Paying Attention to Your Spouse/Lover

Most romantic arrangements have in common a space of time and a partner's full positive attention. Attention first of all. Call your partner during the day. Let each other know you care. When you come home from work, after you've allowed yourself half an hour or so for practical matters, sit down and talk. Sit down and listen. Pay more attention to what your partner is saying than to what you want to reply. "What did you do today?" Listen supportively while your partner clears away the day's debris. Until the debris is cleared away, you can't come together emotionally.

At such times both of you should emphasize positives, set aside negatives, and postpone discussing problems, unless there's an emergency. You can find other times for criticism, worries, complaints. (Some people don't believe they can control their feelings deliberately. They can. We all do, whenever we're in social situations where anger, for exam¬ple, is inappropriate. With bosses, for example, or in church. If it's possible to control your feelings among strangers, it's equally possible with the man or woman you love.) Imagine you're beginning an evening or weekend date. Compliment each other. Joke. Tease. Kid. Touch. Have fun together. Lighten your heart. Care. Tonight's the night!

Sit down to a romantic dinner. That may mean candlelight and a bottle of wine. It may mean a sandwich out under a tree. It may mean no more—but no less—than husband and wife smiling at each other across a table of children. Eating is a pleasure of its own, one we have shaped to a way of sharing. Eat for the pleasure of the food and pay attention to the partner you're sharing it with.

After dinner you may have to interrupt this pleasant performance you've arranged. Discuss what needs to be done to clear the decks: children put to bed, a telephone call made, a favorite TV show watched, the dog walked. Agree when you'll get back together. Then go ahead and do what you need to do to make possible your space of private, uninterrupted time.

Romantics don't like interruptions. The evening would be smoother without them. But intimacy won't be lost if you both agree to them and know that after they're dealt with, you'll pick up where you left off, and that the goal you're both working toward is clearing time together in privacy to give each other pleasure.