No matter how much we have achieved in any area of our lives, true fulfillment can only be found in one thing: the emotional quality of our personal relationships.

Unfortunately, most of us have settled for something that falls below our standards and deepest desires. We all want love, passion, and intimacy yet most of us fill ourselves up with work, friends, sports, food, or causes outside the realm of passion, ecstasy, and intimate love.

The good news is that regardless of your past experience or current relationship, the promise of something deeper, richer and lasting is within your grasp.

Love and Kisses,

Ken & Robin

Rebuilding Relationship

Do you know what the number one resolution people make each year is?

Year after year, Americans seeking a better quality of life cite adopting a healthier lifestyle and losing weight among their top New Year’s resolutions.*

Yet, despite resolving to get in shape, 68% of Americans continue to be overweight, with 33.8% classified as obese, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Why is it that we can keep making the same resolutions year after year, yet we don’t see results?

It’s because resolutions only require words… Results require action!

Are you committed to improving your health and energy next year?

Whether it’s losing weight, regaining energy or simply creating a more youthful and vital life, Rebuilding Relationship has created specialized systems to help you reach the results you desire.

Instead of just temporarily masking symptoms, these programs identify the specific challenges that have been holding you back and then provide you with the tools, nutritional supplements and strategies to create the life you’re resolved to get!

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Make 2011 the year that you get results—stop making resolutions and start taking action!

Love and Kisses,

Ken & Robin

Rebuilding Relationship

For Christmas, I bought a dictionary and went through it, highlighting all the definitions that describe him or remind me of him.

“Every morning before I get up, he leaves two folded towels in the bathroom for me for when I take a shower — one big towel for my body and a smaller towel for my head.

Aron, who is a professor of psychology at State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook, has been researching the impact of love on the brain for three decades.

Several years ago he and longtime pain researcher Sean Mackey, MD, PhD, began talking at a neuroscience conference and conceived the idea for the study.

Mackey is chief of the division of pain management and an associate professor of anesthesia at Stanford University Medical Center in California.

“He was talking about the neural systems involved with love and I was talking about the neural systems involved with pain, and we realized there was a lot of overlap,” Mackey says.

They recruited couples in the first few months of romantic relationships for the study by posting notices around Stanford University. The researchers specifically focused on the euphoric, obsessive phase of early love rather than more mature romantic relationships.

“Our subjects fit into this category of recklessly, widely, passionately in love, and it was the easiest recruiting we ever did,” Mackey tells Rebuilding Relationships. “The fliers asked ‘Are you in love?’ and within hours we had a dozen couples beating on our doors.”

The hypothesis was that love affected the brain in the same way many addictive drugs do, by targeting the “feel good” chemical in the brain known as dopamine. This reward system has also been shown to be critical in pain management.

One? Two? Twenty? How about 200? Some college students have cited as many as 237 different reasons for having sex.

From pleasure to procreation, insecurity to inquisitiveness — today’s reasons for taking a roll in the hay seem to vary as much as the terms for the deed itself. A 2010 Sexuality & Culture review of sex motivation studies states that people are offering “far more reasons for choosing to engage in sexual activity than in former times.” And we’re doing it more often, too. It is a stark contrast from historical assumptions, which tend to cite only three sexual motivators: To make babies, to feel good, or because you’re in love.

Today, sexual behaviors seem to have taken on many different psychological, social, cultural, even religious meanings. Yet, some sexologists say, at the most basic level, there is only one true reason people seek sex.

Wired for Sex

“We are programmed to do so. Asking why people have sex is akin to asking why we eat. Our brains are designed to motivate us toward that behavior,” says Richard A. Carroll, PhD, a sex therapist and associate professor in the department ofpsychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

The idea that humans are hard-wired for sex reflects an evolutionary perspective, says Elaine Hatfield, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii and author of that 2010 review examining sexual motives from cross-cultural, historical, and evolutionary viewpoints.

“Evolutionary theorists point out that a desire for sexual relations is ‘wired in’ in order to promote species survival,” she tells WebMD in an email. “Cultural theorists tend to focus on the cultural and personal reasons people have (or avoid) sex. Cultures differ markedly in what are considered to be ‘appropriate’ reasons for having or avoiding sex.”

What’s Your Motive?

Why do you seek sex? Motivations generally fall into four main categories, according to psychologists at UT-Austin, who asked more than 1,500 undergraduate college students about their sexual attitudes and experiences.

• Physical reasons: Pleasure, stress relief, exercise, sexual curiosity, orattraction to a person.
• Goal-based reasons: To make a baby, improve social status (for example, to become popular), or seek revenge.
• Emotional reasons: Love, commitment, and gratitude.
• Insecurity reasons: To boost self-esteem, keep a partner from seeking sex elsewhere, or because of a feeling of duty or pressure (for example, a partner insists on having sex).

The Difference Between the Sexes

Generally speaking, men seek sex because they like how it feels. Women, although they very well may also derive pleasure from the act, are generally more interested in the relationship enhancement aspects of sex. Researchers describe these differences as body-centered versus person-centered sex.

• Body-centered sex is when you have sex because you like the way it makes your body feel. You are not really caring about the emotions of your partner.
• Person-centered sex is when you have sex to connect with the other person. You care about the emotions involved and the relationship.

By Kelli Miller Stacy
WebMD Feature