3089: 3 Principles to Keep Love Alive by Tamsen Firestone of Psych Alive on Strong Partnerships

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[00:00:58] This is Optimal Relationships Daily. Three Principles to Keep Love Alive by Tamsyn Firestone of PsychAlive.org. I am well aware that there are a gazillion blogs and unlimited advice out there about how to maintain romance in a relationship. Just Google keep romance alive if you don't believe me. And it's really helpful advice. Talk to each other. Make time to be together. Stay positive. Be intimate.

[00:01:28] But here's some advice that digs deeper and hits on more core issues that squelch romance. Number one, participate in the act of love. Much of the advice that suggests taking action to foster romance is effective because it encourages the act of loving rather than the state of being in love. The act of loving is gratifying for both the lover and the loved one.

[00:01:53] The state of being in love is passive and easily dissolves into an internal fantasy about being in love. This fantasy gradually becomes a substitute for actual love. The act of loving involves behaviors that keep a close relationship alive and vital. These include offering emotional and physical affection, expressing tenderness, compassion, and sensitivity to your partner's needs,

[00:02:20] sharing activities and interests, and maintaining honest exchanges of personal thoughts and feelings. They also involve actively accepting, acknowledging, and appreciating love that is directed toward you. When we participate in the give and take of love, when we develop the ability to accept love with dignity and return love with appreciation, we find ourselves actively involved in loving,

[00:02:46] rather than falling into a passive state of fantasizing about being in love. 2. Maintain your individuality and appreciate your partner's individuality. It may seem like a romantic notion to regard your loved one as your soulmate, your missing piece, your better half. However, this kind of imagined fusion destroys romance.

[00:03:10] It's impossible to feel romantic without the awareness that you and your partner are each a distinct and unique individual. That is why you need to regard yourself as a whole person, and be sure you're not looking for someone to complete your incompleteness, or to define or affirm you. When you're with someone for a long time, it's easy to start functioning as a unit, and in the process, to lose track of yourself as a separate person. Therefore, to maintain romance,

[00:03:39] it's critical that you maintain a strong sense of independence and autonomy, and a well-developed point of view. With this as an ongoing goal, you can continue to cultivate and strengthen your unique traits, as well as engage in behavior that reflects your interests and ideals. When you know someone well, it's easy to lose sight of them as an individual person. Therefore, it's important to respect your partner by encouraging his or her unique interests and personal goals,

[00:04:08] independent of yours. This means being sensitive to your partner's wants, desires, and feelings, and placing as much value on them as you do on your own. It means regarding your partner separate from any expectations you may have, or any role he or she may be fulfilling in relation to you. In order to maintain this level of regard for your partner, you need to have empathy with, and compassion for him or her. This involves using your mind,

[00:04:38] as well as your emotions and intuition, to perceive and vicariously experience the nature of your loved one. When you understand your partner in this deeply empathic manner, you are aware of what you have in common, but you also recognize and value your differences. And number three, ignore your critical inner voice. To varying degrees, we all have an enemy within, a part of ourselves that operates inside our heads,

[00:05:06] much like a malicious coach, criticizing us and offering up bad advice. This enemy, with its destructive point of view, is your critical inner voice. It supports your defenses, which wouldn't be a bad thing, except that, for the most part, your defenses are archaic, ways that you came to protect yourself long ago, aren't necessary or appropriate in your life today. First off, you're no longer that little kid having to cope with the environment of your childhood.

[00:05:37] And second, those old defenses, and the critical inner voice that encourages them, interfere with your being able to establish close relationships. You are your most vulnerable when you express your romantic feelings, when you articulate what you love about your partner, and show how you feel toward him or her. You are also vulnerable when you are open and receptive to your partner's loving feelings toward you. Being vulnerable and defenseless to this degree

[00:06:05] goes against your habitual ways of protecting yourself from being hurt. It's helpful to be aware of how your critical inner voice will try to sabotage your loving exchanges with your partner. It'll make fun of you reaching out to your partner. You're so pitiful. You're humiliating yourself. It will belittle your partner's loving gestures. You call that loving? It's nothing. You deserve more than that. It will ridicule the expression of affection between you. You two are so mushy, it's nauseating.

[00:06:35] You look ridiculous. No matter what your critical inner voice says, ignore it, and continue to be loving and affectionate. Don't let its warnings undermine your loving feelings or behavior. Don't let it influence you to protect yourself and retreat from intimacy. You'll probably feel anxious from challenging your old ways of defending yourself. But if you maintain your behavior and sweat it out, the voice attacks will subside. Your critical inner voice will become weaker and wither,

[00:07:04] and you will triumph. It's so easy to lose track of romance. We get busy with the everyday tasks of our lives. Everything is going along well enough, and we don't even realize that the special spark has begun to fade. We haven't been paying attention, and romance has been bumped to the bottom of our list of priorities. But we can make sure that we are actively expressing our love and affection, and that we are actively accepting our partner's love and affection as well.

[00:07:33] We can make every effort to maintain our individuality, and to take an interest in our partner as a unique person. And lastly, when we are romantic, we can ignore our critical inner voice when it tries to influence us to defend ourselves and not be loving and vulnerable. When we take these actions, romance will burn brighter, and our relationship and our lives will be enriched.

[00:07:59] You just listened to the post titled, Three Principles to Keep Love Alive by Tamsyn Firestone of psychalive.org. This episode is brought to you by Google. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The U.S. Department of Transportation is empowering staff with Google AI tools to rapidly synthesize research and streamline contracting,

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[00:08:58] to help the whole fan chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on OLLI.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. And thanks so much to Tamsyn for this terrific post. A simple yet effective guide to follow. Now normally after list episodes like this one, I like to end by providing my own edition as if I was a co-author, which I definitely am not. So in this case,

[00:09:27] a fourth principle I think would be a great one to try out is to have a regular check-in with your partner. You know, sometimes things upset us, and we aren't sure of our emotions in the moment, so we don't address that which has gotten under our skin. Other times we might actively choose not to, if it doesn't feel like a big deal. Or maybe we try to bring things up, but life gets in the way, as Tamsyn mentioned, and we never quite find the time

[00:09:54] that we feel we should allot to that kind of discussion. There are countless other scenarios, of course, that might prevent us from talking through things with our partners. So taking time to deliberately check in and ask, how are we doing? What's been on your mind, if anything, that you'd like to talk about, is really helpful. It puts us in the right frame of mind for these types of conversations. It reminds us to check in with feelings we might be suppressing. And it's a great commitment to make with our partners,

[00:10:24] both emotionally and in terms of time spent. So, there you have it, my friends. Three plus one ideas for you today. It's time to wrap things up, though. So I hope you enjoyed everything you heard, and I thank you very much for tuning in and doing right by your relationships by doing so. Have a great rest of your weekend, and I'll talk to you again tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits. Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this. Thank you.