The holidays can be fun and exciting but totally laden with busyness and stress. There’s the shopping, kids’ recitals, decorating, mentally preparing to spend time with relatives who you may have spent all year avoiding, and just day to day life. At times resources such as time, money and energy can be stretched thin and often we forget our partner with all the stresses during the holiday season. This is all the more reason to put each other first.  Here are some simple things you can do to stay connected during the holiday season.

Let’s tickle and play with your 5 senses, including the 6th sense for fun:

1. Sight – create a fire in the fireplace if you have one, turn on the holiday lights and turn everything else off including all electronics and the chatter in your mind.   Sit face to face and look each other in the eyes and send each other positive thoughts, a wish or something you are grateful for when it comes to each other. Tap into your 6th sense and see if you can guess what thought your partner sent you and share it aloud.

2. Smell- the holidays are full of smells that we don’t get to smell throughout the year.  Entice your partner with a scent he or she likes. Bake something, put on a fragrant lotion or cologne.

3. Taste – share a special holiday treat together. Pick a treat that reminds you of a fond holiday memory, perhaps it is a childhood memory or a memory of your first holiday together. Discuss the memory while you indulge in this treat.  Engage all your senses, smell it with your eyes closed while you feed one another, chew it in slow motion, tasting all the flavors.  You can also create new memories.  I love pinterest for great food ideas.

4. Touch – cozy up, partner 1 closes his/her eyes and touches partner 2 gently. Communicate through your heart, using touch rather than words. Ask your partner what he/she felt.  Don’t forget to switch.

5. Sound – Get silent, sit hand in hand and listen to what you hear.  As an ex-northern (the cold was way too much for me) one of the ONLY things I loved about the snow besides the beauty of snowfall was the silence it created. It was this interesting type of silence I can’t describe.  I loved to sit in front of our big window at night with all the lights off just watching and listening to the snow and the silence it created.  So much arises from silence.

Have some fun:

6. If you live in a cold weather climate and have snow, make snow angels then post the pic to facebook or your favorite social media. A good snowball fight creates fun, don’t forget to infiltrate “enemy lines” and tackle your partner, then have a good make out session.

7. Take a peek at your bucket list.  Is NYC during the holiday season on there?  Take it to Rockefeller Center in NYC and go ice skating, skate hand in hand drink some hot chocolate to warm up afterwards then head over to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes or another great holiday play or classic.

8. Create an advent calendar of love – advent calendars come from the Catholic religion.  They are a calendar countdown to Christmas starting with December 1st.  Create a calendar for your partner with something for each day, whether it is a task, saying, or small fun gift.

9. There is always time for romance- leave a note for your partner in the car, in his/her lunch bag, or by the keys.

10. The holiday gift clue countdown – since my spouse loves facebook I used it as a vehicle to drop daily hints to the big present. It was so much fun for both of us and our friends and family got to get in on the fun.

If you there is distance between you….

11. Make time to talk. Honor that time and be sure to give each other undivided attention. Try something fun- describe a romantic fantasy or your first encounter together.  Create a new tradition on how to spend holidays “together” over the miles.

12. Use the postal service! Send fun, sweet, and loving letters or gifts.

I love Brene Brown.  She is an excellent speaker and presenter.  She is genuine and delivers information in a way that is impactful and helps us understand ourselves and what occurs in relationships.  She helps people learn about and understand some of the commons things we do.  As a couples counselor and therapist the number one issue couples call about is a lack of effective communication.  Couples’ communication is often laden with blame, criticism and defensiveness amongst other things.

I show this video to couples I work with.  This video also demonstrates what happens in our communication with one another and where blame really comes from and what it is all about.  This video is also helpful when working with families in family or teen counseling and individuals dealing with a lot of anger issues.

I’m a divorce attorney.  I have the pleasure of spending nearly all day, every day, helping people break up their marriages.  I watch my clients laugh, cry, and sometimes scream (a few times the same person does all three in less than an hour).  Each time I think I’ve heard “all there is to hear”, someone tells me another story that tops all the rest.  There is never a dull moment in my law practice.

In all seriousness, I love what I do, which is helping my clients make their lives better, one day at a time.  I’m not a big fan of divorce, but know sometimes divorce is the only way for people to be happy and healthy.  Those people are the people I help.  Although I believe I do everything in my power to make my clients’ lives better, one thing that eats at me is knowing it will be impossible for me to ever give most of them the one thing they need most.

“What is that?”, you ask… What my most of my clients need is a time machine.  Yes, a time machine.

Why a time machine?  Well, there are two things in common with all of my clients.  One thing is they all have interesting stories to tell.  The other is they are all getting divorced.  The positive is I hear a lot of interesting stories from amazing people.  The downside is all of the stories end in divorce.  Although no two clients are the same, I’ve realized from listening to my clients over the years that there are certain common characteristics of relationships that grow apart.

What does that have to do with wanting a time machine?  I wish I had a time machine so I could go back in time to tell my clients the simple things they could done to keep happy and healthy relationships with their spouse.  What I’m about to tell you below are concepts that would have saved many marriages had more people known them earlier.  Unless you want to meet me, at my law office, I suggest you keep reading.

What I would like to tell all of you is how to AVOID  divorce.  However, since the title of this post suggests you’d be receiving tips on how to ruin your marriage, and the attorney regulations prevent me from engaging in false and/or misleading advertising, I’m putting my advice in the negative and leaving it to the great therapists like Katie Lemieux and others on StayMarriedFlorida.com to set you straight.

Without further ado, the Five Easy Ways for Couples to Wind Up Divorced (From the Perspective of a Divorce Lawyer) are:

#1:  Do Not Communicate!

If you really want to get divorced, do not communicate with your spouse.  That’s right.  Make sure you avoid talking with your spouse about what is important, about what makes them feel special.  Never share your biggest dreams or fears.  Don’t talk about sex, romance, or what they want in both.  Make sure you avoid at all costs asking your spouse to tell you about their day, or what they want to do tomorrow, next week, or next year.  If you play this approach correctly, your only conversations will be one-sided (with you doing the talking) or “business related”.  After 18 years and a couple of kids you can achieve the master accomplishment of describing your relationship with your spouse to be “like ships passing in the night” while you debate the merits of permanent alimony with the wonderful “friends” you’ve made, at the bar you’ll depart alone, for an empty home.

#2:  Assume your Spouse is Just Like You!

In your quest to become single, make sure assume your spouse is just like you.  Never ask for their input or opinion, ever, on anything.  Never read or follow the advice in books like “The 5 Love Languages” by Dr. Gary Chapman.  Never try to understand what makes your spouse “tick”, happy, or sad.  Just give them what you want.

#3:  Be Selfish!

This one is easy! Remember at all times that the world revolves around you, and nobody else.  Especially not your spouse. Act like this. All the time. And never apologize.

#4:  Demean Your Spouse in Front of Others!

This is also easy!  If you have the need to criticize your spouse, do it.  But make sure the criticism is in front of others.  Does your spouse have imperfections or insecurities?  Perfect!  Make sure they know about them by explaining them repeatedly, and speak up so the children, friends and neighbors also know of the shortcomings. There is no need to keep things to yourself or tactfully raise something using kind words.

#5:  Refuse to Get Help!

If your spouse wants to go to marriage counseling you must at first decline.  After a while, go with them to the first therapist.  Pretend to be interested, but only follow through with the therapist’s advice long enough to convince your spouse “the marriage is saved”.  Then, stop doing everything the therapist told you.  Later, when the marriage sours again and your spouse picks another therapist, tell them they are the reason counseling did not work before.  Make them go to the therapist to fix themselves because you don’t need any fixing.  Ignore them when they then start speaking their mind and telling you what they want in the relationship.  Bury your head in the sand when they start talking about how divorce might be best for the both of you.

Christopher R. Bruce is a divorce attorney with the law firm of Nugent Zborowski & Bruce. His law firm’s four lawyers limit their practice to marital and family law in Broward, Dade, Palm Beach and Martin Counties and handle divorce appeals throughout the state.  When Chris is not working to divorce Florida’s families he tries to keep them together through his website, www.StayMarriedFlorida.com. Chris can be contacted at (561) 844-1200 or cbruce@nugentlawfirm.com.

This blog comes from a question I posed to my colleague Miguel Brown, LMFT of Miami Teen Counseling.  I reached out to Miguel because of his area of expertise and wanted to get his opinion on what he understands about “Video Game Addiction” and how he works with teenagers and families presenting with too much time on their gaming systems or electronic devices.  Miguel’s work focuses on helping teens, he is located in Miami, and speaks both English and Spanish.

Honestly, I think that video game addiction is a pretty rare thing.  Its very different than drug addiction.  I think that parents tend to label it an addiction because they don’t know how else to make sense of what is happening.  Parents also have difficulty understanding the amount of time their teenagers spend on their phones.  They don’t really understand the social importance that it has in socializing for modern teenagers.

I find that video game over use, usually functions as an escape, a distraction from difficult things happening in the teenagers life and as a way they can feel some kind of success when in real life they experience a lot of failure. They can identify with a powerfull avatar as they feel week in real life. It’s a defense. But in the same way teenagers over use video games adults work too much, read too much, watch too much TV, work out too much, etc… They are trying to avoid things in real life. But if they start to see what is happening and why they naturally start to turn away seeking satisfaction.

I help the teenager talk about the role that it plays in his/her life so that he/she can understand in his/her own way how video games are substituting for real life and functioning to keep his/her mind away from the pain or difficulties that are happening.

The more they understand this in their own way the less effective video games tend to be at making them feel better because they understand too much about how this (excessive video game use) isn’t helping them, and then they naturally start to draw away from it, let themselves feel more of what is going on and begin to talk more about real life problems and what to do about them.  This can’t be forced by explanation. They have to be allowed to come to their own understanding of it. Sometimes this really needs to start in accepting the very real psychological importance of the game and allowing the teen to talk a lot about it and getting into the details of how they understand the game play, the challenges, the other people playing and using this as a starting point to make comparisons to their real lives and help them see the psychological function of the game in what it gives them and what it does not give them. At the end of the day they are trying to help themselves by playing this game a lot, and I think they need to explore and think about this idea a lot. When they are in it it’s too ego syntonic to do anything else but allow it to gradually become ego dystonic. Trying to push will make them defensive and reticent because they are often convinced at first that it is what they need to be happy. Labeling it an addiction I think is very problematic and pathologizing and threatens the non judgemental exploration of what it does and doesn’t do for the person. I never talk about it using the word addiction.

I think another really important thing is to take the teenager off the defensive by accepting and being interested non judgmentally, so they can come to their own conclusions. I keep in mind that they will internalize a non judgemental, curious and benevolent representation of me through the therapeutic relationship. This will lead then naturally towards a healthier path.