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In today’s video, I want to talk about one of the simplest and easiest ways to maintain the spark in a long-term relationship.
Read or watch below to learn more about how to make sexual attraction last.
Zachary Stockill: If you look around YouTube, if you look around Google, there are a million different answers to the question of how to make love last, how to stay together over the long term, how to keep a marriage fresh and exciting, how to maintain your sex life over long periods of time...
Obviously, if you’re in a monogamous relationship, staying together is difficult. The divorce rate is over 50% in most Western nations, and for a reason: it’s difficult to stay together long-term. And it’s certainly difficult to keep the spark alive over long periods of time.
In today’s video, I want to talk about one of the simplest and easiest ways to maintain this spark, to keep that energy flowing in a long-term relationship. I don’t see a lot of people talking about this. And I think it’s a shame, frankly. So today I’m going to share with you.
One of my favorite quotes about relationships comes from the Belgian psychotherapist, Esther Perel, who wrote an absolutely fantastic book about long-term relationships called Mating in Captivity.
The quote is: “Desire needs distance.”
One of the easiest ways to maintain the spark in a long-term relationship is to make sure you are taking enough space from each other.
Again, because desire needs distance. Ironically, I think a lot of couples make the opposite mistake to rekindle things or to reignite the spark… They start spending way more time together. And they start spending even more of their daily hours in the same room or in the same space. And obviously, there are different ways to take space from each other. If you live in a tiny apartment, this can be challenging sometimes.
But the basic point is: the more time you spend in the same place, the more your energies become somewhat depolarized.
So this is an idea, a very old idea, that comes to us from Tantric philosophy. On the one hand, you’ve got masculine energy, and on the other hand, you’ve got feminine energy.
By the way, this is true regardless of your gender, regardless of your sexual orientation.
In general, in every relationship, there’s some balance between masculine and feminine energies. Note that I didn’t say male or female, I said masculine-feminine.
In general, the more time you spend in the same place with each other, even in the same physical space, the more your energies will become somewhat even or matched. And you’ll become depolarized to each other.
If you think about this, you’ll realize this happens in just about every relationship. When you spend a lot of time with someone who you love, you’re going to become somewhat more like that person. You might adopt some of their mannerisms and some of the ways they speak and you might take more interest in their interests.
And while that’s great for something like friendship, it isn’t great for sexual tension.
Because a key component in building sexual attraction, sexual tension, is some degree of different energies, different masculine and feminine energies.
But if you don’t want to think about masculine-feminine, you can just think of it in terms of becoming more alike, and losing something in that process.
A big part of what attracted you to your partner all those months, or all those years, or maybe even all those decades ago, was the unknown.
They were somewhat different than you. They maybe had different interests, and they had a different energy, and they brought something different to your life, different ideas and different perspectives, and all the rest.
A big part of what creates attraction is the difference. And the same goes for your partner…
They were attracted to you because you brought a different energy into their life.
The more time you spend with each other, the more things become more balanced. And maybe you’re great friends, but the sexual tension is lacking.
So coming back to the main thrust of this video, no pun intended… A great way to start rebuilding some of that sexual attraction and some of that tension is to reclaim some parts of yourself that maybe you’ve lost in the relationship over time.
And of course, this is not your fault. This is not your partner’s fault. This is one of those things that often happens in long-term relationships.
So my advice to anyone in the relationship who’s seeking to reignite that spark, who’s seeking to amplify sexual attraction in the relationship: spend more time apart. Pursue your own interests, your own friendships, your own hobbies, and all that rest. Make sure you’re making time for that.
Of course, spending time with your partner is very important. Of course, I’m not saying you should take a four-year vacation and completely neglect them.
But make a little more effort towards reconnecting with the version of you long before you met your partner. Start reconnecting to your younger self. Maybe you can pick up some of your interests and hobbies, or even some of your friendships that you’ve let slip by the wayside recently.
Desire needs distance. This is one of the simplest and easiest ways to start reigniting the spark in your relationship.
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