The Stress Solution Page 7

  ‘It doesn’t have to be sex,’ I said. ‘It could be just lying naked in bed together, showering together, even taking a nap together. Set some time aside for it once or twice a week.’

  She paled and shook her head, muttering, ‘This feels like a business arrangement.’

  ‘You don’t think scheduling is romantic?’ I asked, to the sound of Reni’s barely stifled laughter.

  What I told Reni and Saul next seemed to shock them. I find the idea of romance deeply problematic. Romance is what teenagers do, and those in the first blushes of their relationship, when they can’t keep their hands off each other. It’s courting behaviour, but it’s behaviours we’ve been conditioned by our culture to expect to last for ever. This just doesn’t happen. The romantic model, which is fed by pop music, Hollywood and fiction, has given us an impossibly high bar to meet, especially in the hectic world we live in today, in which both partners in a couple will often work and may have young children or adolescents to look after.

  Research tells us that we are having less sex now than we have for decades. Americans are having 15 per cent less than in the 1990s and, in the UK, rates have fallen by over 20 per cent in under fifteen years. This rate of decline is alarming.

  Rather than expecting romance, I believe that adults should instead focus on intimacy. Intimacy doesn’t have to come with fireworks, vintage champagne and roaring log fires. It doesn’t even have to be sexual. But if you don’t actively schedule it – in between the school run and the emails from the gas company saying you’re six weeks late on your meter reading – it won’t happen. So I asked Reni and Saul to park their scepticism and give it a go. Two months later, they were like a different couple. And the irony was, by throwing out any expectation of romance, they found that was exactly what came back into their marriage.

  THE MODERN WAR ON LOVE

  Modern life asks too much of love relationships. Many of us already feel overburdened, with adult couples having to shoulder the responsibilities that a whole village would once have shared. In previous times, members of the community would have given emotional nourishment and support but today, all too often, we live miles away from our friends and family and expect our partner to share our financial and emotional responsibilities. And on top of all that, we expect them to be a sexual partner too.

  Because so much practical load is put on our relationships, they can become seriously malnourished. Many of the couples I see tell me that the only time they can work on their relationship and spend valuable time together is on ‘date night’, which, as often as not, is cancelled at the last minute when other, more ‘important’, things come up. Needless to say, technology isn’t helping. I used to relish long car journeys with my wife, especially in the evening. The kids would fall asleep in the back, and we’d chat. Over the past few years, though, things have started to change. I started to notice that Vidh would spend a lot of time on her phone, surfing the net or texting her friends, while I was driving. This didn’t really appear to be a problem at first but, bit by bit, I noticed that the atmosphere in the car had started to change – the intimacy was simply not there.

  When I brought the topic up with my wife, initially it didn’t go down so well. You see, I probably brought it up in an accusatory fashion and Vidh probably felt defensive and in denial. A few weeks later, however, we managed to have a calm and productive conversation about it and decided to try to implement a new rule. Barring emergencies, we were going to try to be off our phones on long car journeys together. Instead, we would prioritize this as time for ourselves, when we had none of the distractions that would so often suck up our time when we were at home – such as the washing-up, the housework or preparing the kids’ lunches. Since we made this change, our long car journeys have been completely transformed. They are now filled with meaningful and deep conversation – the intimacy has returned.

  ENDING THE iAFFAIR

  Reni and Saul also had problems that stemmed from their use of tech. It became apparent, as I talked to them, that they were addicted to their smartphones. Once upon a time we worried about our partners having an affair with a work colleague, but these days we’re all having extramarital relationships with our devices. Our phones are the last thing we think about before going to sleep and the first thing we think about when we wake in the morning. It’s our phone that we can’t keep our hands off, whose every curvy contour we know by touch and whose buttons we know exactly how to press to turn them on. It’s our phones we’re thinking about during romantic meals and our phones we really want to be with when we’re lying in bed with our spouses. Our phone is the third member in our relationship.

  This is an affair that just has to end if we’re finding the intimacy is draining from our relationships. Fifteen years ago, in the evening a couple would talk over dinner, then they might have the shared experience of watching television. At bedtime, there would have been dim lights and communication and cuddling that would, at times, lead further. But it’s extremely common now for partners to go to bed and be on their devices. This keeps them siloed in their own digital worlds. Even as they sit centimetres away from each other, they might as well be on either side of the planet.

  With the advent of on-demand TV and streaming services such as Netflix, couples are frequently going to bed at different times, with one staying up late to binge on a boxset. There is nothing inherently wrong with bingeing your way through multiple episodes of Homeland, but if this is coming at the expense of meaningful connection time with your partner, there will be a knock-on effect which will show up in other areas: more bickering, perceived problems in the relationship and a lack of intimacy.

  In my surgery, I’m seeing a lot more people coming in complaining of a lack of libido – more than I ever have before, in nearly twenty years of seeing patients. One of the dangers is that this lack of an urge to have sex is often interpreted as a sign that something is badly wrong in the relationship. This is yet another serious stress to have to bear and, more often than not, it’s actually untrue.

  WE DON’T HAVE TO TAKE OUR CLOTHES OFF

  Intimacy doesn’t necessarily mean sex. From conversations with my patients, I would say it has several components:

  1. Trust

  2. Feeling like two members of a team

  3. Being responsive to each other’s needs

  4. Being present with each other

  5. A deep level of care for the other person

  6. Sharing profound information – thoughts, desires and wishes – with each other that you would not share with anyone else

  As you can see, sex does not feature on this list. Sex can occur in an intimate or non-intimate way and is not in itself a requirement for intimacy. Just holding hands with your partner can be incredibly intimate. In fact, studies show that when a woman is holding her husband’s hand, she reacts better to stressful events. Although this study was done on women, I have no reason to believe that this effect is sex-specific.

  Similarly, if somebody takes a shower or a nap with their partner, it also has benefits. Even something as simple as sustained eye contact can be transformative. I experienced this last year when I met a meditation teacher who made a lecture hall full of doctors do an exercise which I have to confess was one of the most uncomfortable I’ve ever experienced. We were all randomly assigned a partner and asked to sit opposite them with our knees touching and our eyes closed. We then had to open our eyes and stare into the other person’s for five minutes.

  It was as unforgettable as it was uncomfortable. There were times when it became so intense that either my partner or I would have to look away. But I soon started to pick up things about my partner’s character and what they were feeling. At the end of the five minutes, even though we’d not said a single word to each other, I felt as if I had formed a deep connection with this person, to the extent that, as my partner was a woman and I’m a married man, I thought it might border on being too much of a connection. Then it occurred to me that I didn’t th
ink I’d ever done anything like that with my wife. So I went home that night and we tried it. Those minutes of sustained eye contact had a powerful positive effect on the texture of our relationship that remained for days.

  SEEING EYE TO EYE

  I would highly recommend that you try this exercise with your partner or a close friend.

  • Sit opposite your partner or friend, ensuring that your chairs are close enough so that your knees are touching.

  • Close your eyes for between twenty and thirty seconds and concentrate on the sensation of your knees touching.

  • Now open your eyes and look directly into each other’s eyes.

  • Try to maintain eye contact for a full five minutes. You may need to set a timer on your phone or have a clock to hand.

  • If you do find yourself looking away, gently reinitiate eye contact as soon as you can.

  • After the five minutes is up, take some time to share your experience with each other. How did it feel? What went through your mind? What did you pick up about each other during that time?

  THE 3D GREETING

  All this got me thinking. So many of us are ‘too busy’ for this kind of simple intimacy. Familiarity, in a love relationship, all too often breeds complacency. You’ve been working from home on your computer all day, your partner walks in and you barely lift your head up from the screen. Or you’ve just come back from a long day at work and you walk in, yet your partner barely says anything. It’s heartbreaking, almost literally, how the daily grind makes us treat our husbands, wives and long-term partners.

  In the months after I married Vidh I was working in Oldham, very near my wife’s parents’ house. Once a week, I’d nip over to have lunch. Vidh’s dad also worked nearby and would also pop home for lunch. I’d notice that whenever he arrived her mum would drop everything, go to the door and greet him with a smile, eye contact and a kind word. Sometimes she’d touch his arm or place her hand on his shoulder. It seemed a little old-fashioned at the time, but now I’m convinced they were on to something.

  Those small, loving moments I saw back in Oldham and that powerful eye-contact exercise inspired me to start greeting Vidh in a new way. When I see her in the morning, I now greet her in three dimensions – with eyes, touch and voice. Giving my wife a heartfelt 3D greeting makes all the difference to our day. The way I feel in myself is different – less stressed and more supported in my relationship. The effect is still lingering when I see her again that evening; there’s just a bit more closeness than there would be if we were just like passing ships, and talking only about the management of the following day: who’s picking up the kids? Who’s going to the supermarket? And it takes less than fifteen seconds. We’re all busy, but I’ve never met anyone who’s so busy they can’t spare the love of their life fifteen seconds. Try greeting your loved ones in this way and see for yourself.

  THE 3D GREETING

  Practise the 3D greeting (eyes, touch and voice) at least once every day. After a while, you can try to up this to once in the morning and once in the evening. Ideally, you would do this every time you haven’t seen your partner for more than a few hours. Even if this feels a little forced at first, stick with it and, within a few days, it will seem a lot more natural and you will start feeling the difference.

  This can be done with friends, as well as partners. When you see a friend you haven’t seen for a while, remember to make eye contact (most of us would do this anyway) but at the same time ensure there is some form of touch – a handshake or a hug – and some words that really mean something (‘Hey, so great to see you. What’s new since last time we got together?’).

  TESTOSTERONE

  It’s unfortunate for long-term relationships generally that the human libido can be so fragile. When we feel tired, our libido goes down. When we feel busy and stressed, our libido goes down. One of the main reasons is because modern living is affecting our levels of testosterone, which in turn can affect our libido.

  People often associate testosterone with masculinity and strength and, while it is crucial for men, it’s also important for women. Low levels of testosterone in women have been associated with low mood as well as muscle weakness and fatigue.

  When we’re stressed, the body prioritizes the production of cortisol over the sex hormones, such as testosterone. This makes perfect sense evolutionarily: if we’re in danger, our body is going to put its resources into survival rather than procreation. Twenty-first-century living sends our body signals that we are under threat. We are no longer running away from the dinofelis; we are being attacked by our modern lives. This is becoming a big problem for the Western world. Overall, an astonishing 40 per cent of the US population is low in testosterone.

  Potential benefits of increased testosterone:

  Improved bone strength

  * * *

  Improved libido

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  Increased lean muscle mass

  * * *

  Increased strength

  * * *

  Increased cognitive function

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  Improved body composition

  * * *

  Better overall drive for life

  SEVEN WAYS TO INCREASE TESTOSTERONE

  1. Get more sleep. A lack of sleep causes ageing in both men and women. One study found that men who sleep only five to six hours per night have testosterone levels equivalent to men ten years their senior.

  2. Minimize stress as much as possible. When we’re stressed, the body prioritizes cortisol production over testosterone production. The recommendations throughout The Stress Solution will help you.

  3. Resistance training is excellent for increasing testosterone. You don’t need a gym to do this: bodyweight exercises or my five-minute kitchen workout from The 4 Pillar Plan are easy ways to get started.

  4. Aim to eat a minimally processed wholefood diet. This will help with hormone production.

  5. Minimize your alcohol intake. Increased alcohol intake is associated with lower testosterone levels. It is a good idea to stay within government guidelines and drink less than fourteen units per week.

  6. Maintain a healthy body weight. As belly fat increases, the activity of an enzyme called aromatase goes up, which converts testosterone in your fat cells to oestrogen.

  7. Limit your exposure to Bisphenol-A (BPA). BPA is a synthetic chemical found in many plastics. Studies have linked BPA exposure to lower testosterone levels. A recent study reported that 89 per cent of men attending a fertility clinic had BPA in their urine.

  THE MAGIC OF OXYTOCIN

  The benefits of intimacy are likely mediated by a hormone called oxytocin. Sometimes known as the ‘cuddle chemical’, oxytocin also functions as a neurotransmitter, which means it helps nerve cells communicate with each other. It’s produced in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. From there, it’s transported to our pituitary gland, where it’s released into the body’s bloodstream, through which it exerts some of its pleasing effects.

  While calling it the ‘cuddle chemical’ is rather simplistic, it does have some truth to it. It helps the uterus to contract during childbirth and is involved with the secretion of a mother’s breast milk. It’s also implicated in the experience of orgasm and research has shown us that it’s involved in empathy, trust and social connection. When we bond socially with someone, our oxytocin levels go up. In addition, it’s thought to be crucial in the maintenance of long-term relationships. When a couple have sex, the afterglow of warm feelings they feel for each other is partially the effect of all the oxytocin they have washing through their systems. And animal studies have shown that the presence of oxytocin seems to buffer us from the effects of stress, partly because it reduces the amount of cortisol that’s released.

  MAKE A PLAN FOR INTIMACY

  Everything in life is easier when we have a sense of intimacy running along in the background. It’s the glue that holds relationships together. We’re often too busy for intimacy, and I see the cons
equences of this in my practice every single day. By having a plan to create more of it, you’ll find that your stress levels go down and your resilience goes up.

  FIVE WAYS TO NURTURE INTIMACY WITH A LOVED ONE

  1. Schedule regular time to connect and be intimate without the distraction of technology. Date nights may be a bit of a cliché but they are a fantastic way to prioritize intimacy. It could even be a commitment to spending thirty minutes with each other every evening without your smartphones in sight, or simply a daily walk holding hands.

  2. Give your partner a massage. If this feels a little bit intimidating, you could start off by holding hands or massaging cream on to their feet or arms.

  3. Steal intimate moments together whenever you have the time. Always look for opportunities in your daily life to be intimate and present with each other.

  4. Smile when your partner walks in through the door, even if you don’t feel like it. As I mentioned here, our actions will very often determine our mood. This action means that intimacy will become the norm rather than the exception.

  5. Remember the 3D greeting (eyes, touch and voice) at least once per day. Make deep, meaningful eye contact, embrace warmly and exchange a few loving words.

  Chapter 6

  NURTURE YOUR FRIENDSHIPS

  Humans are not designed to be alone. We’ve evolved to live our lives as individual members of a large, supportive group. Back when the human brain was doing much of its evolution, we hunted together, we ate together and we sat around a campfire in the evenings and talked together, swapping stories, songs and smiles. We raised our children in sprawling extended families, an invaluable network through which the relentless workload having kids brings was dispersed. Those same extended families cared for their elderly, giving them sustenance, both nutritionally and socially.