BLOG: Wheels to a Wonderful Relationship

Lighten Up to Up-Level Your Love Life

Working on your relationship doesn’t have to be so much work.  It can actually be fun if you’re willing to lighten up as you up-level your love life. 

Using play to interrupt any unhealthy pattern you and your beloved may be struggling with in any given moment is a valuable relationship skill. 

We’re Human

As humans, we get tired, stressed and overwhelmed with life and ultimately take that intensity build-up out on each other. Or we may pull away or just let distance build in the relationship until one day you realize, the intimacy and sexiness is gone. Next thing you know, you’re at best roommates or maybe you drift so far apart that you break up entirely. 

Being human is not always helpful. Our triggers and reactions can highjack the love, compassion and creativity that we cultivate as part of our intentional Couple Culture. Giving into our moods and reactions is NOT helpful. It can actually hurt. 

What Works

You can argue about who is right and who is wrong if you want. It’s natural. It comes out fairly easily for most. We do NOT have to be taught or have to practice blaming or complaining. But blaming, complaining or shaming DOESN’T WORK!

What does work is using tools. Cultivating a Couple Culture between you so that when conflict or distance shows up in your relationship, you’ve got a plan. You have your favorite tools and go-to systems or practices that work for you both individually and as a couple. 

The tools work. The biggest challenge is USING the tools. Remembering them and applying this isn’t often easy, especially when you’re triggered. Using tools has to be a HABIT. You will not FEEL like using the tools. You just know they DO work so you turn to them because you’re MORE committed to both of your happiness than you are to being right. 

Which Tool + When

My husband Raj and I have spent 15 years creating relationship tools to use, ( AKA Games to play). We use these tools/play these Games as the core fabric of our Couple Culture. We’re committed to loving our days and our lives. We know that using these tools and building healthy habits are our Golden Tickets into our most Playful, Peaceful, Passionate relationship.  

More recently, we’ve created a fun way to organize and access our relationship tools according to when we need them the most. 

8 Wheels for a Wonderful Relationship

When you’re confronted with the relationship hurdle of the moment, you’re not likely to be at your most creative or resourced. You want something to shift, you know there is a tool to use, but you don’t remember what to do or how to do it or even what tool is best to use under which circumstances. AUGH!

Welcome to the Wheels for a Wonderful Relationship! With the dozens of relationship tips and tools to choose from on top of being confronted with the hurdle of the moment, I wanted to give you an effective yet also fun tool to turn to whenever you needed support or a shift in your relationship. 

Discovery + Early Application

One day I stumbled across this website where you can create your own wheels to spin for any particular content. At first I used it for my remote team. We created a wheel with a bunch of virtues/ways of BEing. Every Monday we would each spin the wheel and get a way of BEing to live into that week. We’d live into that intention all week and check in with how it went. This was a way of practice being generative as well as to build connection and culture with the team, even though we had never met in person.

Eureka! 

One day recently my husband and I were in a conflict and I said, “Pick a tool, any tool!” We needed SOMETHING to shift out of the dynamic we were stuck in at the time. Eureka! At that moment I realized I could put each of our For Better Love Loving Better tips and tools into the wheel structure and then spin the wheel to pick a tool for us. 

Pause for the Reset

As the wheel spins, it gives you a moment to pause, to take a breath, to give up your grip on being right, to surrender to the greater good of the “US” and to your declared VISION of who you are as a couple. 

When the spinning stops and an entry is selected, the word pops up, confetti shoots all over and there is a voice who hoots “woo hoo!”. It makes us smile every time and often laugh. It is certainly a pattern interrupt and a mini reset opportunity.  

Timing Is Everything + Core Categories

The dozens of relationship tips, tools and techniques we put to good use here at For Better Love are all organized into two core categories… How to Keep the Fights Clean and How to Keep the Sex Dirty. Still, timing is everything as they say, so we break each of those categories into four sub groups based on WHEN that tool is best to use. 

The eight core categories of the For Better Love Wheels for a Wonderful Relationship include…

• Fights Clean - Before, As It Starts, During, After
• Sex Dirty - Before, As It Starts, During, After
• BONUS: The ways of BEing wheel I use with my team. 
  

Weekly Release

As of writing this blog, only one wheel is currently available. Each week for the next eight weeks we will release a new wheel and update this page so by the end of the Season of PLAY, all eight of the core categories will have an available wheel. Plus the bonus Ways of BEing Wheel.

NOTE: Some tips and tools will be in more than one wheel.  

Get Your Games On

This is just ONE way to play this Game. As a former mentor said all the time,  “How can you use and adapt this?”, (Thanks Skip Downing!). Make it your own. The website lets you make your own wheels. What Game do YOU want to play? What is a wheel that would be meaningful to YOU? What tips do you have that you would add to each wheel?

Right now, this Season of PLAY, my husband and I are playing a Game where we spin the Ways of BEing Wheel every morning. That’s three months of practicing generating ourselves. So when conflict comes up, we can use our way of BEing as a touchstone to come back to and to generate ourselves as. 

It’s just a Game. It’s what we do. It’s WAY better than drifting into the default or cliche relationship. No thank you. We’re in it for the awesome!

The Big Shift

The point here is to explore and play and use habits and tools to shift out of conflict, blame or disconnect and back into intimacy, ownership, creativity and connection. 

Tis the Season of PLAY. Wanna play a Game?

• WK 1 - Go to the Ways of BEing Wheel - Pick your Game; Spin daily? One word for the week? As needed? Pick your prompts! Play full out. BONUS: Edit the wheel for your own desired ways of BEing. 
• WK 2 - Check out the Fights Clean - BEFORE Wheel. Spin daily? One word for the week? As needed? Pick your prompts! Play full out. BONUS: Edit the wheel for your own top tips and tools for this time period
• WK 3 - Bring some play to your passion. Spin the S♥️x Dirty BEFORE Wheel to pick a relationship tool. What you do well BEFORE the seduction starts matters - A LOT! Foreplay is 24-7. Invest in intimacy with PLAY!
• WK 4 - Stop an argument in its' tracks! Spin the Fights Clean AS IT STARTS Wheel. If conflict pops up and you want to lighten up and shift from the brewing adversarial dynamic into a more playful partnership, spin this wheel and then read the corresponding blog.
• WK 5 - Set yourselves up for super satisfying sexiness with the S❤️x Dirty AS IT STARTS Wheel. Be your own intimacy hero and triumph over predictable or unsatisfying s❤️x. Explore new pathways to seduction. Turn up the turn-on today. Spin the wheel, read the blog, then explore!
• WK 6 - In the heat of an argument, it’s best to interrupt it before it gets worse. Use the Fights Clean DURING Wheel. Don't let a breakdown turn into a blow out. Pull the ejector seat on the fight, not your relationship. Spin the wheel, read the blog and end an argument when you’re IN IT.
• WK 7 - Don’t let the hot coals of passion cool, turn to ash and disappear. Fuel the fire, keep those coals glowing and ensure that your s❤x life keeps getting better and better. Spin the wheel to pick a tool for new ways to Keep the S❤x “Dirty”: DURING.
• WK 8 - Don’t just move on, move FORWARD. Turn your argument into intimacy with the Fights Clean AFTER Wheel. Up-level your love life in the realm of reconnecting, healing, & even growing through your conflicts. Spin this wheel for top tips on what to do AFTER the argument.
• WK - 9 - Scoop up all that yummy post orgasmic energy, good times and goodwill so you keep getting closer and closer and the s❤x just keeps getting better and better. Spin the S❤️x Dirty AFTER Wheel for top tips on what to do AFTER getting it on.
• BONUS: Create your own wheels and please share them with us! Post on our social media or message us today. 
  

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Your Ally in Aiming for Awesome,