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Rocky Romance Tip #1
by Maris Lemieux Whether you're alone cruising for passion, or careening through an exciting new relationship, there's bound to come a time when your love machine hits the proverbial rocky road. Most of us aren't too proactive about these things. We let the little irritations in a relationship slide until we're really miserable. By then, the negative sludge (resentment, for example) could bury a house. Though the scale and the duration may vary, the way we let this sludge build up is the same for short relationships as it is for marriage.

Our Rocky Romance tips can be practiced to enrich a relationship now or can be saved for a rainy day, to shed light on problems in the future.

And here's Tip #1. The Interface Moment.

Let's take any average couple: they know each other pretty well. For a day or a week they've been apart, working, living separate lives. Maybe he's been thinking, "Damn, my co-worker is trying to pass my work off as his own." And she's been thinking, "Damn, my presentation seemed flat and no one gave me any feedback afterward, was it really that bad?" If they live together, he may be thinking, "I'll get home, take a shower, and we'll have a quickie before dinner . . ." while she's thinking, "He'll get home, I'll let him watch junior while I catch a quick shower. . ." You get the picture. Each person has a different expectation for how things will go when they meet up.
We've already heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. We forget that when these two planets first get together, they're also coming from completely different galaxies. And they still have a good bit of momentum going in their respective galaxies when they meet up.
She may be tense and angry and processing backwards through what happened that day, while he may be upbeat and enthusiastic, imagining forward to what they might do that evening. They meet. Their different trajectories slam together. Ouch.

This is the fatal moment of interface.

After living separate lives for eight hours or two days or three weeks, the way this couple spends those interface moments could be the most important part of their time together. But few people take the time to stand back, open up, and slowly blend, in order to ease the process of two worlds becoming one. This process can make the difference between an easy waterbirth and suspension from your heels with a rough slap to the ass. Couples usually work this out all unconsciously. One person emerges as the receiver, the listener, the one to put on the heavy brakes at the interface as they try to sync up with their partner's orbit. But when a major change occurs in this automatic lifestyle, the couple may not be prepared to handle it. This happens in marriages, for example, when a child is born. It happens in relationships when one of the partners becomes either more or less invested in their job -- say a promotion, requiring more time, or a job loss, requiring encouragement. It can happen around a loss, around grief, around a disability.

Whatever the cause for the change, the couple continues on, expecting their old lifestyle patterns to hold up, patterns that were never planned in the first place. Suddenly, aspects of the relationship that used to function on automatic get tested. Some of them fail. They were not strategies; they were conveniences. And conveniences don't hold up well under stress.

This brings us back to the moment of interface. Say he's unemployed, spends the day looking at want ads and sees lists of valuable skills he doesn't have. Meanwhile, she's had a hard day at the office. Right away, their moment of interface has great potential for conflagration. Let's not go there.

The way to avoid this mine field is for the couple to:
--be very sensitive to and aware of this moment of interface
--have a stress-busting strategy in place for that moment before the stress hits the structure

This two-step program might just help a couple avoid bad feelings that could spiral into layers of resentment. So what is the stress-busting strategy to keep relationship rifts from creeping up on you?

Easy. Do something together.
--It should be something neutral, not sexually or emotionally demanding.
--It should be something of mutual importance or of shared interest.
--It should be treated almost as a ritual, so that it serves to mark your interface moment as something special.
--It should also give partners something in the mutual environment they can expect or count on as they re-orient to each other.
--The right ritual should ease the partners out of their isolated worlds and into the mutual world of the couple.
--Men especially relate to doing, not speaking. And speaking is not always the best strategy for bonding.

It is up to each couple to design their own interface ritual. One couple jogs together or takes a brisk walk together. Another meets at the gym. In the process, each partner is doing something that benefits him or herself while celebrating togetherness. Exercise gets the blood pumping and endorphins flowing -- it's a mood elevator. And finally, the time spent alone together helps the two to reconnect with the mutual world they've created. Other couples may have a hot tub ritual; a mutual hobby; put on the music and take a few romantic dance tours around the home. For new couples, it may be going out to dinner; for married couples it may be a small home improvement project or changing the baby's diapers. Or why not folding the laundry together -- simply save that laundry for your special time! (Think of all the movies and TV ads where two lovers meet over small conversation at the Laundromat.) Even doing dishes can be pleasant, if you make it so. The only requirement is that the project or activity be of mutual importance, or of shared interest. Neither partner should think, "I'm doing this for him/her." Both should be committed to the fact that they're doing it for the relationship.
Your interface ritual also serves as a relationship barometer. When a couple finds this ritual falling by the wayside, it often signals some trouble within the relationship. But just as easily, committing yourselves to getting back to your ritual can be the first step on the path back to relationship bliss.
It can be fun to make up your own private ritual. Try it. Be creative with it. Invent a ritual that is flexible, while able to evolve over time and withstand the life changes you'll share together. And have fun.