O'Grady Psychology Associates

Psychotherapy, Marriage Counseling, Neuropsychological Assessment

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Sex and Romance in Long Term Relationships

Harboring fantasies about someone else while happily coupled isn’t unusual. In most relationships, whether of two years, 20, or more, one or both partners will likely experience fleeting moments of imagining how exciting life would be with a different person. This could begin innocently while flirting in the break room, or having coffee with a co-worker, or reconnecting with an old lover. Such moments provide a sweet, brief ego boost. But when short-lived fantasies take hold, moving from transient to obsessive, we should take heed.

When Erotic Fantasies Cross the Line

Fantasies are significant as a precursor to affairs because imagination is a precondition of desire, which awakens our senses. Though we’re pretending, a fantasy can actually feel closer to our authentic selves, or the selves we think we should be. That is why we come alive again when we encounter new love. Risky and exciting, it pushes the boundaries we have established in ourselves.

In such reveries, we imagine how much more fun, sexier, and passionate we would be in this other relationship. The key here is how different we would be. For although partners play a role, it’s usually not the marriage that has grown stale, but how we see ourselves. Although we cherish marriage’s safety, permanence, and predictability, these qualities can also be deadening. In my psychotherapy practice, I have seen time and time again how couples lose their connection by trying to live as a perfect couple, then a perfect family. The struggle to earn a good living, make a good home, and raise a strong family takes priority. Children claim much time, space, and emotion. Sports, band, scouting; daily squabbles about homework, screen time, and chores—all these issues squeeze yet more time from romance.

Because we do long for the continuity and safety of togetherness, the lack of romance feels okay–until one day, we realize it doesn’t. But it’s this gradual erosion of intimacy that can lay the groundwork for fantasies of another partner that then play out in meetings, confidences, and intimate details of mutual marital disenchantment. Soothing support from an attractive other can be intoxicating. In an emotional or physical affair, we feel young. Our old boredom falls away to reveal a passionate, sexy person. We blame the spouse for our dull lives. The new love gives us the illusion that we are different, and we don’t need to look at our well-constructed fortification against insecurity.

If you’ve lost your Self through trying to be a perfect couple or family, addressing this problem is a worthy goal. But running to the novelty of a new partner is a feeble way to do it. It’s true that marriage requires surrendering parts of our Self  in the service of the relationship, and many people feel regret about their choices, often triggered by a crisis or major life shift (such as aging or retirement, giving up their career to raise a family, or the loss of possible adventures in favor of marriage’s security.) But we should remember that surrendering the Self can be tremendously valuable to growth as long as we don’t give up too much– and also that disowning responsibility and projecting our unhappiness onto a partner is a set-up for an emotional or physical affair.

Understanding Your  Role When Romance Leaves the Marriage

If excitement has disappeared from the bedroom, leading to fantasies about someone else, the best next step is to understand our own role in the situation rather than giving up on the marriage in search of novelty.  When we marry, we make vow, implicit or explicit, that issues are to be faced together and worked through, not evaded. James Hollis writes in The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other (1998) that the greatest gift to others is our own best selves. Our marriage may have met our need for grounding—to be known, and to know our partner, with a comfortable predictability. But this devotion to security and familiarity eventually collides with our need for breaking established patterns so that we can encounter something unpredictable and awe-inspiring. Romantic passion can indeed be the chariot to take us there, but not if it is the creation of an affair, no matter how compelling.

And the irony is that if we do take up a new relationship, we are still ourselves, and over time, that relationship will lose its allure. I have seen countless clients on their second or third serious relationship who privately admit that they made a mistake. They realized too late that they, too, had a role to play in what was missing in the relationship. Often, the same issues come up with the new partner. They feel deep regret for breaking up a good thing in favor of an illusion, however intoxicating it is. There are exceptions: sometimes an affair is a stepping stone out of a bad, unfixable marriage and that new relationship can bring happiness and healing.

Averting an Affair

Averting an affair is doable, but it takes work from both partners, because talking about dissatisfaction with our love life is scary. It requires partners to look, unflinchingly and together, at just where we’re most vulnerable—our sexuality.

Couples therapy is often about helping partners understand that what they think are impediments to their sensual pleasure and satisfaction, and out of their control, are in fact, their constructions. Through all the travails of marriage, when we can still embrace and encourage individual growth, and not have to sacrifice the security and safety our relationship provides, our love deepens. And that makes room for romance.

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Remaking Love: When did you stop dancing?

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Amor and Psyche

Taking Down the Walls to Intimacy

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

Sometime during the first episode of BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, I fell in love with Mr. Darcy. So much so that my husband began to suffer in comparison. And why not? Darcy is handsome, rich, and unobtainable, not to mention the British accent and dark brooding eyes. But it was his radical transformation from an arrogant snob to a thoughtful, considerate gentleman who fiercely protects his beloved his sister that sealed the deal. I was smitten.

It’s easy to idealize the other when we fall in love, and it can feel like now, everything will be perfect. In The Symposium, Socrates explains that “Zeus resolved to cut [people] in half to humble them. He declared that they shall walk upright on two legs, but each forever desiring his other half. . . . Each of us when separated is always looking for his other half.” This metaphor describes the compelling nature of romance, where we see—and fall in love with—unacknowledged or unconscious parts of ourselves in another. By reflecting back to us our ideal selves (generous, sensual, strong) lovers seem to complete us. We all contain seeds of our potential selves within, but it’s hard to develop them fully on our own, without that loving reflection.

People spend lifetimes searching for this lost self, even if the longing is barely conscious.

When relationships are new, we’re intoxicated by the experience of being admired and desired. It’s enlivening, surprising, and immensely gratifying when another person helps you discover unexpected or forgotten qualities: confidence, spontaneity, sexiness, fun.

But should you expect the same thrill if you’ve been married for 10, 20, or 30 years? As George Bernard Shaw wrote in the play Getting Married, “When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”

Romances convey a warped view of love because they show only the highlights, from the infatuation to the happy ending. We’re not seeing the in-between—the reality of loss, hurt, and work. As Le Guin writes, love has to be made and remade all the time. The happy ending is only the beginning. No matter how romantic or meant-to-be a relationship seems, couples must endure lots of challenges to stay together in a maturing relationship.

Being someone’s other half—being responsible for them to feel complete—is a lot for a relationship to hold. We find a person who makes a good screen for our projections and feel profound connectedness, hope, enlivened energy, and a feeling of coming home. But these projections are based on ideals, not reality. Real people who are living together on a daily basis are bound to disappoint the fantasy’s huge expectations.  The loss can feel catastrophic if you’re not emotionally pretty healthy. But at the same time, a good marriage is a path to wholeness if we respond well. When we withdraw our projections, and stop seeking unrealistic fantasy partners, we begin to see ourselves.

Recapturing the initial breathless excitement of romance is a fantasy too. It’s a little bit sad—but a long-term relationship does not have to be stale. Like bread, relationships will rise and fall, but by working at it, we will continue to nurture ourselves as individuals and as a couple. Committed relationships may not offer intoxication, but they do provide deeper satisfactions. But we have to take those opportunities when they arise.

I recall the poignancy with which a 50-year-old client—recently separated from her husband—told me that she regretted not continuing dance lessons when her husband asked. At the time she quit dancing, she felt old, unattractive, and preoccupied with things that seemed in hindsight, unimportant. She longed to go back in time and rekindle the fun and creativity she had ignored for too long.

The Importance of Vulnerability

In any long-term marriage, successful interactions over time build a sense of trust and allow for safety and dependency. Just as infants mold their bodies to their mothers, couples surrender to each other’s embrace, allowing them to be vulnerable, supported, and cared for. With many repeated experiences, these habits of trust and intimacy become ingrained.

But in committed relationships, we must acknowledge the reality of imperfection. Some interactions fail—the longed-for empathy and understanding is absent, and we get hurt. Failed interactions that get repeated become habitual. These failures of attachment can take all sorts of shapes: repeated criticisms, loss of sexual intimacy, years of feeling blamed or judged, or difficulty working with conflict. And over time, defenses are erected to protect our soft parts. We become distant, angry, and disengaged. When couples eventually seek therapy, the wall separating them is usually very high and very strong.

There is often a moment in therapy when couples realize, if only barely, that they want to save their relationship. They can acknowledge what they bring to the table and how each has a role to play in constructing their particular wall. In that moment of vulnerability, they ask, ”How do we take down a wall that has been standing for so many years?”

A wrecking ball is not the answer. And it can’t be solved by some simplistic listicle of “10 things to build back intimacy.” It has to be done brick by brick. Almost all of us are naturally oriented toward growth, with healthy needs and desires, but it’s hard to see our own defenses. After years of reinforcing rigidity, it takes an empathic and skilled therapist to help foster a new sense of agency and reprocess experiences to make new meanings. Success lies in compartmentalizing those aspects of the relationship that involve empathic failures while savoring and tending those habits of intimacy that allow for deep experiences of trust and safety.

Knowing the Ruts that Comfort and Confine

Thinking of a relationship in terms of intimacy rather than passionate romance can be helpful. Knowing a partner thoroughly and being known ourselves can be deeply joyful.

When we lower walls that were raised over years of earning a living and raising a family, we gain receptivity to surprise. We become more engaged in living in a way that allows for discovery and growth and brings excitement back into our relationship. We don’t blame our partner for our boredom. We open up to their creativity as well as our own. Relying on our partner to be the source of our excitement when we are unable to generate our own is unfair.

While some of the realities of long-term relationships are painful to face, giving up the fantasy of having something better with a new person is fiction. In contrast, knowing that you can capture and remake some of what drew you together, and hold onto your shared history (good or difficult) will bring depth and intimacy. Facing problems and challenges honestly, realistically, and together, even if there is no immediate or easy fix, is more sustaining than fantasy, just as bread is more sustaining—and to grownups, tastes better—than cotton candy.

 

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Look Into My Eyes: The crucial role of eye contact in relationships

Eye contact is crucial in couple and family relationship. People are innately attracted to faces, especially eyes. The human face is associated with our identity; we are recognized more through our eyes than through any other facial feature. ”Because the eyes offer such rich social information, adults and infants alike show a natural attraction to the whole face,” write contributors to the APA handbook of nonverbal communication (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2016, pp. 335-362). Those who have trouble processing or dealing with social information, such as people with autism, schizophrenia, or social anxiety, tend to avoid eye contact; job seekers are told that good eye contact will make a positive impression.

When a relationship is new, lovers can spend hours gazing into each other’s eyes over dinner or while lying in bed, enjoying all the nuances of thought, feeling, and passion that can be communicated through facial expression. Young parents watch their children intently, searching their faces to read emotional reactions to sad or exciting events.

The Importance of Eye Contact

But at some point, we stop making eye contact. The romantic relationship matures, distractions (kids, work, medical problems, financial troubles) come in; kids attend to their devices, ignoring parents; parents chauffer their kids while talking on their phones; we eat dinner in front of the TV or our tablets, looking down every time a notification pops up. Whole days can go by without really seeing our partner’s or our children’s faces. In fact, in a previous post on non-sexual touch, I admit to a time when our twins were young, we were both working a lot, and I failed to notice that my husband had shaved his mustache three days before! That was a wake-up call for me.

In couples’ therapy, I gather a lot of information about how my clients communicate by watching their non-verbal interactions. Let’s take Amy and Paul as an example. If Amy and Paul never look at each other, or if Amy looks at Paul but Paul doesn’t return the gaze—his eyes darting around the room instead—I learn something of their connection. Paul has trouble making eye contact with me as well, which also tells me something.

They are coming to therapy because Amy feels that Paul is distant and disengaged. The two seldom interact, whether after work or on weekends. On a typical evening, Paul will come home and turn on the sports channel. Amy will call out from the other room with a question. Distracted, Paul doesn’t acknowledge her. Amy feels neglected, Paul feels he can never please her, and divorce looms. It is important to make eye contact to know that your partner is really listening. Trying to communicate from different rooms will lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding.

This scenario is very common in relationships. The partner calling for attention feels innocent of blame, saying “He never listens, he never responds.” When I gently point out that she’s trying to get his attention when he’s otherwise preoccupied, she explains that he must have heard her and is just ignoring her.

Maybe, after going on for years, this is has become the case. But often the simpler reason is that Paul is watching the game and he literally doesn’t hear. Or he half hears, but the question never gets into his long-term memory.

As is often the case with couples by the time they get to counseling, their dynamic has become entrenched after many years of hurt feelings on both sides. Each blames the other, Amy criticizing Paul for his lack of engagement, and Paul keeping all his feelings to himself. This apparent sulking serves to infuriate Amy more, and she in turn harps on him with progressive intensity. Walls go up and prevent the vulnerability that is needed for true intimacy. Neither Amy nor Paul realize what they are doing to prevent connection.

Look at me when I’m talking to you!

When someone makes eye contact with you, they’re signaling that you’re the object of their attention. There are cultural differences regarding gaze and respect, but in general, we look at those who are socially relevant to us. An averted gaze, in contrast, signals disinterest, shyness, or evasion (although research is mixed about whether lying causes less eye contact). That’s why parents demand “Look at me when I’m talking to you!” or someone suspicious of another might say “Look me in the eye and say that.” It is astonishing how often couples, and kids and parents, try to communicate without ever looking at each other.

But getting back to Amy and Paul, it was important for Paul to understand how dismissed Amy felt when he didn’t answer her or make eye contact with her. Of course, it was also important for Amy to have Paul’s attention before speaking to him. By taking the time to really look at each other, Amy and Paul began to feel closer. Each felt they were being heard.

Getting the focus where it belongs

If your family or romantic connection feels cold and distant, consider the role that gaze may play in preventing closeness. Here are some tips for getting the focus where it belongs.

  • Ban screens of any type (TV, computer, phone, or game) and reading at the dinner table so you can all converse face to face.
  • Make a point of turning to look at someone when they speak.
  • If someone isn’t meeting your gaze, don’t assume they don’t care. They may be preoccupied with work stress. Ask if there is a good time to talk and make a point of coming together a bit later.
  • Kids can be big distractions. If your kids continually interrupt your conversations, let them know that they need to respect adult time.
  • Make sure you have your partner’s attention when talking to them. Don’t try to talk from different rooms.
  • Turning toward your partner builds intimacy.

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“I’d be better off single”: Distress-maintaining thinking

6523102125_059d03f888_bHow may times have you gone to bed thinking that you hate your partner, fantasizing how you would live on your own? Your thoughts snag on difficulties like how to tell your kids, your family, and the neighbors, and how much it would cost to live in two households.

If you’ve had such thoughts, you are not alone. Transient feelings of anger, dislike, or even hatred toward a partner are not uncommon. “Transient” is the important word: we all have those feelings from time to time, but they don’t become harmful unless we nurse these feelings of discontent, disappointment, and grievance—until they add up to a permanently negative perspective. Therapists call this “distress-maintaining thinking.”

The fantasy that life would be better without your partner feeds the cycle of negativity and keeps you unhappy. This is a huge danger zone, making our relationship vulnerable to secrets, even affairs. Thinking that there is a more perfect person out there who will meet your needs is usually wrong. Blaming your partner for your unhappiness is easier than understanding what role you play in the disharmony.

Fantasies of escape can abet distress-maintaining thinking, but so can fantasies of perfection. We grow up listening to fairy tales, and often form our expectations from them: The princess must love the toad, the knight gives freedom to the hag, and the beauty falls in love with the beast. Real marriage, though, requires confronting what you bring to the relationship—not just looking at your partner’s flaws or imagined imperfections. The fantasy of the perfect partner who always loves and understands you is a child’s fantasy. Children want to be loved unconditionally, but adult relationships take effort on both sides.

 For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

 Equally distress-maintaining is simply giving up on a relationship. I had a client who had grown so detached from his partner that he was paralyzed by his inability to leave the marriage. In his despair, he told me the phrase I was to hear many times from other partner-providers: “It’s cheaper to keep her.” He had resigned himself to a passionless life because paying spousal support would have significantly diminished the retirement accounts and portfolio he’d taken years to build. But despair and casting oneself as the victim also means taking no agency in improving the relationship.

Relationship Enhancing Thoughts

In contrast to distress-maintaining thinking, cultivate relationship-enhancing thoughts. This practice doesn’t deny a relationship’s problems, but allows you to think about them in a way that brings understanding and insight to the challenges you face. Giving time and attention keeps friendship strong, leading to more engagement and more passion.

Don’t wait to redefine yourself by imagining a life with a different partner. Don’t just give up. Look at what you want for yourself now. How can you change the way you think about your marriage? As I was writing this post, a friend called to tell me about something I said to her several years ago that really stuck with her. I had mentioned the importance of making bids for contact and the “turning toward” concept, and how failing to do this will weaken connections, leading to negative perspective. She told me the image that come to her mind was one of a stack of neglected vinyl records stacked on top of each other without their sleeves, collecting dust and warping. Each time she ignored a bid or turned away from her lover, it was like adding another record to the pile, making the music increasingly unplayable.

Expecting perfection and continually ignoring opportunities to appreciate and admire each other compounds our marital problems, setting us up for escape fantasies. When we do the work of love by making a conscious effort to notice how attracted we are to our mates, when we make a point of noticing their positive traits, we feel comforted and loved.

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Building and Keeping a Strong Relationship After Having Kids

Couples counseling to help cope with disappointments with partner. Marital conflict is bad for kids. While every marriage has conflict, especially after the first baby, persistent difficulties in the marital relationship expose children to increased chance of depression, poor communication skills, and conduct disorder later in life.

Cindy and Max came to see me after their daughter Sophie started pre-school and teachers called them in to discuss her inability to speak in class or to play with other kids. Cindy and Max thought she was just shy, but Sophie was diagnosed with a form of social anxiety. I learned that the couple, not wanting Sophie to suffer the anxiety of being left with a babysitter, had never gone out on a date after her birth. They were never alone together and had even stopped entertaining friends. At home, Cindy and Max spent no couple time, except perhaps when bickering about who was going to do certain chores. Most meals were eaten in front of the TV; when the family did all sit down at a table together, Sophie would be the focus of their attention.

Cindy and Max responded to these tensions by stonewalling. Conflict lingered without any closure. Sophie observed all this, of course, and her separation anxiety increased until she became mute in front of anyone but her parents. It was only the diagnosis of anxiety that spurred her parents to look at their unhappiness and how it was affecting their daughter.

The Best Way to Take Care of Your Kids is to Take Care of  Your Marriage

The most important thing you can do is to stay good friends with your partner. Handle conflicts with gentleness and positivity; repair arguments when they become nasty. These seemingly simple things can create a climate that fosters intimacy, romance, and emotional engagement because these things grow out of a couple’s friendship and their ability to manage conflict.

Couples of today expect a lot from marriage; in previous generations when roles were more clear-cut, expectations were lower. People become partners because they value time together, but a new baby shifts the balance. Couple time recedes and baby time takes the lion’s share. For women, marital satisfaction goes way down, from 62% of childless married women reporting being very happy to only 38% of new mothers reporting feeling happy.

Please note: While many women get the “baby blues,” a relatively brief emotional letdown after childbirth, some 8 to 19% of women reported having frequent postpartum depressive (PPD) symptoms in a CDC survey. These symptoms include having scary or negative thoughts about the baby, worrying about hurting the baby, and feeling ashamed about not being a good mother. PPD is a serious problem that can not only affect the sufferer but also impair infant-mother attachment and the marriage. If a woman has this more severe depression, it is important she discuss her symptoms with her physician, who will refer her to a psychologist for counseling and a psychiatrist for medication evaluation.

Protecting Your Sex Life is One Way to Stay Connected When Children Take So Much

Having kids puts a damper on a couple’s sex life in several ways. Nursing shifts the hormonal balance by suppressing estrogen, increasing prolactin, and lowering testosterone levels. This combination results in vaginal dryness, which can cause pain during intercourse and lower libido. Breastfeeding is literally draining, and it’s additionally tiring to have sole responsibility to feed or even pump, especially on a newborn’s two-hour feeding cycles. Nursing does increase oxytocin, the feel-good hormone. With the baby meeting the mother’s needs for happiness, warmth, and intimacy, fathers can feel left out. However, fathers can experience rising oxytocin levels when cuddling their babies—they don’t have to feel left out http://www.livescience.com/10784-dads-hormone-boost-caring-baby.html. Many women, whether they nurse or not, feel “touched out” by the end of a day full of clingy young children.

While it’s not possible to change your hormonal balance, looking at what you can change will go a long way. Understanding that loss of desire is normal and that it will return is reassuring. It can also be reassuring to know that couples can maintain good sex lives without gymnastics. As Dr. Helen Fisher says, “If you want to start a very active sex life with your partner, don’t wait for your sex drive to get you to the bedroom. Just get to the bedroom.” Quickie sex releases all the feel-good chemicals of long gourmet sex. I tell my clients that meat & potato sex is fine (or gluten free.) Not every meal is gourmet.  Even if you aren’t in the mood, the closeness you feel will increase warmth and affection when not in the bedroom.

There are many other ways to protect your relationship after having children. In future posts, I will discuss other important ways to take care of your children by caring for your marriage.