What We're Reading Now

Little Things Can Keep Your Love Alive

12 February 2013

Allison read a lot about love in the last week and thought about what it takes to keep a relationship going strong after the initial passion settles into a slower simmer.

Tags: communication, happiness, valentine's day

It’s almost Valentine’s Day. For some of you this will be an important day to celebrate love. Others may lament the commercialization of the holiday and the sickly, sweet pressure to perform. Others still may feel left out because they're single. I’ve even been invited to a Black Thursday party this year. Regardless of how you feel about 14 February, my guess is that you’ve spent some portion of your life thinking about romantic love.

It’s certainly a topic that comes up often with my clients and I’ve had many chances to think about it myself over the years. I also read a lot about the brain, neuroscience, and the emerging neuroleadership field. So when The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction came out last year, I was hopeful about the book jacket’s summary. “Physical attraction, jealousy, infidelity, mother-infant bonding—all the behaviors that so often leave us befuddled—are now being teased out of the fog of mystery thanks to today’s social neuroscience.”

I found the myriad of scientific research stories about prairie voles, rats, leeches and the occasional human to be pretty interesting. And I certainly have a better understanding of what’s going on with all the hits of oxytocin, dopamine, opiodes, and vasopressin coursing through our brains when we’re attracted to one another, ovulating, having sex, or having babies. I even got a few actionable items from the book and a better appreciation for why falling in love feels so good and scary all at the same time. (Turns out it is has some similarities to addiction.) But on the whole, this book left me wanting more ideas about how to use all of this brain science to live a better life and have more successful relationships.

Fortunately, Jane Brody’s article, That Loving Feeling Takes a Lot of Work, from The New York Times on 14 January 2013 provided the advice I was searching for this week. (Brody often delivers exactly the practicality I crave. Last summer, I blogged about her optimism article, A Richer Life by Seeing the Glass Half Full.)

Brody starts with the fact that “...the divorce rate in the United States is exactly half the marriage rate” and new studies from Richard E. Lucas and colleagues at Michigan State University that “...have shown that the happiness boost that occurs with marriage lasts only about two years, after which people revert to their former levels of happiness – or unhappiness.” This cooling of the passion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you’ve ever fallen in love, then you know that it’s not always the most productive time and can lead to some long sessions of staring into space (or your lover’s eyes). I like how Brody says it, “The passion ignited by new love inevitably cools and must mature into the caring, compassion, and companionship that can sustain a long-lasting relationship.”

I like even more that Brody includes lots of practical tips from Dr. Lyubomirsky’s new book, The Myths of Happiness, about how to overcome the “…natural human tendency to become ‘habituated’ to positive circumstances – to get so used to things that make us feel good that they no longer do.” This tendency labeled “hedonic adaptation” is something that you and your significant other had better be ready to overcome if you want to keep your love alive. The article is short so I suggest you give it a read to find out why appreciating the little things--novelty, variety, surprises, spontaneity, increased nonsexual touching, more positive words about simple things, curiosity about your partner’s day, and support of each other’s hopes--make all the difference in the world. I’m convinced that these small acts make a big difference and Barbara L. Frederickson’s new book, Love 2.0, sounds like it will be filled with suggestions like, “…asking yourself each morning, ‘What can I do for five minutes today to make my partner’s life better?’”

As I was wrapping up my musings on love and relationships today, I had fun reading Caite White’s article in today’s C-VILLE, Feel the Love: 8 Couples We Can’t Get Enough Of. (Online Caite includes 10 couples. I like to think she just had to include two more after the paper went to print.) One of the delightful things about living in a small town is that I’m friends with many of the couples. It’s a happy read for sure, but here’s the reason I’m including it in today’s blog post. In every story, you’ll find that it’s the little things these people do for each other and like about each other that make a big difference in their relationships. So I think the verdict is in. Your big job is to remember to do some small things every day to keep your love alive.

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