Yo wat, very excited about that next book. Curious though, thinking about gridlocks and relationships. Let's talk a little bit about physical touch, because it's often one of the first things that couples lose. What do you both see as the biggest road blocks to intimacy between partners andand what do you think helps increase that? Yes,

there 's i great study done by the salone centre at u. C l a. And what they did was tho put cameras and microphones in the homes of 30 couples who each had a career and children. And these dual career couples, they found just neglected the relationship. They spent less than ten % of an evening in the same room. On average. They talked to each other 35 minutes a week, that's all. And most of that talk was about the the long to dulist that they had in their life, who's going to do what when. And so they they were neglecting the relationship. They weren't having weekly romantic dates. They weren't turning toward each other. They weren't connecting emotionally. They weren't playing and having fun together. Fun had come to die in the relationship. An adventure was gone. And so really it's very simple. When you just maintain that kind of connection, you really change the relationship. You nurture it. The largest study done about love was done with 70 thousand people in 24 different countries. And they eally had one question, what's the difference between people who say they have a great sex life and people who say they have an awful sex life? You know, how are those different? And you would think that a lot of what they found was what people do in the bedroom, but all their findings were about people saying, i love you every day, people watching one another, people being affectionate, even in public. Couples cuddling. Ando only four % of the non cuddlers said they had a great sex life. 96 usad of the non cuddlers said their sex life was awful. And they know, as it was, it was small things. It was touching, giving compliments, being grateful, having weekly romantic dates. That's what made the difference. Yes, let me add something. In heterosexual relationships, in particular, you'll often have the dilemma that a woman needs to feel safe emotionally in order to be physically intimate. The man needs physical intimacy in order to feel emotionally close. Yere's your dilemma. So women, of course, you know, we come from thousands of years of history of violence, violence, rape, abuse, being the other, you know, the second class or tenth class citizen. And so given the vulnerability, especially of passion or sex, we've got to feel safe, because that history of feelings is deep in our bones, deep in our bones. You ask a woman to walk into an underground garage, and you ask a man to walk into an underground garage, right? And is the woman nervous? Is the man nervous? Well, the woman always is. The man usually is not. You know, there there's a good example. So touch, we have found also, is so important in relationships. It's like food and water. When babies are not held and touched, as they saw in some orphanages, after a wor two, they died. They actually died. They were nourished, they were kept warm and dry, but they died anyway because they weren't being held. They called it failure to thrive. And we never lose that need. We all need to be touched, all of us. So the more we can be affectionate with one another, touch one another, be safe and to understand our partners history about touch, and what kind of touch they like, what kind of touch they don't like, then the better our relationship is going to be. I

lve that.