{"id":10539,"date":"2018-12-10T08:27:53","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T13:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/?p=10539"},"modified":"2018-12-10T08:27:53","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T13:27:53","slug":"social-media-cant-romance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/12\/social-media-cant-romance.html","title":{"rendered":"The Missing Key in Romantic Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-10545\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/258\/2018\/12\/womens-power-2137563_1920-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"womens-power-2137563_1920\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/>You want to let your partner know how much you love him. Should you gaze lovingly into his eyes, send a text message or buy him a small gift? It&#8217;s important to keep the romance going.<\/p>\n<p>You decide to\u00a0send a loving text and let him know you are thinking about him. He reads it, smiles and then goes on with his day.<\/p>\n<p>The text message\u00a0is nice and a way many couples show love and interest, but is it enough? Can you really keep romance going using social media and cell phones? Have we lost the importance\u00a0of direct contact with another person as the best way to deepen intimacy?<\/p>\n<p>What about the experience\u00a0of eye-to-eye contact-something that might be\u00a0missing\u00a0when it comes to deepening romance. Would sitting across the table at a coffee shop\u00a0and gazing into his eyes be more effective than that text message you sent?<\/p>\n<p>Eye-to-eye contact is powerful. There is something to be said about sitting across from your lover and staring him or her in the eyes. In fact, eye contact is one way to build attraction and interest. So much so that even strangers can feel attraction to each other just from making eye contact.<\/p>\n<p>A number of years ago, researchers Kellerman, Lewis and Laird randomly assigned opposite sex\u00a0pairs of strangers to stare into each others eyes. After 2 minutes of mutual staring, \u00a0the stranger couples\u00a0were asked how they felt about each other.\u00a0Those who\u00a0gazed into each others eyes for 2 minutes reported feeling passionate love for each other. If strangers feel passion and love for those who stare them in the eyes, what could this do for intentional relationships? \u00a0Perhaps eye contact\u00a0is a missing emphasis in love relationships.<\/p>\n<p>So if you are thinking about a great gift to give someone you love this holiday season, try eye contact. It&#8217;s free and\u00a0might even rekindle some loving feelings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You want to let your partner know how much you love him. Should you gaze lovingly into his eyes, send a text message or buy him a small gift? It&#8217;s important to keep the romance going. You decide to\u00a0send a loving text and let him know you are thinking about him. He reads it, smiles&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[913],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-couple-relationships"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Missing Key in Romantic Relationships<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/12\/social-media-cant-romance.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Missing Key in Romantic Relationships\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You want to let your partner know how much you love him. Should you gaze lovingly into his eyes, send a text message or buy him a small gift? It&#8217;s important to keep the romance going. You decide to\u00a0send a loving text and let him know you are thinking about him. He reads it, smiles&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/12\/social-media-cant-romance.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Doing Life Together\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-12-10T13:27:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/files\/2018\/12\/womens-power-2137563_1920-300x200.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Linda Mintle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@drlindamintle\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Missing Key in Romantic Relationships","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/12\/social-media-cant-romance.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Missing Key in Romantic Relationships","og_description":"You want to let your partner know how much you love him. 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Dr. Linda\u2019s fun personality and expertise comes through whether she\u2019s helping her audience stress less or make peace with their thighs! Dr. Linda has her Ph.D. in Urban Health and Clinical Psychology and is a national expert on mental health. She has specialized in the treatment of eating disorders, anxiety, depression and pain management. With 30 years of clinical experience working with couples, families and individuals, she brings her common-sense approach to people who want to live in positive mental health. Dr. Linda is also a bestselling author with 21 book titles to her credit, a radio host of the Dr. Linda Mintle show, professor, national speaker, winner of the Mom\u2019s Choice Award, a national news consultant, featured writer for Beliefnet and hosts her own website. Her academic appointments keep her abreast of current research in her areas of expertise. Her media experience includes seven years as the resident expert for ABC Family\u2019s Living the Life television show and regular appearances on network television and radio. It is often said that being with Dr. Linda is like having coffee with a friend. She makes the complicated issues of relationships and mental health easy to understand and applicable to everyday living. The ease she has with people, coupled with her clinical training and experience makes her a sought-after speaker on college campuses, conferences and special events. Whether she is doing a TV skit with Tim Conway or discussing teen violence with Queen Latifa, Dr. Linda will entertain, educate and integrate faith and mental health in everyday living. Check out her latest book Hope and Healing for Anxiety, a whole-person approach to eliminate anxiety. .","sameAs":["https:\/\/drlindamintle.com\/","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/x.com\/drlindamintle"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/author\/lmintle"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10539"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10547,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10539\/revisions\/10547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}