Local marriage therapist Tim Higdon and his wife have some advice for couples who want to reinvigorate their bond this Valentine’s Day: Wait until after the holiday to talk about your problems. On Sunday, the Higdons urge couples to show appreciation for each other through simple actions.

Tim Higdon, sitting next to his wife, Susan Luckey Higdon, in his northwest Bend office, gave an example. He’d heard a husband telling his wife he appreciated a simple sign of affection: “‘I don’t need to have sex with you all the time; when you come and you put your head on my shoulder, it just makes me feel so loved.’”

Higdon, a marriage counselor, knows about relationships. In fact, he and his Portland-based business partner, Norene Gonsiewski, have co-authored “Rock Solid Relationship: Seven Keys to Restore Your Connection & Make Your Love Last,” which they self-published in January. Higdon calls the 151-page publication their “legacy book” because the advice is a culmination of 30 years of marriage counseling.

With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, some couples might need a few realistic tips on how to keep their relationship going strong or working out a few kinks in a marriage. The two counselors think their book can help. In addition to professional experience, the authors have each been married more than 30 years.

Despite that, writing a book on this topic had its challenges. “Rock Solid Relationship” underwent several manifestations in its early stages, Higdon explained. While he and Gonsiewski initially set out to write about affairs, the more they researched the more they encountered fundamental questions: What are the ingredients of a great relationship? What makes us want to be in it? They explore these ideas in seven key chapters, including: returning your relationship to “priority status” over career and child-rearing concerns; how stoking an enthusiastic sex life begins with fostering an open dialogue, which in turn nurtures emotional closeness; and acquiring the tools and skills to carry out regular relationship maintenance and repair.

“Most couples don’t know it, but 80 percent of their relationship is good; it’s the 20 percent that isn’t that hijacks the rest,” Higdon said.

The bedrock of Gonsiewski and Higdon’s therapy and book is the Imago Relationship Theory. Developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Imago is a Latin term coined by Sigmund Freud, who noticed people were attracted to a type of person based on a template brought from childhood, Gonsiewski explained via phone from Portland.

A concept evolutionary biologists later explained how the brain evolved to be attracted to what is familiar.

“In a romantic relationship, what Imago would say is we are attracted to someone who has the positive and the negative characteristics of our childhood caregivers,” Gonsiewski said.

Back at 3Rivers, the Higdons described their realization about how a ritual they have that fits the Imago theory. Susan has made Tim’s sack lunch every morning to take to work — a task she’s done begrudgingly and for which she has sometimes teased Tim. Her husband explained how those daily sandwiches had filled him with a profound joy, one he didn’t understand.

During an Imago workshop years later, the link between Higdon’s sack lunch and happiness became apparent. His mother had packed a Davy Crockett lunch pail each day for him to take to school. When she gave birth to his younger brother, however, she suffered postpartum depression. Tim stopped receiving packed lunches — his mother’s affection was gone. When he explained this to Susan Higdon, she swore she would never tease him about his lunches again.

“We all bring stuff from childhood with us — unmet needs,” Tim Higdon said, casting a warm smile toward his wife. “When we show up for each other, it isn’t just about showing up and being present, it’s about learning what each of us needs and how to show up in that way.”

The easy laughter the Higdons enjoy while talking about their relationship betrays the couple’s years of conscious work, work that not even a marriage therapist can escape.

Higdon recalled how, early on, his wife told him in one of their “dialogues” that “it sucks to be married to a marriage counselor” because of the blind spots he can acquire despite — or perhaps because of — his relationship expertise.

“If I get too high-falutin’… like I’m a know-it-all, she’ll bring me down to Earth really quickly,” he said, both of them nodding. It’s this “BS detector” that served both Higdon and “Rock Solid Relationship” well; not only did Susan design the book but she also worked as a sounding board for her husband, often helping him clarify his ideas and streamline passages. For his part, in general, Higdon says he helps his wife have fun, something that, having come from a work-worshiping family, she finds hard to do.

“I like to tell people that I’ve made it as hard as possible on him so he can learn more,” Susan said with a smirk.

— Reporter: 541-617-7816, pmadsen@bendbulletin.com