Keeping the Spark Alive in Your Relationship

In recent years, researchers have discovered that the initial phase of a new romantic relationship is characterized by new relationship energy (NRE).  NRE refers to that intense passion you experience at the beginning of a romantic relationship, which can be exhilarating and fun (see my article: The 5 Stages of Love From Attraction to Commitment).

Keeping the Spark Alive in Your Relationship

NRE occurs during the so-called "honeymoon phase," which typically lasts up to 2-3 years or so.  

This is the phase when you spend a lot of time thinking about and yearning for that person, and when you see each other, you can't keep your hands off each other.

The Brain and New Relationship Energy 

Dr. Nan J. Wise, cognitive neuroscientist, licensed psychotherapist and certified sex therapist, explores NRE in her book, Why Sex Matters.  

According to Dr. Wise, NRE includes high levels of dopamine flooding the brain.  

Keeping the Spark Alive in Your Relationship

Dopamine plays a major role in movement, motivation, perception of reality and the ability to experience love and pleasure. 

High levels of dopamine can make you feel giddy and euphoric when you're around your partner.  

In addition, you usually experience high levels of oxytocin, often referred to as the "cuddle hormone," and vasopressin, which makes you feel emotionally and psychologically attached to your partner.

So, it's no wonder NRE makes this phase of the relationship so intense.

Tips For Keeping the Spark Alive in a Long Term Relationship

As previously mentioned, NRE eventually diminishes.

The chemicals in the brain settle down and, if your relationship endures past this phase, your feelings for each other often mature into a deeper kind of love.

Keeping the Spark Alive in Your Relationship

While it's normal for NRE to wane after a while, many couples want to know how to keep the romantic and sexual spark alive in their relationship.

Here are some tips:

• Keep Joy Alive: The ability to experience joy together is important, especially for a long term relationship that will, inevitably, go through ups and downs.  The ability to laugh together is important to maintaining the vitality in your relationship.  In addition, finding new and novel ways to be with each other can also keep the joy alive.  This could include you and your partner being more playful with each other and exploring new fantasies.

• Engage in Open Communication: Being able to give and receive feedback openly is important to keeping the spark alive.  This means being open to hearing feedback which might not always be positive without getting defensive as well as your ability to talk openly and tactfully with your partner about how you feel about all aspects of your relationship, including sex (see my articles: How to Talk to Your Partner About Sex - Part 1 and Part 2).

• Show Your Love and Affection: Rather than holding back, nurture your relationship, show your love for your partner by being physically affectionate, allowing yourself to show you're happy to reconnect with them when you've been apart, being emotionally and sexually generous in ways that are pleasing to both of you, making loving eye contact with your partner, establishing relationship goals, being aware of your peak erotic experiences as a couple, and finding other ways that are meaningful to both of you (see my articles: What Are the 5 Love Languages? and What If You and Your Partner Have Different Love Languages?).

• Be Open to New Experiences: Whether this means exploring new interests, ideas or places or finding new and exciting ways to be sexual, being open to new experiences helps to keep the spark alive in your relationship (see my article: Being Open to New Experiences).

• Be Your Own Person: Rather than merging together, find that balance between being your own person and being part of your relationship.  Maintain your own identity and interests as well as those you share with your partner.  Learn to compromise about time together and time apart.  Not only will being your own person allow you each to grow as individuals, but you'll both have something unique to bring to your relationship.  

• Be Generous: It's easy to take one another for granted, especially in a long term relationship, so it's important to show your appreciation and to be kind and emotionally generous.  Instead of keeping score, pick your battles and know when to overlook certain things that aren't important in the long run.  Know your partner's love maps and talk about your own.

Getting Help in Therapy

Everyone needs help at some point.  

If you have been unable to resolve your problems on your own, you could benefit from working with a licensed psychotherapist.

A skilled therapist can help you to develop the tools and skills you need to live a more fulfilling life.

So rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who has the expertise and experience to help you.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I am a sex positive therapist who works with individual adults and couples (see my article: What is Sex Therapy?

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Losing Yourself in a Relationship: When "Me" Gets Lost in "We"

In a prior article, Reclaiming a Lost Part of Yourself, I discussed how people, sometimes consciously or unconsciously, disavow parts of themselves and what they can do reclaim those aspects of themselves.  In this article, I'm focusing on a related subject, which involves losing your sense of individuality while you're in a relationship.

Losing Yourself in a Relationship: When "Me" Gets Lost in "We"

Most people know that being in a relationship involves certain compromises, a give-and-take in every day life.  Without a willingness to compromise and be flexible, it would be hard to sustain a long term relationship.

This isn't what I'm referring to in this article.  Rather, I'm referring to situations where you're in a relationship and you don't know who you are any more and where you begin and your partner ends because you've become so merged with each other.

It can be challenging to be a couple and still maintain your individuality, especially if you're spending all your free time together and you're not spending time with your own friends or engaging in your own interests.

Often, this happens over time, and then you find yourself saying, "Who am I?  What happened to me?"

Losing Yourself in a Relationship: When "Me" Gets Lost in "We"

Not only is this a problem for each individual in the relationship, it's also a problem for the relationship.

The very things that brought the two of you together, where each of you brought new and interesting aspects of yourselves to the relationship, gets lost.

It's as if you've both merged and become one person, which can cause boredom to set in (see my article: Relationships: Resist the Urge to Merge).

Some Tips that Might Be Helpful to You:

• Take Time to Reconnect With Your Inner World: A life that's based only on getting pleasure from the external things is a shallow life.  Whether you engage in meditation, yoga, write in a journal or engage in self exploration in therapy, it's important for you to dip into your inner world from time to time because this is the source of your strength, resilience and well-being.  This is also what keeps you in touch with who you are as an individual (see my articles: Discovering a Quiet Place Within Yourself and Reconnecting With Your Inner World).

• Maintain Your Friendships:  The mistake that a lot of people make when they get into a relationship is that they get so involved with their partner that they forget about their friendships.  While it's understandable, especially when a relationship is new, that you want to spend time with your new partner, it's a mistake to give up close friends.  Your friendships need nurturing too and mutually supportive friendships can sustain you through life's ups and downs.  Also, your partner can't fulfill all your needs, so you need different people in your life to fulfill different needs (see my article: Relationships: Your Partner Can't Meet All Your Needs).

• Maintain Your Interests:  If you had interests or hobbies that you really enjoyed before you entered into the relationship, stay connected to those interests.  Having hobbies and interests outside of your relationship can make life more fulfilling and meaningful for you.  It also allows you and your partner to each bring new vitality into the relationship.

• Make Time to Talk About Things That Are Meaningful to Each of You:  Casual conversations are fine, but if all of your conversations tend to be superficial, not only is that boring, but you won't be sharing meaningful parts of yourself with your partner.  Having meaningful conversations means that you're a good communicator and a good listener.  Don't assume that your partner knows what's going on with you or that you know what's going on with your partner without communicating with each other in a meaningful way.

• Be Open to New Experiences:  Not only do you need to maintain your friendships and your interests, but you need to be open to new experiences (see my article: Opening Up to New Possibilities).  That's what keeps life interesting and keeps you growing as an individual.  Your partner might not be interested in the same new experiences that you might want to try, and that's okay.  He or she doesn't have to be.  You don't have to do everything together.  There should be room in your relationship for each of you to pursue new, healthy experiences.  

If you or your partner aren't comfortable maintaining a sense of individuality while you're in a relationship, sooner or later this is going to create problems for each of you as well as the relationship.

Maintaining Your Individuality While Being in a Relationship Can Be Challenging

If each of you is secure with the other and with your relationship, balancing your individuality with being in a relationship will enhance you as individuals as well as enhancing the relationship.

Getting Help in Therapy
As I mentioned before, it can be challenging to maintain your individuality while you're in a relationship.

Both people need to be committed to growing as individuals and as a couple.

If you find that you're unable to do this on your own, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who has experiencing helping people to create this balance in their lives (see my articles: The Benefits of Therapy and How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing Therapist who works with adult individuals and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Being Open to New Experiences

Do You Feel Stuck in Your Life?
As a psychotherapist in New York City, I see many clients who feel they're stuck in their lives. Over time, if this feeling persists, it often leads to anxiety and depression, which usually has the effect of making people feel even more stuck and leads to even greater feelings of constriction. Life can become dull and uneventful. For some people, it becomes hard to climb out of this rut and all they can see is more of the same.

Being Open to New Experiences

Fear of Trying New Experiences

For many clients who have gotten into this kind of rut, life has become too routine. They're living their lives in a habitual way. For some, there's a fear of trying new experiences. Even though they may feel unhappy with the well-worn routines in their lives, their fear of trying a new experience paralyzes them emotionally from stepping outside the "box" they're in.

Working Through a History of "I'm not good enough"

Often, it's necessary to work through a history of feeling "I'm not good enough" or "I don't deserve to be happy." The roots of this problem can be deep. But, in the mean time, when working with clients who are caught in this kind of rut, I often recommend that they remain open to new, positive experiences. A new experience doesn't have to be a big change. It can be something small, like walking down a different street to go home, window shopping in a store where you wouldn't normally go, listening to music you don't usually listen to or think you don't like or trying an ethnic dish that's new for you.

Beginning with Small Changes to Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

The idea of being open to new experiences is to help you change the habitual cycle of "stuckness" and boredom in your life. Small changes often lead to bigger changes as you overcome your fear of stepping outside your comfort zone. This usually isn't the "magic bullet" to overcoming a lifelong self experience of feeling undeserving, but it gets you to start taking steps to make changes while you're working with your therapist to overcome the underlying issues that are driving this feeling.

Taking an action, as opposed to only analyzing your problems, is crucial to making positive changes. One of the criticisms of traditional talk therapy is that people spend years analyzing their problems, but nothing changes. Clients might become more insightful about their problems, but it remains an intellectual process. If you don't actually take steps, even very small steps, nothing changes. So, when I work with clients who are stuck in an emotional rut, whether we're doing hypnotherapy, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing or contemporary talk therapy, I often also encourage clients to be open to new experiences.

Starting with Small Changes Can Lead to an Upward Spiral

What might, at first, seem like a small change, can lead to an upward spiral to bigger and more satisfying changes.

For instance, a willingness to explore a new way of going home could lead to the discovery of a costume jewelry shop that you've never seen before. You go in and, possibly, this leads to a conversation with the store owner who designs this creative jewelry. Maybe you discover that she also conducts jewelry design classes for beginners, which piques your curiosity. This could lead to your taking a class in jewelry design which, in turn, could lead to a new and interesting hobby--or maybe, if you really love it, you eventually sell your designs in the store. Maybe, if you're really passionate about it, you even get your own website to sell the jewelry you're designing.

Opening Up to Your Creative Imagination

It all starts with a willingness and curiosity to be open to new experiences and a willingness to take the first step. Will this be the answer to all your problems? Probably not. But it helps to break the cycle you might be caught in right now. It also helps you to see there are an endless source of possibilities for new experiences if you're willing to give them a try. Often, the key to pursuing new, positive experiences is allowing your creative imagination to open up to new possibilities.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist who provides mental health services to individuals and couples, including contemporary and dynamic psychotherapy, clinical hypnosis, EMDR, and Somatic Experiencing.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.