How YOU can bring back the spark!
Why Security Doesn’t Excite Excitement and Why Excitement Doesn’t Make Security Feel Secure!
What makes us feel secure rarely turns us on. Security is a relief. It’s sure. Security soothes your nervous system. Excitement feels dangerous. It’s stimulating. Excitement pumps the adrenaline. Adventure and intimacy are opposites, but both are needed to make a relationship strong.
This isn’t usually a problem when you’re first getting to know someone… it’s exciting and new all the time. When you’ve been together for a long time and you start to REALLY get to know each other’s habits and patterns… Well, there isn’t much that is different and unknown anymore… The newness becomes the known, which feels more secure, but isn’t very exciting.
One of the reasons that new people are bright, shiny, sparkly new objects in our life, why they’re exciting is they’re unknown. That unknown factor often feels erotically charged for us. If you’re in a long term relationship, one reason it might feel less exciting and passionate and romantic is that you guys are doing a really great job of getting to know each other.
I really love Esther Perel’s book Mating in Captivity. It’s brilliant. Read it. Esther explains why long term relationships are difficult. It’s because people in relationships are looking for two different things. They’re looking for 1) excitement and what’s erotic, that hot passionate thing that naturally happens in a new relationship, and 2) they’re looking for security and assuredness in their relationships. Brendon Burchard’s The Charge can help you understand people’s need for change, and their “controlling for new,” as he says.
How do you balance Security and Excitement?
Start talking about your needs around trying new things, and your needs around safety and what, for you, makes a relationship feel secure and solid. Each of us has a need to know we’re secure and loved. Once we have that foundational safety beneath our feet, we often feel more adventurous. Our need for new comes up. By sharing what you need, and hearing what your partner needs, you can double whammy your relationship and create a dynamic where you access both security AND excitement!
By being conscious about the dual needs, you can meet them in fun ways. Offering your partner reassurance (or asking for reassurance yourself) that the relationship is secure before, during or after you do something new and challenging, might completely change the experience. You get to be cheerleaders for one another and adventure buddies all at the same time. Holding hands as you go on that rollercoaster you’ve always been afraid to try… Encouraging each other to try that hobby you’ve always dreamed about… What do you need to feel secure while trying new things?
So how do you reignite those feelings of passion and romance and fun again?
Start creating experiences that help the two of you discover and re-discover each other anew.
One of the things that you can do to start creating more romance and passion and fun again, silly as it may sound, is to create a team project.
Even if you’re not in a relationship, or just starting one, it’s useful to know ahead of time that the longer people are in a relationship, the greater the chance of losing the passion and fun. A team project is specifically designed for you to rediscover yourselves, to be a team, and learn something new about yourselves. For some people, having and raising kids becomes their team project… By the very nature of having children you start discovering new things about each other that you didn’t know before because you guys are embarking on parenting together.
There’s a joke in there about discovering what you’re both like when deprived of sleep for two to three years, but I’ll let it pass… 😉
Unfortunately, the team project of parenting also requires a lot of new stresses on your relationship that you can’t get out of because you have these little tiny human beings who have some really huge needs… I’m not recommending that your team project has to be getting each other pregnant (unless that’s on your bucket list)! Your team project can be whatever you want to create together, and is basically designed to help you rediscover your relationship and learn about yourself and about each other.
One example of a team project would be reading Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity, and doing the exercises and homework together. What you’re doing is you’re rediscovering each other. You create this team project with the book so that you’re learning things about yourself that you didn’t know, and sharing them with your partner as they share the new things they didn’t know about themselves with you.
My Relationship10x program is a great team project, too. You can walk your way through to an amazing relationship in 10 minutes a day!
And if you want a team project around sexuality (I highly recommend having one!), check out my next article. It will certainly bring back the spark!
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