- Community rituals for entertaining friends, caring for other
people in your community, or opening your home to others you care
about. - Rituals surrounding lovemaking and talking about it. These are
important events that get left till the very end of the day when
everyone is exhausted. Couples often think that lovemaking should
be spontaneous and don't want to plan for it. But if you think about
when sex was at its best, usually it's during courtship. Those
romantic dates were planned, down to what to wear, what perfume
or cologne to use, where to go, the music and wine after dinner, and
so on. So you need to plan for romance and sex. A ritual that makes
you feel emotionally safe in talking about what is good and what
needs improvement in lovemaking can be very helpful. - Rituals for keeping in touch with relatives and friends. Family
events and reunions can be planned. - Birthdays and special events that recur. Examples are holidays
of importance to you, religious celebration cycles, and anniversaries.
There are also important rites of passage that can be discussed,
such as confirmations, bat mitzvahs, graduations, and weddings.
Your roles in lifeOur sense of our place in the world is based to a great extent on the
various roles we play--we are spouses, children, perhaps parents, and
workers of one kind or another. From the standpoint of marriage, our
perspective on our own roles and our mate's can either add to the
meaningfulness and harmony between us or create tension.
Your marriage will feel deeper to the degree that your
expectations of each other--what you feel your wife's or husband's
place in your family ought to be--are similar. We're not talking here
about seemingly superficial issues like who washes the dishes; we're
talking about deeper feelings about what you expect of yourself and
your spouse. For example, both Ian and Hilary believed that a
husband should be a protector and provider and the wife more of a