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What happens to a favorite song if we listen to it over and over again? That’s right: one day it will bother us. This is still the same excellent composition, a hit, but there is no desire to listen to it anymore. The same can happen with relationships, although in the early stages it is absolutely impossible to believe in this. How to avoid it?
“Do you remember how it all started”
It all starts with a glimpse of mutual interest. You both notice him. From this spark, the flame of passion soon flares up. It is no longer possible to resist mutual attraction, and on Friday evening you go on a date. Friday smoothly flows into Monday. Happiness makes you dizzy, and with only a few hours apart, you both lose the ability to function normally. All thoughts are about the moment when you can again embrace each other and merge into a kiss.
The work starts to suffer, the boss starts to worry about whether you will meet the deadline, but you don’t care. Can’t concentrate. You spend maximum time with each other, listening to endless tales about a colleague from accounting, and it seems that you have never heard anything funnier in your life. Week follows week. It feels like these happy days will never end. “That’s her,” you say to yourself. – This is Love”.
And then the passion suddenly starts to fade away – just like the love for that song that was listened to too often. Yes, you are still close, but something is irretrievably gone. At first, you could not tear yourself away from each other and did not get out of bed for the whole weekend. Now you can’t always remember the last time you had sex – yesterday? The day before yesterday? Last week?
Her majesty routine
You spend Friday night together, and after dinner and a movie, you have sex. On Saturdays, you meet with friends, for example, on Zoom. On Sundays, you clean and cook dinner together. Monday and Tuesday are TV shows. And so on and so forth. You know exactly what you will do on any given day. It’s so convenient, so predictable, but predictability is what creates boredom. In the evenings, you ask each other about how the day went, but not because it’s really interesting – it’s just the way it is supposed to be. It’s not that you don’t care at all, it’s just that the answers don’t change much from evening to evening.
On Friday, after a hearty dinner, there is no time for making love, and Thursday evening becomes “sex time”. To rekindle the flames of passion from the smoldering embers, you are planning a vacation. And everything seems to be working out. But then you return home to the old schedule. A week goes by and there is no vacation at all. Thursday comes – “sex night”. But neither you nor your partner feel excited. Both silently undress and climb under the covers: “Well, come on?” It is no longer lovemaking, it is no longer sex, it is a weekly obligation, a marital duty.
“And how did we get to this point?”
Do you remember the song you once loved? At first she bored you, but that’s not all. One day it starts to get annoying. There is no way to listen to her anymore.
Over dinner, you think, “If I hear about that colleague from accounting again…” It’s another Thursday, “night of sex.” But you are watching the series with enthusiasm. “Oh, I didn’t notice that it was so late,” you say to each other. “Maybe let’s sleep better?” “If you don’t mind, then I don’t mind either.” You both sigh with relief, and then suddenly you think with horror: how did we come to this?
You never quarreled. No one scandalized, did not leave the house, loudly slamming the door, did not change. So where does it all go? “But I love you! you say to each other. “You know that, don’t you? We have to come up with something!”
It’s time to act
And you rip the calendar off the wall. No more routine! No friends and TV shows! On Sunday early in the morning you take your partner out for a walk. He, in turn, comes to you in the shower on Monday before work – a pleasant surprise. At dinner, instead of asking how your day went, you ask, “What would you like to achieve in life?” A few weeks later, you enroll in a dance studio or an improv acting class together and rush home after class, unable to contain yourself. You suddenly remember why you once fell in love with that song.
How to notice an impending threat in time
Routine is the “silent relationship killer” that we notice too late. To understand if he has crept too close to your couple, ask yourself: what were the last six months like? Didn’t these 180 days turn out to be similar to each other, like two drops of water? Have you experienced Groundhog Day 180 times?
Routine inevitably leads to boredom. The relationship slowly dies as you both wonder how it could have come to this. But this fate can be avoided – there are at least two simple ways. Even if you have heard about them more than once, you are unlikely to have applied them, and even more so correctly.
- Let go of expectations and add spontaneity to your life. Abandoning the routine does not mean resurrecting the relationship. Sometimes we place too many unrealistic expectations on this move, so the first and foremost thing is to abandon them. The less pressure the better. Allow yourself to be more spontaneous. Try new things and do it together. The more interesting it will be for both of you, the higher the chances that mutual attraction will return.
- Do something that interests each of you. When you are stuck in a routine, it seems that the same worn-out record is playing in your head. And when you do something that captivates, life is filled with meaning. The feeling that the relationship is pulling back disappears. Moreover, you give your partner a reason to be interested in you again. The days are no longer twins, because now you both do what is interesting to everyone and causes enthusiasm.
The more variations of your favorite tune you manage to invent, the longer the album will last.