How to have both relationship security and passion
Last week, I wrote about the three stages of intimacy- the Lust Stage, The Romantic Stage and the Attachment Stage. Each stage comes with its own purpose, accompanying hormones and neurotransmitters and emotional states. You can always read that article which is titled- Evolutionary Psychology and Lust, Romance and Attachment on my website. Is it possible to have the passion and excitement of the earlier stages with the security and “calm” of the attachment stage?
I say enthusiastically and emphatically- YES!!!
In the earlier stages, the excitement and vitality is done for us through hormones and natural chemicals. Yet through our ability to have a vision, our intention, and our creativity, we can have the security of a long-term relationship and some if not all of the excitement of our earlier courtship. How? By expressing our multiple internal parts. We have many parts to us and the key to a long hot marriage is to be able to exhibit as many of these parts as possible with our partner.
For example, I have a part of me that is responsible and can bring money into our household, help people, be a great dad to my daughters and be an overall reliable person. That is needed for healthy attachment to my daughters as well as my wife. My family (as well as my clients) need to feel that they can rely on me. (I will throw in here- being a good listener is a great help in evoking a sense of trust in our significant other). At the same time, I am a fun, sexual, playful spontaneous person. I am that because 1) it is inside me (as it is in you) and 2) I can choose to express that part of me. And I choose to express the wild, sexual playful side in my monogamous relationship with my wife. If I were to start a brand new relationship, the playful, fun side could come out easily due to the novelty of the new relationship. What I need to do in my marriage is to create some novelty. I visualize how I want my relationship to be, I set an intention to create a playful wild relationship and I follow through with creative ways to do that. I discuss some of these ways in my newest book Love, Sex and Karaoke, 52 Ways to Ignite Your Love Life. Then when it is needed, I can revert back to responsible, reliable me.
The relationship becomes a portal in which you can see and experience the various parts of you. In beginnings of relationship, we automatically (usually) are playful and sexual. As relationships go on, we automatically become routine, predictable and not so much fun with our partner. I ask you- “Why be on automatic if you can have both?”
I will tell you the number one reason why this is such a problem:
AS YOUR PARTNER BECOMES INCREASINGLY MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU, YOU STOP RISKING AND EXPOSING YOURSELF. As you rely on your partner and get more entrenched in each other’s lives, you tend to avoid the possibility of being rejected, abandoned or humiliated. Instead, you need to go against this automatic self-protective mechanism. That’s right- Instead I would suggest that the best way to go is that the more you rely on your partner and the more you have to lose, the more you need to risk being vulnerable, playful and sexual. Be unpredictable, be playful and be bold. Risk rejection. Just like you needed to be when you first met; otherwise you probably would have never got together in the first place. Now you have the ingredients of the wildness of the early relationship and the security of the attachment phase. The more your relationship can shift fluidly between these two states, the more robust your relationship will be. There you have the Consummate Relationship.
In my Thursday tip this week I will list my favorite ways to create novelty in my own relationship in and out of the bedroom. (That’s right- but I am only giving you a small sample and will keep it brief so you can borrow, modify or add to your own list).
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