Enhancing Intimacy: Step 2 – See Each Other with Loving Eyes

Step 2: See each other with loving eyes – Love Speak Exercise

Helping a couple to rekindle feelings of tenderness for each other is an important aspect of enhancing intimacy in couples counseling. Re-opening ourselves to intimacy and romance in a relationship that has become oppositional and defensive is a complex and sensitive process. I have outlined a Five Step process to address this in couples counseling.

In Step 1 we worked on letting go of past grievances, shifting out of a negative or defensive mindset, and opening up to respectful communication with your partner. The next step towards enhancing intimacy is to re-establish a connection to the loving, sensual relationship that you crave!

Step 2: See Each Other with Loving Eyes

In Step 2 I introduce you to a wonderful technique which I call the Love-Speak Exercise. This is an incredibly effective exercise that I learned from renowned couple’s specialist Toby Bobes¹. When working with a couple, I recommend doing this for the first time with me in my office. If you have already been able to move into regular, respectful communication with your partner, you may be comfortable doing this exercise on your own. (You can certainly do it as often as you like once you’re comfortable with it!) If you have any doubts about whether you can really dive into this exercise without the assistance of a therapist or trusted friend keeping the exercise on track, you might consider waiting until you have a healthcare professional or someone you respect to help you out.

The Love-Speak Exercise:

In my office, I ask the couple to sit close enough to each other so that they can hold hands. Having made that simple physical connection, I direct them to look into each other’s eyes. I then encourage each person to share with their partner the qualities that they fell in love with. It can be a very moving and beautiful experience to recall the early days of one’s romance! Often, this simple exercise is all that is needed to remind couple of their loving feelings for each other.

Sometimes, however, one or both of the partners feel uncomfortable hearing what appreciative things their partner has to say about them. They may feel unconnected to the qualities their partner is describing, or have a hard time seeing themselves in this way anymore. Sometimes, it can be hard to let in the nice things that our partner is saying about us!

Over-identifying with a role like “Mommy,” “Stay-at-Home Parent,” “Temporarily-Out-of-a-Job,” or “Less-Successful-than-I-Planned,” doesn’t feel very sexy. It can be tough comparing what we used to feel like, or who we thought we should become—with the disappointing image of who we feel we are right now. In this case, the above love-speak exercise, instead of paving the way for tenderness and intimate connection may simply further erode our self-esteem and make us feel even less erotically inclined than before!

Perhaps, one or both of you feel less physically attractive because of weight gain, illness, or aging. Or maybe, the level of unresolved anger between you is so high that compliments simply bounce off like ping pongs hitting a mirrored surface!

These are issues that can be understood more clearly and worked towards resolving with the help of couples counseling.

Whatever the reason if we can’t receive or believe the love-speak from our partner, we will have a difficult time repairing the growing chasm in our romantic relationship. Learning how to receive and believe compliments is the focus of Step 3.

1) Bobes, Toby & Norman S. Bobes, The Couple is Telling you What You Need to Know: Couple Directed Therapy in a Multicultural Context, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.

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