Dr. Helen Fisher: Communicating with Your Spouse
February 07, 2011, By Dr. Helen Fisher 0 comments
Helen Fisher, PhD Biological Anthropologist, has conducted extensive research and written five books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and how your personality type shapes who you are and who you love.
Transcript: Hello, I’m Helen Fisher an anthropologist and I am here again to talk about you, men. And this time I want to answer four questions that people have written in to me. The first one is: My wife and I had our third baby recently and it seems like kids dominate every aspect of our relationship. I miss talking to her about things that don't involve schedules, kids and money. How do I reopen those lines of communication? And the answer to that- the first thing I want to say is that I think there are three people in a relationship - you, her and what I like to call the relationship. A third personality. And I think this personality needs the time, the attention and the love that you can give it. And indeed I actually think that if you don’t feed this relationship , your partnership is going to fail. So the first thing that I would do is go to your wife and ask her to help you design and set aside a time daily, a daily time. Maybe 30 minutes in the afternoon, the evening, the early morning. Sometime during the day when the two of you can feed this relationship- feed this relationship between the two of you. And I would also create what we call date-night. Every two weeks or so, probably every two weeks would be really good to create an evening where the two of you just go out together and spend your time without the children. Plan ahead and go and do something, particularly something you did or used to do when you were courting, something you did before you were married. And I also think you should gently remind her that these date nights and these special times of talking together is not just good for her or good for you but also it is also good for the children. Children need two parents who are happy and together.
