Make the Honeymoon Phase last
Dear Maxwell’s, how can I make romantic love or “the honeymoon” phase last longer in my relationship, or at least bring back some of those feelings after it has faded?
We all, hopefully at some point in our lives, have known that “feeling.” That all encompassing, gazing into your lover’s eyes as if you are seeing for the first time what life is really about, peak experience of falling love. Sunshines and rainbows and birds chirping and all those cliches of love we have grown to understand and be fed through the various channels of our culture; romantic comedies, tv, celebrity love stories, love songs throughout the ages, romance novels, disney prince/princess folklore, and now instagram posts of weddings’ first kisses, and honeymooners perfect happily ever after. The tale of romantic love, the kiss of aphrodite if you will, is really the archetype of love that has been imprinted into the subconscious minds of all of us as the pinnacle…what we all should be searching and yearning for and when we find it we will just “know” because we will “feel it” and then we will be complete.
The problem here though, is that like the peak of a great psychedelic experience, even the best forms of romantic love fade relatively quickly, and can only go as deep as a pool even the shortest of us can still touch the bottom of. While our cultural narratives say the opposite, romantic love deserves its rightful place towards the bottom of the hierarchy of love as its success rate in producing successful long term relationships is nothing to be impressed by. Romantic love thrives in mystery. For masculine oriented folk, romantic love can be sparked just by beauty alone, and for the feminine oriented, romantic love has as much to do with the fantasy of the beloved that is created in the mind than it does the actual person. Romantic love is not a purveyor of shared values and long term goals, nor is it a by-product of compatibility and transparency. It is instead, a glorious veil, fueled by chemistry, sexual passion and the initial unraveling of the mystery of the beloved. Too often however, it is also our childhood trauma bonds and toxic chords merging with another’s.
We must, as a culture, start to recognize that romantic love is, best case scenario, a great starting point. In the hierarchy of love, it doesn’t come close to the depths of love that are created through working through the real challenges of building a life together, the vulnerability and soul connection of experiencing someone’s dark side, and creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. So to answer our readers question, the goal shouldn’t be keeping romantic love alive, but to graduate from the shallow waters of romantic love into the bottomless well of something far deeper and greater. In order to do this, you must focus on some key values that are necessary to create any life-long relationship. These values are honesty and transparency, the ability to own up to your mistakes and forgive another for theirs, and a desire to evolve oneself. Let’s quickly unpack these and can dive into them in more detail in a future column.
To go deeper than romantic love, you must be committed to a level of honesty and transparency that leaves no room for secrets. The vulnerability that is created through this level of communication fosters ever deepening intimacy, trust and love over time.
The nature of a good intimate relationship is that it will inevitably bring up all of our shadow-sides. We are human and by nature, broken and imperfect and if we are truly ourselves in our relationships, at some point we will hurt our partner with our ugliness and they will with us in turn. We must be willing to forgive quickly, as well as take ownership for our own darkness.
Both members of the relationship need to be committed to their own personal evolution. We can’t see our own blindspots, and in order for a relationship to grow, everybody involved needs to be committed to their own personal growth. This ensures that the relationship continues to evolve over time which is in line with nature. Everything in the universe is in motion and flux and relationships need to be living, breathing things.
