The lull in a long-term relationship can present itself in a myriad of ways. Sometimes losing the spark looks like scrolling at the dinner table instead of engaging with one another. Other times it means sleeping in separate rooms for month.
It’s unlikely that two people can partner for years and years and not experience some sort of disinterest or disappointment.
Even when a relationship appears to be thriving, a couple might be facing invisible or at least obfuscated struggles.
Take Barack and Michelle Obama. While promoting her book “The Light We Carry” in 2022, Michelle Obama opened up about the pain points in her marriage.
Long-term relationships often endure significant chunks of time where you, and maybe your partner, are not happy with how the partnership is functioning, she said on an episode of NPR’s Life Kit.
“You have to be prepared to have long stretches of discomfort,” Obama said. “And [by] long I mean it lasts for years.”
If you’ve experienced these periods of unease or apathy, or are currently in one, it can be hard to know how to jolt your relationship back to life.
The first step is to have an honest conversation, says renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel. The author and podcast host recently released “Esther Perel’s Desire Bundle,” a duo of online courses that teach you how to reignite a romantic flame.
“You have to take the initiative,” she tells CNBC Make It. “You don’t have to wait and just say, ‘My partner is not doing anything, and it’s completely dead between us, and it’s totally listless, and there’s zero energy.’ You need to say, ‘I want to enliven our relationship.'”
If you can’t find the right words, Perel offers up this script as guidance:
1. Address the obvious
“It’s been a long time since we actually talked about our relationship. I’ve been thinking about how we are so good at running the house, having a social life together, taking care of your family, taking care of our kids, and, often, I think we’re kind of last on the list.”
2. Express what you feel is missing
“It’s not so often that we ask each other, ‘How are you?’ And it’s not so often that we hold hands anymore, and it’s not so often that we just look in each other’s eyes and smile and say, ‘We did well.’ I miss you.”
3. Ask if they’re open to making a change
“I want to invite you to reconnect, to make space for us, to make us important, to not give the best of ourselves to work and bring the leftovers home, to not take care of everybody, but not our relationship. Would you like to join me?”
‘Even the cactus can die’
If your partner wants to try, the next step is to put some activities on the calendar immediately. These do not have to be about intimacy, but they should awaken a curiosity and excitement in the two of you, Perel says.
For example, instead of dining at your favorite restaurant, snag tickets to watch some live music. Maybe your bikes have been sitting in the garage for years. Dig them out and go for a ride.
“It’s not like people don’t know what to do,” Perel says. “They’ve often done it in the past. But they’ve stopped doing it and they basically have treated their relationship like a cactus, and then they’re surprised that even the cactus can die.”
Remember, physical intimacy can be part of reigniting the spark, but resuscitating a relationship is “not about having sex,” Perel says.
“It is about bringing back a sense of aliveness, of vibrancy, of vitality,” she says. “You can have sex and feel nothing. It is about bringing back the energy to the relationship.”
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