It doesn’t sound like much: a simple back rub for your partner. But actually, massage between couples can have profound and long-lasting effects on your relationship and the quality of your connection with each other.
The promise of deeper intimacy, stronger trust and even a resurgence of lovey-dovey brain chemistry are just a few compelling reasons for you to get your hands all over your sweetie, stat!
Massage is the gift that keeps on giving – I don’t know anyone who gets tired of too many massages. Our aching muscles can always do with a little TLC and who better than to pamper you with healing touch than your spouse?
Here are five incredible ways massage can work to transform your relationship:
1. Supercharge Your Trust & Connection
You obviously already trust your spouse. It’s a crucial part of any romantic relationship, after all. But massage has been proven to help supercharge this bond between couples.
As your partner starts to rhythmically massage the tension from your neck and shoulders, you’ll find yourself beginning to deeply relax. You’ll close your eyes, breathe a little slower and eventually fall back into them with complete faith that your partner is working toward the singular goal of making you feel good.
Becoming putty in your spouse’s hands and likewise, having them surrender to you in the same unquestioning way, is a beautiful experience that will infuse through your entire relationship.
2. Ignite Your Intimacy
While a massage from a trained therapist keeps a healthy professional distance, massage between married couples can go much deeper, forming a profound intimate connection.
Intimacy is about being emotionally close to another person, and while it doesn’t always require words, it is not an automatic occurrence in a relationship.
Intimacy should be carefully and consistently cultivated between two people.
It’s about letting your walls down and still feeling safe. It’s about shared experiences in private moments.
One of the most important conditions for fostering this intimate connection is to spend time alone, focusing on each other. In the case of a massage you are most decidedly focusing your complete attention – even your hands! – on the person you love, and giving them space to be themselves.
3. Fall Head Over Heels… Again!
Learning new things together as a couple helps reignite that first “falling in love” phase of your courtship.
Researchers have found that injecting novelty into your relationship will help your brain with a surge of feel-good hormones, the very same hormones that were flying around in the early days of your relationship.
This novelty can come in the form of many things – a small change to your daily routine, sampling a new restaurant, trying out a new activity or learning a new skill.
Among other things, a good dose of novelty can cause symptoms such as butterflies in the tummy, contented humming and a tendency to dwell daily on how much you love your sweetie.
We may be biased, but we think that learning to massage each other is the perfect way to add novelty to your relationship. You can do it from the comfort of home, it’s fun and low-stress and the fact that you’ll have your hands all over each other means we can pretty much guarantee a little swooning.
4. It’s the Ultimate Date Night
Sitting down to a planned couple activity like a massage gives you a chance to mindfully turn off your mobile phone, step away from your laptop and focus completely on your spouse.
In your massage space, there is no talk of the mortgage, the kids, or work. It’s a chance to let down your guard together, relax and pamper each other.
Make your massage a full romance experience by lighting candles, playing soft music and maybe even opening a bottle of wine.
It’s an easy date night to set up, it costs next to nothing and you can do it over a series of nights or weeks, each time adding new massage strokes or routines to keep it fresh. Make it “your thing” to do after a hard week at work, or take it in turns to indulge each other in the name of quality time.
5. Gives You More Time in Your Day
In our fast-paced world of high-speed internet and 140-character status updates, we sometimes need a reminder to take a deep breath together and slow down.
Massaging your partner will make you very mindful of that – it’s good practice in slowing yourself down and helping slow your spouse down too.
Carving out this extra time and space for your relationship to grow and thrive is vital to your marriage.
Stop. Be with each other. Breathe. Connect. Love.
Each moment we have here is a precious gift. Massage is a beautiful way to stretch those moments out a little longer, together.
Pick up a copy of Melt, a Massage Course for Couples (affiliate link) and have Denis teach you more about how this activity can dramatically improve your relationship. Use promo code simplemarriage at check out to get the videos at a great discount (this offer is only good until the end of June 2014).