Episode 157: Reducing Friction In Relationships
Introduction
Welcome back to the show. I’m your host Miranda Anderson today is Episode 157: Reducing Friction In Your Relationship.
I’ve been excited to share a couple simple applications that can help your relationship feel even more connected. This episode is brought to you by Coconu, all natural USDA, organic, personal lubricant, which of course reduces any uncomfortable friction in your intimate relationships.
Now you don’t have to have a specific health problem or be at a particular stage in your life to need a personal lubricant. Coconu can enhance and improve your love life at any stage. Thinking of a massage is a good example where that feeling of your muscles being touched and massage feels really good.
The idea of that is really good. And when you add in some oil, some lubricant, some Coconu, which actually is a great massage oil, the sensation changes into this incredibly smooth and connective, silky feeling.
If you haven’t tried Coconu, and you’re curious, I would love to invite you to head to the show notes, click on the link and use the code LIVEFREE for 15% off your entire order. You can choose from the oil based, the water-based or the CBD infused lubricants. And the website will give you more information as to which to choose based on your particular intimate circumstances.
While Coconu is perfect for reducing friction in your intimate relationship, I’m excited to share some tips and ideas in this podcast episode about reducing friction in your relationship, generally. That friction, the tension that you sometimes feel when you know that you’re not on the same page with your partner, when you’ve had a disagreement or when they’re sort of an ongoing wedge that is something you can’t quite figure it out.
Before I jump in with some practical tips and advice. I want to share a quick segment called the Peaks of the Week.
Peaks Of The Week
Just a quick reminder about this segment, the peaks of the weeks are just the things that I’ve been loving lately. There’s usually not a whole lot of rhyme or reason to them. They’re the things that if you’re my good friends, I’ve already told you about them. Or if you’re one of my sisters, I probably text you about them.
These are things simply bringing me lots of joy or making a positive impact on my life.
The first one I have to share with you just arrived on my doorstep today and it feels like the ushering in of the holiday season. To me, it’s. 2022 Stendig calendar. If you’re not familiar, Stendig calendar is a giant four foot by three foot wall calendar that was originally designed as a piece for the metropolitan museum of art in New York city. And has since become an icon.
It is a huge calendar. There’s not any space to write on it. So a lot of people think it’s maybe superfluous. I love it for its design. I love that it makes a statement in my space. I have it in my office here in Scott’s Addition, in Richmond. In our house in Texas, it hung on a corner wall in our living room.
I love the way that it looks. I use it as my reference for which day of the week it is when I’m, you know, paying attention to the dates. And I also I’m going on maybe my sixth, seventh, maybe eighth year ordering one. I order them in about September. And they usually sell out. So I order it and it comes sometime in October and it just sits in the corner in the box until I put it up at the beginning of the year.
Mine arrived this week and makes me feel like we are closing this year out. It’s wild. We still have November and December coming up, but. Can you believe how close we are to the end of the year? The Stendig calendar is one of my favorite little traditions. I love having a space for it on my wall. I love the way that it looks. And I love just the feeling that it brings a new year ahead as an added bonus, the pages of the calendar are so big and wonderful.
They can be re-used regularly as wrapping paper so they don’t get wasted. You could recycle them their paper, but they also are really wonderful to reuse as wrapping paper, which basically acts as my wrapping paper for the year. I’ll put a photo of the Stendig calendar up in my Texas house on the show notes livefreecreative.co/podcast, and a link to one if you’re curious and interested in ordering one of your own.
My second peak of the week is the frozen rise overnight croissants from Trader Joe’s. Now I am a huge Trader Joe’s fan. Many of you know that I shop for 95% of my groceries there weekly and people always ask, what are your very favorite things?
Well, one at a time I’m going to let them out here on my peaks of the week. I may do a blog post at some point, but really I love almost everything.
I wanted to highlight in particular, the deliciousness of these croissants. They’re actually made in France, frozen, and brought to your local Trader Joe’s. You find them in the freezer section, set them out on a cookie sheet overnight, the proof during the night. You put them in the oven in the morning in 25 minutes, you have crispy, flaky, delicious almond, or chocolate or butter croissants.
And I use them at our Live Free Creative camp last week. Everyone was oohing and aahing. The whole kitchen smelled like a French bakery, and they’re just so easy.
My final peak of the week is what I’m going to call Bernie Sanders mittens. They are a pair of wool fleece lined, cozy, mittens similar, but not exactly the same as the ones made popular by Bernie Sanders at the inauguration. The actual Bernie mittens were made by a school teacher named Jen Ellis, who has gone on to partner with Vermont Teddy Bear company to fulfill the thousands and thousands of orders that she got resulting from that meme gone viral.
My mittens are not those. I was in Vermont last week and I found a pair of natural wool mittens with fleece liners that were made by a company sustainably in the United States. And although they’re not the same, the actual generalist mittens, I felt like they were the same nod to sustainability, as well as being a super cozy and accessible pair of mittens.
You’re not going to go skiing in these. They’re perfect for walks around the neighborhood or for bike rides for staying cozy and warm, you know, as you’re out seeing the Christmas lights or the Halloween decorations. I will link both where you can sign up to be notified if the actual Jen Ellis, Vermont Teddy bear collaboration is available again, they’re sold out currently.
And a couple of places that I found “Bernie mittens” similar to mine, (here, here, and here) a sustainably made and locally sourced in the show notes at livefreecreative.co/podcast. If you are looking for a cozy pair of mittens, I love the kind of country feel of these too. They’re really cool. Well, fleece, coziness, perfection.
Okay. Those are my peaks of the week, a calendar, a croissant, and some cozy mittens
Reducing Friction In Your Relationship
In order to understand how we might want to reduce friction in our relationship, we might want to first understand what friction is and how it normally is lubricated. Friction itself is a force of resistance that can slow down or prevent motion it’s necessary in a lot of different applications.
Sometimes we want friction. In fact, when I was working as a outdoors counselor at a wilderness rehab, we used friction to create fire. By rubbing sticks together, we were able to create the force and energy necessary to start the spark in a lot of different applications. You want a little bit of friction and also the lubrication.
A good example of this might be in your car engine, where the friction of the parts moving and rubbing against each other and the pistons pumping up and down is where the energy is combusted and allows your car to actually move. However, without the lubrication of the motor oil that you add to your car regularly, the engine can start to have some major issues.
About seven years ago, I was working as a nurse driving all over the state of Texas to do patient education and teach individual patients how to better use their medication. At the time I was driving an older and still functioning fine Mazda Protege hatchback. It was my adventure vehicle. It’s the car that I had bought after I returned from my mission, the car I had had when Dave and I got married.
Eight years into our marriage we had driven across the country multiple times, moved all around and it was serving me just fine until the day that it ran out of oil on the side of the road, about four hours from Austin in ranch country in the middle of nowhere. And the engine seized completely.
When I was able to get a hold of a local tow company to come check out the car and tell me what was going on. He took one look at my engine and told me that the pieces of metal had melted together because the friction without lubrication had overcome its ability to move my car engine of that faithful car was done for completely.
Not only was it towed, it was actually just smashed. And I think they gave me $500 for the metal. And Dave picked me up and drove me home.
Just like in your car when your relationship has too much friction without lubrication, it can get all stopped up. The heat and energy can overcome its ability to move forward and to function properly. And in a healthy, normal way, friction, without lubrication in a relationship can be really uncomfortable.
It can look like those kinds of arguments that form a well-worn path in your brain. And as it gets started, you think to yourself, we’ve been down this road before. Friction in your relationship can also look like resentment. It can look like frustration. It can look like blame and shame. And of course it can look like the heat of arguing and disagreeing and becoming upset. The unwillingness of each other to bend or to seek to understand.
Now the purpose of lubrication is to reduce, wear and heat between contacting surfaces in relative motion. So lubrication in your relationship is going to be those activities and conversations and actions that reduce the wear on the relationship that reduce that heat and that allow you to come together and relate even better to each other as with most areas of our life.
The best way to start improving is to recognize where there’s some sort of a problem or obstacle. Think for just a minute. What are some of the areas in your relationships where friction occurs? What might be some of the causes of that rubbing up against each other in a way that produces this energy of argument or of unrelatedness?
Some things that I came up with are the division of household duties, who does what, who decides who does what, what is getting done and what is left undone, financial issues. Whether you feel like you don’t have enough, or you don’t agree on how what you have is being used or allocated differences in your ideas about parenting and raising the little ones that you may have at home, or that have already grown and are out on their own.
Another way to think about this would be to think, what are the types of things that you and your partner argue about, or what are the things that cause frustration or resentment in your relationship? Identifying those while it might be a little bit painful is also a really important step to beginning to find solutions and.
I also think it’s important to note that some of the friction that happens in our relationship may not be caused by the issues, their relationship experiences itself, rather by the personal stressors or circumstances of our individual lives.
An example may be that you find there’s more friction in your relationship when you’re hungry.
I know that’s true in my relationship. And luckily Dave has identified that as well. And often if I start to get a little grumpy, the first thing he says is, Hey, why don’t we find something for you to eat? You’ll feel a little bit better and maybe you’ll think a little bit more clearly about this. So he gives me a snack and that usually helps take the edge off.
Tired being tired or not getting enough sleep fatigue. Those are things that can cause added friction near relationships, simply because your ability to think clearly and cope is reduced. I know for many women, there are certain times of the month where you are less able to see and. With judgment that is clear because of your hormone levels.
There are probably entire weeks of the month where you don’t necessarily want to trust your own opinions because you’re feeling a little bit hormonal that definitely leads to increased friction in a relationship.
I also want to call out a full generalized category of resentment. I loved months ago hearing the definition of resentment as something that happens when you are not meeting your own needs. If you find that one of your emotions in your relationship tends to be resentment, that may be an indicator or a little warning flag, that there are some needs of your own that are not being met and that you might not be taking as clear a role. Meeting them or creating space for them to be met as might be possible. Resentment is often thought about as unfairness or a situation where someone does something that you feel is unfair or has a negative effect on you.
I like thinking about it in a way that it actually empowers us to. Take more control and find ways to create space for ourselves and fill our needs rather than using resentment as a way to feel victimized and disempowered in our own.
So just a note on resentment, it maybe deserves an entire episode, but when you’re thinking about resentment, that definitely will cause friction in a relationship. And I have just loved the mental swap personally of when I feel that little bit of that little twinge of resentment coming up, that I think what of my own needs is not being met, that I have the power to meet.
Do I feel like something is unfair because I’m not asking clearly for what I need because I am being a martyr and I’m not taking the time that is being offered to me because I think that I, you know, this role demands, whatever X, Y, Z of me, there is usually a bigger picture when there’s resentment.
So as I’ve been sharing some examples, have you been able to identify for yourself a couple areas or triggers for friction in your own relationship? Now you could be thinking about any relationship I’m specifically thinking of and talking about this month, a more long-term romantic relationship, a partnership like a marriage.
These same types of things, friction and relationship can also be healed with the lubrication that I’ll talk about in a minute in friendships, in other types of relationships as well. So have you identified and recognized what are some of the causes of friction in your own life, in your own relationship?
The huge bonus to that is that it allows you to prepare in advance. And as you’re thinking about this episode, as I’m sharing over the next few minutes, and also once episode ends and you’re thinking about it throughout the day in the week, You can become aware and prepared for the next time there’s a situation where the friction is present. You can kind of plan on that.
Whether it’s that time of the month, whether you’re hungry or tired, whether you know, you’re going to have a conversation about finances and that’s always something that creates this friction in your relationship, you can have a little bit of a backup plan to add the lubrication so that the friction doesn’t get so hot that it stops the relationship from moving forward. Once you’ve identified and recognized some of those areas. Or you could just think about a generally whenever we kind of get that twinge or that heat of things feeling a little bit off here are some recommendations that can lubricate and reduce the friction.
Now some of these are things that will be helpful in the moment, and some of them are things to be generally applied to your relationship so that there is already that smoothness happening and that connection happening so friction, when it arises, isn’t strong enough or isn’t great enough to sort of overcome the whole.
So if you think about again, a car engine, you put oil in before it seizes, right? You, you have it in all the time and you replace it, a new change it and you refresh it. So that generally. There’s kind of that smoothness happening. There’s other situations in our life where a lubricant might be necessary just for him for a moment, for a specific time.
And, uh, an example in a relationship might be when, you know, you’re heading into a difficult conversation or a difficult season when someone has experienced ed serious external stressor, or is going through a personal time of difficulty. Those are things that. Where you may need more than just the systemic lubrication, where you may need to add in some sort of additional implementation of these lubrication ideas to make sure that you’re covering all your bases.
1. Have Fun Together
So let’s start with number one, which is. Have fun and adventure together. I know maybe you’re thinking what that was a little left field. One of my favorite pieces of research in relationships is the way that trying new things together really boosts your connection. In fact, a recent study by Baylor university showed that when couples played board games together or took a painting class with each other, their bodies.
Oxytocin, which is sometimes called the hugging hormone. It’s that kind of the hormone that makes you feel so kind of gooey and sweet, connected to each other. Those things happened in both the man and woman during these instances of playing together, just having fun and learning together is playing. And activity part of your relationship with your partner.
Do you try new things together? Do you laugh together? Do you have recreational experiences together? This is a lubricant. That will have numerous positive effects, not only within your relationship, although that’s a huge one and the one we’re focusing on today, it also will boost your own positivity levels, your own wellbeing, your physical and emotional and mental health.
Why don’t we play more together? Why don’t we do more fun things together with our partner, if. Are listening to this thinking, gosh, it’s been a while since I played a board game with my partner, it’s been awhile since we tried a new class together, since we went and sampled, you know, the new local ice cream shop together, maybe you could add something to your calendar right now where you can reconnect in that way by having fun and just enjoying a moment of adventure and play to.
2. Daily Connection Ritual
Number two comes from the Gottman Institute on relationships and it is to have a ritual of connection every day. What does a ritual of connection look like? Well, there’s a lot of different ways. It can look, it can look like eating breakfast together every day without your phones. It can look like going on a walk with the dog.
Exercising in any way together, it can look like making sure that you share a 22nd hug or a six second kiss before you part in the morning, or when you come back together in the evening, having a ritual of connection or a few of them in your days, and your weeks keeps that lubrication going in your relationship.
It allows you to stay connected even through the ups and downs of. When there’s increased stress or difficult conversations on the horizon, you don’t have to start from ground zero because you’re already connected. You already feel like you relate to each other and you know that you’re on the same. One ritual of connection that I’ve shared a lot on here that Dave and I have is a weekly date night.
It’s not a daily connection. We have some of those as well, but our weekly connection, this ritual of Saturday nights are for mom and dad to go out together to be together, to have conversations without being interrupted, to try new things together and spend that extra time together. So think about a simple ritual of connection that you could add to your relationship to come closer together and reduce that friction.
3. Add Physical Connection
Number three is the importance of touch. Adding in physical affection in simple ways can dramatically reduce the friction in your relationship. Now, there are a lot of different benefits of touch. There are emotional benefits. There are psychological benefits. There’s a study that shows that partners were found to have lower levels of cortisol, which is your stress hormone on days when they had higher levels of physical touch, like hand holding and hugging.
Those are simple things, handholding, hugging, just the physical acknowledgement of recognizing and seeing the other person sometimes in the middle of an argument, this can feel kind of tricky. And in fact, I was thinking this week about how once in a while, when Dave and I have had a disagreement and there’s that kind of buzzing tension in the air, like it’s there, even though we’re not talking anymore, there’s that kind of friction energy and often.
As we move into whatever happens next, whether we’re going on a ride in the car, or we sit down to dinner at something as simple as me reaching out my hand and putting it on his arm. I’m thinking about when we’re driving in the car that I’m usually sitting in the passenger seat and I’ll put my hand on his arm and instantly like, just leaving it there.
We both start to relax and you can like almost visibly see how our heart rates start to go down. And the breathing start to decrease in the stress of the friction, that high level energy of being in a disagreement or an argument or not seeing eye to eye starts to reduce instantly. We have this physiological reaction to affect.
To touch to acknowledgement that I see your humanity. I’m here with you. We’re doing this together. We’re going to be okay. And sometimes having that physical affection, even in the middle of a time of friction can really increase your ability to cope and to see each other. And it’s when we see each other that we’re able to then come to a place of understanding.
4. Set Goals Together
Number four is to set goals together. Now a couple of weeks ago, Dave and I talked about how, when you’re on the same team in a relationship, you can stay on the same team, even when you have disagreements, because you see yourself as us against this disagreement or us against this issue that we’re trying to come and find a common solution on when you set goals together.
They can be small goals. They can be big goals, relationship goals, family goals. You can even set goals together about how you want to reduce the friction in your relationship, in the future and come together with some ideas. Maybe you want to talk about this episode and say, Hey, maybe we can set up a ritual for connection, or is there a class or a game that you want to try in the next couple of weeks?
Because I know that we’ll kind of bolster our ability to relate to each other and have fun together when you and your partner can come together and set some common goals, especially those that are mutually meaningful and mutually attainable or accessible. You’ll be able to check in with each other, feel like you’re working towards something important together.
And rather than halting your relationship with friction, you’ll be able to find the common ground that moves your relationship.
5. Take Care Of Yourself
Number five is to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself individually in the relationship so that you have the energy and the wellbeing to spill out and take care of those around you.
This sort of calls back to that little chat I had at the beginning of the episode about resentment and how so often that’s caused by us not fulfilling our own needs. You’ll find that your ability to. See clearly in your relationship is greatly increased when you aren’t individually stressed out. When you don’t feel like your own situation is unfair when you’re not hungry and tired and lonely. When you’re able to approach the relationship as a whole. Because you are seeing and taking care of yourself as a whole person, are you getting enough sleep? And if you’re not because of something related to the family, how can you divide up those responsibilities so that you are getting more sleep? Are you eating well and taking care of yourself nutritionally?
And if you’re not, what are some ways that you can get back on track with eating food that fuels your body and enables you to maintain. High energy levels. I’m going to link some podcast episodes that I’ve done these back to the basic episodes about getting sleep, taking care of yourself, nutritionally, getting some baseline exercise and body of movement so that you can.
Continue to restore yourself physically, as you’re working through things mentally and emotionally. I love also the Gottman Institute when it’s talks about reducing stress talks about how, when you engage in activities individually, and with your partner, you can restore balance and health to your mind and body discovering and practicing your gifts, passions, and values can restore a sense of meaning and purpose.
Are you practicing your gifts, passions, and values. How are you spending your free time? Do you have free time or something you would call free time that you’re able to spend on something, doing something you love, that lights you up. That’s not for any purpose, except for, to bring you enjoyment. And finally one of the best self-care practices out there is practicing gratitude and not trite #blessed type of gratitude, but the type where you actually engage in moments of awe, you look around your life at what’s going well, not discarding what isn’t going well, but to fully feel and be transformed by the beauty that does surround you by the relationships that you love participating in by the miracles of the people and the circumstances of your life, that you couldn’t have predicted that you do love.
Of course, we’re not discarding that, of course not everything is perfect and there’s always things going wrong. But what are the things that are going right? And how can you celebrate those? And in celebrating those, how can you train your brain to be on the lookout for them even more often? Once you can do that for yourself and take care of your own needs. You will be much more likely to be able to see others as whole and help engage in taking care of some of their needs as you can as well.
Recap
Okay. So how can you reduce the friction in your relationship? Let me give you a quick review.
Number one, have fun and play with your partner.
Number two, develop a ritual of connection, even if it’s really simple, something that makes sure that you are connected in some small way every day.
Number three, add a touch and affection to your relationship. Even within a moment of friction, the miracle and the magic of how simply acknowledging each other’s bodies and humanity will increase your oxytocin levels and reduce the cortisol that stress hormone, and help you ease into working through whatever is hard.
Number four is to set goals together. These can be relationship goals. They can be family goals. They can be fun goals. Simply putting yourself on the same team. With something that you’re moving forward towards and progressing towards can be really impactful and helpful in your relationship and help things move smoothly.
And the last one number five is to make sure that you’re taking care of your. That you’re taking care of yourself, physically, that you’re taking care of yourself emotionally, that you are meeting those needs or you’re creating systems and setting boundaries so that your needs are met. As you show up in your relationship as a whole healed and healthy human, you’re much better able to relate to your partner and to see him or her as a whole person and to work towards.
Reducing that friction so that your relationship continues to move smoothly and progress into the relationship you want.
What do you think about those five tips? Can you make it a point right now, before you forget about this episode to choose two of those tips that will help you reduce friction in your relationship? To add to your calendar today, whether it’s playing a board game with your sweetheart, instituting a ritual of connection, setting a goal together, making a point of adding some affection to your relationship or setting aside time to take care of yourself.
So that you can better take care of your relationship, make a choice doesn’t matter which one, or where you start just simply doing something that I’ve suggested today will add to your ability to keep your relationship moving smoothly and feeling great. We want our relationships to feel great. We want this relationship to be a source of strength in our lives.
Something amazing, something wonderful about our lives. And as we are intentional about reducing friction and instituting practices, that will keep that ease in our relationships, we’re going to find that we’re so much happier.
Conclusion
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Okay, have a great week.
