Two Turns from Zero

by Stacey Griffith

  Staying in love and maintaining a high bar for that love is the most important job you’ll ever have. Think of it that way, and you can’t possibly say, “Oh, it’s a piece of cake.” How can such an important job be a breeze? Why should it be easy? If you’re a parent, you know how hard it is to manage another personality in your life and see the changes in what your children need as they grow—what they need from you and what you need from them.

  Raising your kids in this stressful world and launching them into a good place where they are thriving individuals is as tough as it gets. Good parents are my heroes. I see my friends do it. I see my sister do it. I’ve watched my partner raise three beautiful girls over the last decade. It is the most selfless job anyone could ever take on. She makes it look effortless.

  You also have to realize that relationships are always going to evolve over time. The job you loved might become less challenging over the years. The community you loved might have changed as people grew older and moved away or changed their priorities. The little toddler you loved grew up into an independent and feisty teenager with ideas and passions far different from your own. And your partner, whom you vowed to love till death do you part on your wedding day, might not be the same person you fell in love with. He or she might be more loveable—or much, much less.

  What made you fall in love and what you thought back then as the most important component in your relationship can shift so completely that you don’t even recognize the feelings anymore. Are they still love? And are you willing to do the work to keep the relationship thriving? Is your partner? If your relationship is unhappy, are you going to stick it out for the sake of the kids, or is that just an excuse because you’d rather be miserable as a couple than miserable on your own? Are you dreaming about getting out because the grass is always greener and you think if you’re not in your current relationship, another one is going to be better?

  Only you know the answers to those questions. But there is one common denominator in all thriving, loving relationships, and that’s communication.

  Good Communication Is a Skill You Can Learn

  Good communication is a real issue for me. You know why? Because I have a one-sided conversation for three or four hours a day when I teach. I don’t have to listen. I just speak. No one talks back to me, no one challenges me. I’m the boss. And I know my students are really paying attention to me.

  You might think because I’m up there teaching and I know what I’m talking about in class that I would automatically be a good listener at home. When I get back to our apartment, I haven’t turned off from work mode yet. I’m still used to talking to a rapt audience. When I fall into this trap, what I get in response is a much-deserved “Will you let me finish?” I’m always abashed and apologetic, because I don’t even realize I’m going on and on. Factor in my ADHD, and it’s a double whammy of having to work extra hard at settling down to have a proper talk. Conversations are always going to be give and take, yin and yang, salt and pepper. It’s peanut butter and jelly. Otherwise, one person is giving a monologue and the other person is sitting trapped in the audience.

  How do you become better at communicating? At a dinner party once, I asked a very successful journalist—someone who’s talked to thousands of people over the course of his career—what makes a good interviewer. “Someone who comes prepared, who asks probing questions, who is genuinely interested in the subject and the person sitting there talking,” he told me, “and, most of all, someone who knows how to listen.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. “That’s my problem. Not listening hard enough. Sometimes I wish I would get reincarnated as a lap dog. They get unconditional love from their owners, and they don’t have to say a word!”

  “Well,” he said, “I know that if I want to get to the heart of the story, I have to really, really listen to what whoever’s speaking is saying. I had to teach myself how to do that because when you’re reporting, you always have to have the next question in your head, so you have to focus. Sometimes I have to use the interruption technique—which throws people off-base. You’re trying to get them to say something they wouldn’t have thought of saying, and being interrupted makes them a bit angry or frustrated and then they say something off the prepared script, as it were. It’s not like I’m trying to be rude on purpose; it’s just to get something interesting out of them.” He looked at my face and laughed. “This is a reporter’s technique, Stacey,” he went on. “Interrupting someone in your personal life is just rudeness, and it won’t have the same results. Just ask my wife.”

  And then he stopped laughing. “You know what I’ve learned over the course of my career? If I sit down with someone who’s not famous and used to being interviewed and stroked all the time, if I sit down with a perfectly nice, average person, and I look them in the eye and say, ‘Tell me what happened. Tell me about you. Tell me what’s important,’ they always will. You know why? Because they’re used to no one ever listening to them. To no one thinking their stories are exceptional and worth telling to a stranger who just happens to be a reporter. I see them change, in the span of only a few minutes. They sit up. They remember things they thought they’d forgotten forever. They are interesting. Because I’ve validated them solely by my active listening.”

  “I never thought about it that way,” I said.

  “It’s true,” he said. “It’s absolutely riveting. And it’s a really gratifying part of my job and kind of breaks my heart at the same time. To realize that these people have so much to say and nobody asks them and they don’t feel confident enough in themselves to say, ‘My opinions are important; I believe in this, somebody please listen to me.’ Their kids don’t listen, their husband doesn’t listen, their boss doesn’t listen. They forget how to communicate.”

  And then you know what happens? When communication goes, love goes. People who aren’t listened to and who don’t know how to express their needs don’t know how to ask for love. They certainly stop loving themselves, and their most needed relationships can break down completely.

  Being a better listener will improve all your relationships. I know it’s not easy to focus and really pay attention to someone, especially when your mind is going off on tangents or you’re tired or hungry or just want to chill. It’s also hard when one person is a better communicator than the other, so you can’t both stop talking or trying at the same time. If this becomes a problem, one person always has to work even harder at bringing the other person into the conversation. If you both give up, it can be lethal for your relationship.

  That’s what happened with my partner and me two years ago. We both gave up at the same time even though we promised each other we’d never do that. We got mad at each other and had a horrible fight and we both just went, forget it. Forget it. Usually, if we said, “Forget it,” I’d say, “No, I’m not going to forget it. We’re not going to break up.” And we’d clear the air and be fine. But after that horrible fight, it was good-bye. I stormed out. I was devastated. But then after a few months and lots of therapy, we came back together and now our relationship is better than ever.

  You know you can’t give up if deep in your heart of hearts, you truly love a person. After our brief breakup, I had to work even harder. I had to listen harder. It was worth it, because I’m very lucky to love such an incredible woman with such ferocity, and to have her love me back.

  To keep ourselves in touch, she and I text every day. Not two hours go by that we don’t touch base. Some might call that codependent, and some might call it love; it doesn’t matter to me because communication keeps our relationship healthy. It works for us, and I’m sure you can find something that works for you. I never stop thinking about sweet and silly little things that might make her happy, and vice versa. If we both had super-busy workdays and not much time for talking or texting, on the way home I might stop and get a card, or buy her an item for the house that she mentioned she wanted. (One of these items was an electric sesa
me seed distributor—definitely not something that would ever be on my radar!) It’s not that she needed an electric sesame seed distributor, or any other object—it’s that I listened to her, remembered what she said, and acted on it.

  Or, if I need space, I’ll say, “I’m going to turn off my phone for a few hours while I do some writing or have to take a twenty-minute nap.” Then I text when I’m back. You don’t have to hide or lie that you’re going to be somewhere that you’re not if you need space. Everyone needs space, breathing room, time on their own. I have a hard time asking for it. I get super bitey and then I know I just need to get out and go do something for myself. The second you just take ownership of your time, you’ll feel better.

  Just tell your partner what you’re doing! And listen to your partner when they say they need space, too.

  The more skilled you are at listening, the better you will become at seeing people for who they really are. You will be more judicious in who you give your heart to. And you will attract all kinds of love into your life.

  Never Go to Sleep Angry

  One rule we have in our house is that no one can ever go to bed angry.

  If you do, you can kiss a good night’s sleep good-bye. You’ll have crazy weird dreams, because your brain can’t chill and settle down. You’ll start the next day off on the wrong foot.

  You need to get whatever is plaguing you out of your brain and body, somehow, before you go to sleep. Let your partner know you want to try to fix things and have some good pillow talk. And great sex allows you to regroup (as long as it’s connected sex, that is—disconnected sex or withholding sex is guaranteed to exacerbate any anger, right?). It makes you feel pretty damn good, too!

  Holding on to anger or grudges not only prevents any kind of open and helpful communication, it destroys relationships before you can say “WTF.” Grudges are toxic. They make you angry and then you radiate this rage that pushes people away. I am the worst at this, actually. I have classically hung on to stuff without talking about it, and it piles up on my heart and then I explode. I have learned to really talk about the way I feel before it annoys me.

  You need to communicate with the person you’re mad at, but sometimes, for whatever reason, you haven’t been able to get your message across. Sometimes it’s because the person is no longer available (through distance, or even death), or sometimes it’s because, if you’re honest, you want to remain the victim instead of dealing with the situation.

  SG TRUTH I am really bad at talking about what bothers me. I actually have to make sure I am communicating on a daily basis, and that takes a lot of work.

  My suggestion is to have the grudge-busting conversation with this person anyway. Either in your head, or by talking out loud to an empty room, or by writing a letter or e-mail and not saving it in your drafts before you send it. Send it only to yourself. Fine-tune it as much as you like. The mere act of saying or writing down what you need to say is a huge help at getting the grudge out of your system, even if you have been very wronged.

  Then, if you’ve written anything down on paper, take a match to it and burn it up. You’re burning away the anger, and you are moving on to a more loving place. Then you can present yourself nicely to the parties involved. (Obviously, burning a letter can be very dangerous, so don’t do it in the house unless it is a very small piece of paper being burned at the bottom of a very deep sink. If you have a fireplace, you’re in luck—otherwise, take it outside to a safe place.)

  Good Communication Fosters Intimacy

  I never liked talking about the past. It was too painful. My therapist helped me work out that as long as I held back, I could never cross that wondrous line that takes a relationship from just okay to the best it can be. That’s what I call the Intimacy Line.

  Intimacy is key to love in a relationship. Intimacy is trust. Intimacy fosters communication because this trust makes you unafraid to share your deepest needs and issues without fear of being judged. Knowing that your partner or your friends have your back no matter what is the best feeling in the world.

  What I wonder and worry about is how social media is changing the way people’s brains work, especially as it creates fake intimacy. You can develop relationships with people that you think are deep and meaningful but that are wholly virtual. I’m not saying these relationships can’t be amazing, but they’re still digital. And that makes them nonintimate. (It can also make them devastatingly disappointing, if you spend days or weeks or even months involved in a virtual relationship.) The only way you can have true intimacy is with a real person in a real place, looking at each other in real time and having real reactions. In other words, you need to be an analog lover.

  I had a friend who went on an app called Second Life, a popular online community that allows you to create the “life” you want. You can create your house, your apartment, your avatar, your family, even your pets. You talk to other Second Lifers as your avatar. My friend got so hooked on it that he started spending up to twelve hours a day on it. His work suffered. And his marriage suffered more. It ended. It wasn’t just the time he spent on the game—it was how his avatar was a wholly different person, not one his wife would have ever recognized, but it served as a distraction for him and the pain he was going through in his real life. The game was an escape from his inability to communicate his true feelings. For years this distraction went on and just prolonged his being able to find genuine joy.

  Some couples—not anyone I know well, but a lot I know of—are merely two people who are together but not in a deep way, and they don’t really like talking at the end of the day. They might not have the kind of intimacy I have with my partner, but it could still be a great surface-level relationship. A lot of people prefer to function on the surface because they’re unable or unwilling to go deeper. They might shun therapy. They might be happy with things the way they are. If so, and if they’re truly happy, then fine. Whatever floats your boat.

  The key issue is whether or not these couples are truly happy. I don’t see how some people can be without intimacy, but that’s me. I’m not sayin’ it has to be rockin’ every night of your life with your partner, but you should feel intimate toward them often! I wasn’t truly happy in many of my prior relationships because I wasn’t able to be truly intimate. Often, I walked away; other times, my then girlfriend did. All of us have made errors in judgment about people.

  Exercise and Your Sex Life

  There are three wonderful ways exercise improves your sex life.

  Let’s call on the American Council on Exercise for the first one, as they state that being physically active can be “a natural Viagra boost.”

  This is thanks to endorphins. These are the compounds produced by the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland in your brain; they’re released during exercise, excitement, pain—and orgasm. Endorphins give you what’s called a “runner’s high,” even though you don’t have to be running to feel that rush. You just have to be moving. In bed or out!

  The second way is that exercise strengthens and conditions your body for the intensely physical act of lovemaking. A strong cardiovascular system will give you the stamina so you can go and go and go. Firm muscles and flexibility will allow you to experiment and enjoy trying different positions. Exercise also dilates your arteries and improves blood flow. Men need this to sustain their erections; women need this to help arouse their genitals.

  Being fit through exercise is especially important for men worried about their sexual performance. Numerous studies at the Harvard School of Public Health and elsewhere have also shown how exercise especially helps men improve their production of dihydrotestosterone, or DHT, a potent form of testosterone. According to Dr. Harry Fisch, a New York City–based urologist and author of The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups, “A man’s body must have adequate testosterone levels to build muscle mass, so someone who is fit and muscled is likely to have normal or high levels of testosterone.”

  The higher the testoste
rone, as you likely know, the higher the sex drive and the less likelihood of erectile dysfunction or impotence. The heavier a man’s weight, though, especially if he tends to gain it in his midsection, the lower his testosterone levels. He won’t just have performance problems—his libido will falter as well.

  The third way exercise improves your sex life has to do with body image. Obviously, you don’t need a “great” or unrealistically “perfect” porn body for sex. But one of the biggest reasons women don’t like to have sex is because they don’t feel good about their bodies. They think they’re fat when they’re not. They’re worried about their jiggly bits. They don’t want to be shamed and found wanting when they’re naked and vulnerable.

  Exercise can undo all that self-shaming that I wish would disappear for good. It gives you confidence. It makes you feel good in every possible way. It makes you appreciate how your body works and what it’s capable of doing. I see body confidence growing in my students the more they work out. This isn’t about weight loss, but about that confidence. They literally stand taller. They carry themselves completely differently, and it’s not just because their core is stronger and their glutes firmer. It’s because they finally feel happy about their physicality—and for you, this will translate to feeling happy about yourself whether the lights are on or off.

  Think about this in the context of all the ads you see that are hyping exercise-related activities and merchandise. How do the models look? Well, of course they look buff—but they also have the glow. They positively radiate healthy, sexual energy. It’s not just because they’re selling something—it’s because working out makes you look and feel sexy! Forget sex appeal—I call it flex appeal.