A consummate love can be segmented into three aspects: commitment, intimacy, and passion. Initially, the majority of couples want all three of them in their relationships. However, it is not so easy to achieve such a healthy relationship. It seems that our relationships always have some flaws and insufficiencies. For example, a fledgling relationship is often high on passion and intimacy but low on commitment; but for a couple who has been married for years, their relationship is often high on commitment and intimacy but low on passion; and those married couples are actually experiencing companionate love instead of passionate love.
Here, let’s focus on companionate love that describes a relationship that features intimacy and commitment but not passion. Companion love is more like a friendship that is based on mutual trust and common interest. It is the most important type of love that close friends, colleagues, or supportive mentors look for. But for marriage, companionate love is not enough. When a marriage lacks passion, a couple should strive to get the passion back because it plays an important role in keeping the long-term relationship alive.
In a marriage without passion, a couple only feels unhappy:
A couple may simply lose their spark after they deeply fall into the same old routine and pattern. When they get very comfortable in their relationship, it is easy to take each other for granted. Surely, at some point, almost every couple gets comfortable in their married life. But when a spouse gets too comfortable in their marriage, he/she tends to tune the other spouse out.
A marriage without passion is like a desert that is devoid of water. As the initial passion that a couple was addicted to levels off significantly, they start to feel bored in their married life; and if this situation persists for a long time, inevitably one or both spouses will think about checking out of their relationship emotionally. Therefore, if a couple just struggles to maintain a marriage without passion, such marriages can not be happy in the long run.
Next, let’s discuss how to get the passion back into a marriage from two major aspects:
(1) Thrill:
The thrill is an elusive element of passion. After the first few years of marriage, it seems to disappear gradually. But it is possible to keep the thrill in a long-term relationship. If you have no idea how to cultivate thrill in your marriage, here are some tips:
- Don’t assume that you have known everything about your spouse:
Excessive assumptions can lead to “shut down”. If a marriage is based on assumptions instead of communication, couples will not be receptive and open to each other, and they will lose a lot of chances of connecting with each other; excessive assumptions can create constant tension as well as conflict. If you always assume that you know well what your spouse will do and why he/she did something, he/she will feel judged; in the meanwhile, he/she will misunderstand that you also don’t want to open yourself up to him/her; under this situation, both you and your spouse will feel lonely in the relationship, and passion will fade away as time passes.
You can’t read your spouse’s mind correctly all the time. And even sometimes when you were quite confident that your spouse would act in a certain way, but in reality, he/she did in an unexpected way. So when your marriage lacks passion, you might need to enhance communication with your spouse as much as possible.
- Stay positive even though your spouse isn’t:
Positive psychology helps keep the passion alive in a long-term relationship. In other words, a spouse’s negative thinking not only affect himself/herself but also can kill the connection, communication, and passion, especially if the toxic thought pattern becomes habitual. Surely, you are not able to take control of your spouse’s; what you can do is to try to stay more positive even though your spouse is not. And do you often blame your spouse for making you angry or unhappy? Inevitably, your spouse can say or do something that can ruin your day from time to time; but if you react negatively and act on your emotions in the heat of the moment, you are allowing yourself to become as negative as your spouse is. And here are some tips on how to stop reacting negatively:
(a) See it coming:
You certainly know what negativity in your relationship looks and sounds like; so when it crosses your path, you should be present and aware. When you remind yourself that your spouse is deliberately attempting to provoke or annoy you, the odds are that you will consciously stand back and not want to engage with the negativity.
(b) Remind yourself that it may not be about you:
Maybe sometimes you get tangled up in your spouse’s negativity and react negatively because your ego takes it personally; in that situation, his/her negativity that is being projected toward you is not about you. It is just a reflection of something unpleasant that is going on inside his/her mind and emotional system.
Furthermore, if you are chronically negative, it is imperative to change your thinking pattern. Surely, you have to feel the need to make this change; otherwise, nobody can help you do it. And there are a lot of things that you can do to become more positive in your daily life; specifically, you might be more open-minded, cultivate gratitude, avoid negative self-talk, eat healthy foods, do exercises every day, get enough sleep, avoid staying up late, use words of self-affirmation, surround yourself with positive people, help other people as much as you can, practice mindfulness…
- Break the routine:
You and your spouse can hardly feel passionate about each other when the two of you have got used to repeating doing daily things over and over again without expecting any difference. So when your marriage lacks passion, probably your marriage has hit the boredom rut. If so, it is necessary to break up the monotonous routine and bring some unexpected novelty and spontaneity into your married life. For example, maybe you have got stuck in the dull sexual routine; and when you and your spouse are lying in bed, you both just want to finish the “task” as soon as possible. In such a case, you might consider giving your sex life a major boost by incorporating more romantic, erotic foreplay ideas into your sex life.
(2) Attraction:
To have a passionate marriage, a couple needs to learn to keep the attraction going. And after years of marriage, a lot of couples drift so far apart that they no longer feel attracted to each other. To avoid the drift, let’s talk about what you can do to keep the attraction alive in your marriage:
- Be attentive to what your spouse says/does:
Over time your attentiveness may get lost or may not be as thoughtful as you were at the beginning of the relationship. If the situation persists, not getting enough attention can lead your spouse to feel not cared love, not cherished, not adored, and not needed. And actually, being attentive to your spouse is not a difficult thing, and it all hangs on whether you are willing.
As your significant half, your spouse wants to feel that he/she will always come first in your eyes; and he/she hopes that if he/she needs you, you will always drop anything and come over straight away; and he/she wants you to listen to him/her carefully without interrupting his/her speech; he/she wants you to occasionally ask him/her how his/her day is… No matter how long you and your spouse have been married, your spouse always wants your attention and affection.
- Be romantic:
Passion and romance often go hand in hand. As we all know, romance is a beautiful way to say “I love you”. Showing your spouse how much you love him/her can help kindle the passion between you and your spouse. And as long as you want to do it, you can come up with a lot of ideas for demonstrating your love for your spouse; for example, you might give him/her a gift that he/she wishes to get, cook him/her dinner, take him/her on a picnic, and celebrate your wedding anniversary or the day you met first.
Another part of being romantic is to strive to ensure happiness by paying attention to your spouse’s likes and dislikes. Maybe something is not your favorite thing but you know your spouse enjoys it, then you might do it for him/her to make him/her passionate about you.
- Don’t stop flirting:
When you stop flirting, you stop anticipating an unpredictable joy; when you two know well each other and feel secure with each other, it is so easy to let the fun, flirty side of things pass by; gradually, you may have forgotten how to be playful and endearing in your relationship. And no one has ever told you that you should stop flirting after you get married.
Keeping flirting with your spouse is a way to continuously remind the two of you of those things that can attract each other. Flirting is an art; as long as you use it properly, it can help keep your marriage exciting and interesting – after you make your spouse feel needed and loved, in return, he/she will motivate himself/herself to make you feel the same.
- Don’t dwell on the unpleasant past:
After a marriage went through ebbs and flows, a lot of couples become more inclined to remember negative events than good ones. If you have the same experience, you should be aware of one thing – the more you recall unpleasant events in your married life, the more you think negative about your spouse as well as the relationship, and the more unhappy you feel; and many times, when you are feeling bad about your spouse and become emotionally unavailable, he/she can get a strong sense of what your feeling is; this can easily make him/her feel confused, unloved, or unwanted.
Therefore, when your marriage lacks passion, if you admit that you still dwell on the unpleasant events that happened in your relationship, you should remind yourself that you do not have to think too badly of the marriage because the relationship also brought you a lot of nice memories; and maybe it has been a long time since you recalled wonderful memories of your marriage. In particular, you might make a point of recalling those happy events that can get your spouse’s resonance; this is conducive to attracting him/her and reigniting the spark.
The final word:
Like a machine, a marriage also needs regular maintenance and strengthening attendance. And passion can fade if you don’t put sufficient energy and time into it. So when your marriage lacks passion, it gives you a wake-up call that something goes wrong with your marriage and that you don’t consistently show concern for this long-term relationship.
If you need more marriage-saving advice, you might go on to watch the video below to follow the comprehensive guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience:
Maybe, you are also interested in the related posts below:
How to keep intimacy in your marriage – Improve marital intimacy.
7 tips on how to get back emotional intimacy in marriage.
How to have a long lasting happy marriage – Marriage-saving tips.
What should you do when your marriage is on the rocks?
How to turn on your husband again – Arouse your husband.
How to rekindle sexual intimacy when your wife becomes a roommate.
When your marriage is stale, how to fix it and keep it alive.