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‘The way we love changes as our life circumstances change’
Is genuine, true, ‘til-death-do-us-part love sustainable throughout a lifetime spent together? Relationship expert Carmel Wynne weighs in on the quest for love, evolving needs, fluctuating sex lives.
The strong feelings of love and happiness that are there during the initial wonderful stages of the partnership lessen and are weakened when daily life intrudes and partners do not live up to each other’s expectations. This process is gradual, unconscious and inevitable.
Within a couple of years many partners have established a pattern of nagging and fighting about what the other does or doesn’t want to do. He says he’s going to the pub with his friends. She complains that he is not spending time with her and their baby. He feels nagged. She feels frustrated.
As romance declines, the willingness of each person to meet their partner’s needs lessens. The openness to see things from the other’s viewpoint changes and the desire to spend every waking moment together is no longer intoxicating. You don’t need experts to tell you that our needs and wants are constantly changing. As needs change, some couples find they engage in less sexual activity. The way we experience, receive and give love changes as our moods, perceptions, beliefs and life circumstances change.
Assumptions that people who get married want the same things are as illogical as thinking you can read your partner’s mind. Partners take a huge gamble if they decide to get married and commit to love each other ‘until death do us part’. Many people do not understand that living together cannot show partners how little they know about their hidden expectations of marriage.
There are many reasons for why the frequency of sex diminishes. Some couples never talk about their sexual needs. If partners become disillusioned, disappointed and frustrated with each other, romantic feelings decrease and they have sex less often. Lack of emotional intimacy can result in the partnership losing its spark and generate deep unhappiness.
I believe that every person who stays married to a spouse or remains in a committed, monogamous, enduring partnership is a hero or a heroine. To promise to love your partner, day after day, week after week, year after year for the rest of your life is taking a monumental gamble.
On a quest the hero has to overcome fears, develop courage, become resourceful and have the motivation to stay focused on the goal as they push forward and remain determined not to give up. To make a lifetime contract, one has to overcome fear. When you feel vulnerable it takes courage to have an honest conversation; to allow yourself to be vulnerable; to share how you feel and to explain why you feel as you do; to stay motivated and determined not to give up on your partner.
The way we experience, receive and give love changes as our moods, perceptions, beliefs and life circumstances change.
If there is a more frequently misused word in the English language than ‘love’, I don’t know what it is. When couples come for relationship coaching I have the integrity to tell them: “You don’t know this yet but please trust me, I’m confident that you have the solution to your problems. If you allow me to challenge your language, beliefs and assumptions I will ask you questions that will empower you to work out how to co-operate in resolving your problems.”
There are endless theories about what a couple can do to build a solid, loving and enduring partnership. Only a very privileged few are born to parents who made excellent role models for a great partnership. The best modelling comes from parents who enjoy physical and sexual intimacy, have the ability to communicate honestly, demonstrate the skills to negotiate and manage conflict and empower each child in the family to feel loved and lovable.
Sometimes the best thing that can happen for people is to question the belief and values they hold about love and happiness. Through his work as a marriage counsellor, Dr Gary Chapman came up with the concept of the five different love languages. These are words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time and physical touch. When partners learn each other’s love languages it increases their intimacy, sense of connection and the feelings of closeness between them.
The qualities that each person who is being coached will need on their personal quest are similar to those required of the hero. They can never predict what lies ahead but whether it be finding the Golden Fleece or overcoming an enemy, they’re motivated to succeed. Through hardship and personal struggles they persist and keep going on their quest, determined to reach their goal. In the process they learn to conquer their fears and become so brave and resourceful that they are changed and transformed by the adventure.
I have spent decades observing family relationships, studying research findings and reading books and articles on love, marriage, separation and divorce. What I have learned from all my reading, from my own life experience and from the couples I have coached is that regardless of whether we are single, married or in a committed relationship, we are all on a quest for love and happiness and it is a lifelong quest.
Partners who have different love languages give and receive love in different ways. John and Mary were attending a counsellor for marital issues. Part of their homework was to do something nice for each other. When they came back for their next session the counsellor asked how the homework went. Mary glared at John and said, “He didn’t do it.” John was highly indignant.
If partners become disillusioned, disappointed and frustrated with each other, romantic feelings decrease and they have sex less often.
He explained that on Saturday he got up early and went out at 9 o’clock to clean, vacuum and wax the car because Mary liked it to look nice. Unaware of the effort he was making to please her Mary lay in bed feeling hurt and disappointed. John was up so early that Mary expected that he would bring her breakfast in bed. She was disappointed that he didn’t. Misunderstandings like this occur very often when partners fail to appreciate their different love languages.
During the following week Mary felt unhappy, disappointed and angry with John. He was supposed to do something nice for her and instead he spent the morning working on the car. During the week Mary was cold and matter of fact. John was aware that she blamed him for something that upset her. The non-verbal communication of her displeasure was evident but he had no idea why she was unhappy or what he had done to cause her negative reaction.
John’s love language was acts of service, which frequently went unnoticed. Mary had a change of attitude once she acknowledged the effort John put in to please her. She was gracious enough to express her appreciation and honest enough to share that he would have got more kudos if he brought her up breakfast in bed.
The revelation for John was that he went through a miserable week, feeling bad for upsetting Mary. Had he told Mary that his plan to do something nice for her was to get up and clean and wax the car she might have thanked him but said that what she would really love was breakfast in bed. Had he joined her in bed they could have spent quality time together and he would have spared himself hours of work.
The insight for Mary was how much she took for granted. Appreciating the practical things that John did for her such as stacking the dishwasher, hanging out the washing because she didn’t like clothes dried in the tumble drier and leaving out the bins was a game changer. The life-lesson they both learned was that your partner cannot know what you don’t tell them.
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