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Bring Romance Back Into Your Relationship
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Getting More Out of Sex
(written by Jennifer L. Foust, M.S.,
LPC)
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Bring Romance Back into your relationship (written by Tracy L. Wood, M.Ed., LMFT)
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Seduction, written by Alex Caroline Robboy,
CAS, MSW, ACSW, LCSW
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Putting Passion Back into your Relationship
(written by
Jennifer Foust, M.S., LPC)
Bringing Romance Back Into Your Relationship
If you’re in a longer-term relationship, you likely have longed for the
feelings that were present in the beginning, when it was new, intriguing,
exciting. You may wonder if you’re with the right person, since you no longer
light up at the sight of your partner. You may even be ready to end your
relationship because it has become regular, predictable, and yes – even a little
boring. Not so fast. Losing that “in love” feeling is a normal developmental
stage of love relationships, one that every couple experiences. But just
because it’s normal doesn’t mean you have to like it, or even accept it for much
longer. Before you entertain doubts or even end a perfectly good relationship,
there’s a great chance you can bring the romance back. That’s right –
you! Wishing for your partner to revert to old behavior puts you in a passive,
powerless position and invites sorrow. It is precisely this passivity that has
turned those roaring flames of passion into glowing embers. In order to bring
romance back into your relationship, you first need to understand why it left.
What’s Happened Neurochemically
When you and your partner were in the early stages of courtship, the
euphoria of infatuation had help from your brain: there is strong evidence that
the altered state or “high” of infatuation and attraction is accompanied by
neurochemical changes. In this stage, your brain was flooded with a powerful
chemical cocktail (including 1- phenylethylamine (PEA), an amphetamine-like
neurotransmitter, 2 - dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, and
3 – norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter associated with exhilaration, excessive
energy, and feelings of excitement) that let you feel boundless energy,
optimistic, hyper-aroused, etc. The effects of this cocktail were short-lived,
however, and when the high was gone, you and your partner were on your own. So
if you’ve come down from the “high” remind yourself that this is normal. This
is not the end of love, but the beginning. Now you can see your partner how he
or she really is, instead of a love-blind, idealized version of him/her, and
enter the next phases of your relationship: discovery and connection.
What’s Happened Behaviorally
We’ve all heard that relationships take a lot of work, but really, who wants
to work hard at love? In the beginning of your relationship you didn’t work
hard at all, right? It was effortless, romantic, and spontaneous. Why, you
wonder, can’t it be that way still?
Here’s the truth: you’ve been fooling
yourself. You never worked harder for love, romance and sex than you did in the
beginning, when you spent tremendous energy on your relationship. You made
great efforts to please your lover, you made romance happen, and every step of
it was planned -- not spontaneous at all. Believing that you didn’t work hard
in the beginning is an absolute falsehood. The truth is that you worked your
hardest then, and now you’re probably not working hard enough.
Relationship behaviors can be
understood by thinking of them as only two types: nurturance and maintenance.
Nurturance includes the meaningful and rewarding activities couples engage in to
strengthen the relationship, such as give massages, send flowers, take baths, go
for long walks, dine out, send a card, dance, laugh, exercise, play cards or
board games, express love, gratitude, appreciation, attraction, dreams, hopes,
etc. Maintenance includes the day-to-day responsibilities we all have to attend
to in order to get by: earn a living, clean the house/apartment, pay the bills,
shop for groceries, do the laundry, run errands, etc.
Early in your relationship you probably
spent 90% of your time on nurturance, and only 10% on maintenance. As time
passed, the percentages naturally evened out to a more realistic and sustainable
50/50. Still, you felt happy about your relationship and how effectively you
balanced the nurturance and the maintenance. As more time passed, however, the
scales may have tipped far in the other direction -- perhaps your nurturance
activities are only 10%, while the maintenance activities are 90%. At this
point you may feel distressed about your relationship, disconnected with your
partner, and disappointed that you have so much to do, you just don’t have time
to have fun anymore.
When you feel distressed, disconnected
or disappointed, pay close attention because it’s your wake-up call. It doesn’t
necessarily mean that you’re in the wrong relationship. It may mean that it’s
time to shift the balance and engage in more nurturance behaviors. It’s time to
try hard at love, just like you did in the beginning.
What’s Happened Sexually
Your sexual relationship has probably stagnated. You can probably predict
with close to 100% accuracy what will happen the next time you and your partner
will have sex. It has become routine, predictable and a little boring. When
two people first get together, they engage in an unconscious but very complex
dance of accommodation in which they manage their own anxieties, as well as
their partner’s, by asking for and participating in only those behaviors that
seem emotionally safe -- that is, those behaviors least likely to result in
judgment, rejection, or discomfort. With little or no discussion, you and your
partner agreed to what is, and is not, permissible in the bedroom. In essence
you and your partner have colluded over time to limit your sexual expression,
when in all likelihood both of you crave to expand it.
You can generate some more sexual
passion quite easily by ending the collusion and bringing your full sexual and
erotic self to the bedroom. Here are just a few ideas to get you started, but
only you know what your full sexual expression would look like:
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Break the routine (if you usually
start with kissing, start with oral sex)
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Share
fantasies
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Role
play
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Introduce new behaviors
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Talk dirty
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Incorporate erotica, porn, or sex
toys
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Initiate sex in an unexpected place,
or at un unexpected time
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Allow for and create different types
of sexual experiences: playful, tender, explicit, fast, light-hearted,
emotional, brief, prolonged, etc. Mix it up.
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Play a sex game
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Devote time to visualizing and
anticipating a sexual encounter with your partner
The specifics are not important. What
is important is that you ask yourself: have I shared my full sexual self with my
partner? If not, how can I start? Know what you like, what you want and invite
your partner to go on the journey with you to explore your sexual and erotic
potential.
What Your Expectations Have Created
If you came to the relationship expecting the “in love” feeling to last a
lifetime, you are likely disappointed. This expectation created an unrealistic,
unsustainable goal. In this case, it may be your expectations, and not your
relationship, that need adjustment. On the flip side, if you came to the
relationship expecting that after the initial high, it would inevitably be
regular and dull, then you may have unwittingly, and unnecessarily, created just
that. Both stances reflect extremes – the reality is likely somewhere in
between. Look at the expectations you brought to the relationship and determine
what those expectations have created. By being intentional about your
relationship and re-balancing the ratio of nurturance to maintenance, you can
bring the romance back.
Written by Tracy L. Wood, M.Ed., LMFT
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