This morning on Today's Health, we are talking about relationship mistakes from dealing with the kids to the bank account. It's not always easy getting along with your significant other, but did you know that some of the mistakes you make in your relationships can actually take a real serious toll on your health. NBC's Chief Medical Editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, and Sex and Relationship expert Lorry Bermen are here with advice on that. Hey, ladies, good morning to both of you!

Hi, Matt!

Simple, right? I mean you have a bad relationship, you've got stress and tension in your life that impacts your health.

It's as simple as that. I mean that long time ago in medicine we separated mind body from the physical being which was one of the dumbest things we ever did. If you have miserable relationship, guess what, your body takes a toll.

And … and I think a lot of people are gonna immediately say, well, this must be stress and tension between a husband and a wife or a boyfriend and a girlfriend. But you say this can even be that you are focusing too much time on your children.

Yeah, you know, it's really amazing coz' we wanna do the best job we can for our kids. We wanna take them to every extra school activity and be the best parents on the PTA and everything else. So it is important to invest our time and energy, but sometimes we go overboard in our other relationships, in particular, our romantic relationship really suffers. And the best gift you can give your kids is a model of what a good relationship is.

So…so there's mistake No.1: Too focused on children, not enough me or us time.

Yeah… I think, you know, you don't have to be a hard parent, soft parent on various issues, and so kids know that they have someone to go to.
Right.
But if you start to see this manipulation all the time, so Mom and Dad are always divided and there is no consensus.
Yes!
Marriage is just to break up.

Mis…Mistake No.2 it’s pretty closely connected I think to this. That's not making enough time for friends.
(Yep)
For social life.
Huh ha. This is one of my great pet peeves for Women. They meet a "the guy" of whatever dream this day is. And the girls get dumped on the road, on the wayside.
(The flavor of the Mom.)
Yeah, and you know what, that's not good for the women who's dumping the girlfriends behind. And you lose a certain amount of female intimacy in those kind of....
And for guys, too, we shouldn't make it a woman thing.
Yes, it happens to both men and women, and there is an energy and a self-esteem that we get from spending time with our friends that goes by the wayside, when we get busy with kids and marriage and mortgages and just everything else. So you have to make a concerned effort just like you do for your partner, to make time for your friends.

Ah so that's mistake No.2, not enough time for your friends. Mistake No3 is one, you know, people say you always fight about money and sex. Sex, not maintaining a healthy sex life can dramatically impact your relationship and your health.

Fifty percents of married people in this country say they are dissatisfied with their sex life and that's important, because we know that men who have sex three or more times a week, have a 50% lower chance of having heart attack or stroke.

Is that for cardiovascular reasons or is…?
Cardiovascular…yeah. I mean look, an orgasm, in my opinion, erected penis is nothing more than blood flowing to one part of the body. (Right) So if the man is having impotency problems, it may be a window into the heart and entire vascular system. So if you are not using it, you are gonna lose it.
But also…
It’s sex matters.
But also, men associate intimacy with sex.
Absolutely, and this is what happens. It is that women lose. They are not interested in sex more often as a woman. He loses that way of getting intimately connected to her. He is less present and romantic in the relationship and then she’s less interested in sex. So this whole negative cycle keeps in.

And as intimacy declines, the threshold for anger changes also.
That's right.
And we still do like to talk afterwards.
Yeah.
We want you to know that. There has to be part of it.

Then next point is avoid and, and it's a pitfall for a lot of marriages and relationships, and you call it financial infidelity. Just define it for me.

I am a big believer that although there should be transparency about money in the relationship. Women have to have their own check book. I've been there, I've had my money disappeared. I believe that women feel strong about themselves and they'll respect their money more when they have power over the money they earn. You don't share. But boy, women who don't have their own check book, I think they are heading for disaster.

And you also can, you have to be really honest, it's so common for men and women to be hiding the expenses, their bills, what they’re spending money on. And the impact of that infidelity is sometimes as powerful as sexual infidelity when you've hidden those secrets.
So betray is…
It’s a feeling of betrayal.
A feeling of betrayal.
Yeah.

And finally, not setting boundaries. Give me an example what kind of boundary should people in relationships be setting.

You don't want to do something you say "No". "No" is a complete sentence. It's a word; it doesn't mean "maybe", it means "no". And you have to feel free in relationship to say “not now".

But there are consequences to saying no...
But there are, but then that's why you have conversations afterwards and couple stop talking and couples that don't have sex,
That’s right.
Don’t try, and goes back and forth.
And when…
I don't know if you can divorce the two.
Absolutely, women don't learn how to say no very easily. We want to be pleasers and that's how we are raised. So especially for women as they are reaching, you know, middle age and getting in that sandwich generation when they have older parents to take care of, adolescent kids, husband, the house, everything else. You have to learn to set limits and say "no" once in a while, so you can take care of yourself.
I know…
And I think we are with our kids especially because we wanna…we wanna everybody happy; that we end up saying "yes" to so many people at the end of the day, we are not happy.
We regret it. Now we regret it. Laura Berman and Nancy Snyderman doctors, thank you very much.
You're welcome, Matt.
Appreciate it.

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