know if it comes from Gottman. There's also other research that says we all need about 10 hugs a day. We need physical touch, we need a pat on the back, we need a touch on the arm, we need a smile. And so as you're talking about these intimate interactions, recognizing just for our physical well being, our skin, that that's one of our biggest organs. And we all need physical touch that helps us grow healthy physical touch, I would say. And so I love this topic. This is super. This is such an important one. Creating that physical safety and intimacy which is once again comes back to I'm safe, you're safe with me. Yes, that strengthens the relationship.

And last but not least, Marianne is dream together. Dream. Look to the future. What can we create together? I think Dr. Martin Seligman, in his last book, the Circuit of Hope, he talks about how when things are difficult and things are hard, if we can find hope somewhere, our brain starts working towards it to create it. I think to human intimacy, which I believe we all crave for, we all long for. When we are dreaming of a future together, something that we're going to do, I think about maybe you and your spouse are planning a trip to go somewhere or you're planning something to do in your home to make your home more beautiful or something that you're creating together as a bigger picture. Your family, whatever it is, dream for the future, plan together, work together. If you're thinking about retirement in the future, how are we going to do that together and what are our dreams? What's on our bucket list when we do retire? How much money are we going to need? How much? And you start looking to that future energy increases when you start to look to the future together. And I think healthy couples, they implement that into their relationship. How do we create this future together?

You know, as you're saying that Dr. Skinner, my mind goes back for me to Covid. And you know, during COVID I don't know about you, but a lot of people were doing home improvement projects, dug out part of our lawn that was dead. It just got a lot of sun and the sun baked it and killed it. And so we dug out part of our lawn and we put in a retaining wall and created a flower bed. But when I think about that time, I think about my husband and I had some Lawn chairs that we would just sit on the lawn and we'd both just sit there and we just called it our thinking chairs. And we would sit together and we just look at this dirt, this spot, and go, what are we going to do here? What are we going to do? And it for me, like, great, that we put a little patio in. Great. That we put in a flower garden. And I look at those and I'm grateful for those. But I look back at that time, and it was a time sitting in those chairs, thinking together, how are we going to do this? Let's see. If we try this, how will we do that? What? More care. And we'd go through idea after idea after idea of this figuring out process, and it didn't always work right. But we'd go back and we'd say, how do we do this? And this? Planning, thinking, interacting together. For me, that's the dreaming. We have an idea of what we want, but how do we get there? That's where I'm connecting with what you're saying, because I think we can dream together, but we've also got to figure out how to get to that dream. And it takes the trial and error that we didn't measure that quite right. And we got to dig that out. We got to redo that. That's part of this process. But it is together having a unified purpose and plan. And I think that's what this whole podcast we're talking about today is how to improve your relationships, how to have better relationships. And part of it is, here's where we want to get to. We want to have something better than this. What are the small, simple steps that we need to take to get there?

Awesome. To our listeners, there are nine strategies that we gave you to strengthen your relationship in the bond between you guys. Our hope is that it will help you create a deeper human intimacy in your relationship. So we want to thank you, Marianne, thank you for your time, and may each of you be blessed in creating that kind of relationship in 2026. Now, final thought, if you have not yet signed up for the Human Intimacy Conference, this will be the last few days to register before the 50% off coupon goes away. If you want to access that coupon code, we'll leave it in the show notes. Don't forget, if you want to have 50 conversations around today's podcast, we've got that in our course on the Human Intimacy podcast. So, Marianne, thank you for your time today and to our listeners. Thank you for letting us be a part of your journey towards human intimacy.

Thank you.