BA – Kissing Challenge
Kissing Challenge
You are hardwired to create strong, deep, and personal associations with
your partner – to connect. This type of connection is a matter of experience
and trust. You feel connected to those that you share experiences with and
trust that you have some shared purposes. In intimate relationships, these
experiences and trust often involve physical touch.
Why this Challenge?
To connect physically, emotionally, and purposefully
How to
This one is really simple. Before you both start your day in the morning spend 30 seconds kissing.
Before you go to sleep at night, spend another 30 seconds kissing. Kissing is a wonderful way to connect. It activates the pleasure centers of your brain and releases oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin. This lowers your stress hormone and encourages feelings of affection and bonding.
Research also shows that kissing increases your sense of self-worth, relieves stress, reduces anxiety, boosts your immune system, and lowers your blood pressure.
"People leave traces of themselves where they feel most comfortable, most worthwhile.
About Connection
At points in your relationship, you may feel disconnected. When you feel
disconnected you may also feel your sense of security is at risk. This loss of
connection and unstable security can be a perfect emotional storm. You
may become hypersensitive to your emotions and the choices your partner
makes. When this happens, you are likely to take one of two paths, either
withdraw from your partner in order to protect yourself emotionally, or
turn toward your partner by testing brief positive behaviors such as a
gentle touch, a smile, a kiss, or playful gesture. These small acts are a bid to
reconnect with your partner, in fact, Dr. John Gottman calls them precisely
that, bids.
How connected do you feel in your relationship? Are there any patterns
to when you feel connected versus when you feel disconnected? What
are ways that you can turn toward your partner when you feel
disconnected?
Healthy and fulfilling relationships are connected relationships. When you
share a strong connection with your partner, you feel secure and stable.
This happens when you both regularly offer “bids” to build on and deepen
your connection. The wonderful thing is that these bids won’t just
strengthen your relationship, they have significant benefits of themselves.
For example, kissing boosts brain chemicals that result in increased
happiness, feelings of affection, bonding, and even increases your self-esteem. Whereas kind words, are shown to increase effectiveness and decrease stress. As Herman Melville has said, “Our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.” So, test out some small connecting actions and see what effects come back to you.
