3 Key Ways To Start Finding Your Partner Interesting Again
It is only natural that a long-term relationship loses some of its spark after a while.
After loving and knowing your partner for some time, and you are well-aware of their habits, strengths, weaknesses, and patterns. And they know yours. Even your date nights trips together, and intimate moments can start to feel mundane.
You can’t help but wonder what happened to the excitement you once felt for your partner. You still love them, but you’d like to reignite the curiosity, novelty, and interest of your early days.
Relationships aren’t easy. In fact, as the saying goes, they take work, and sometimes a little creativity, to find ways to inject a little passion back into the relationship.
Here are three unexpected ways that you can do just that:
1. Find Time for Yourself
This tip might feel counterintuitive, but the idea is twofold.
First, check in with yourself. What activities bring you joy? How do you deal with stress and struggle? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?
Could you easily name three adjectives to describe yourself?
When you know who you are, you can bring this person fully to a relationship so that you don’t lean on your partner to make you whole.
Second, when you find time for yourself, you have the chance to spend time away from your partner, and generally speaking, you are likely to begin to miss their presence.
Taking time for yourself is healthy and needed in a union that requires two whole individuals to function successfully.
You can find “me time” through a personal vacation, time carved out in the day for yourself, or separate social activities that make you feel good.
2. Flirt.
As long as you know each other’s boundaries and the lines of consent, flirty moments can help make a relationship exciting again. That might mean a little squeeze here or there, or randomly finding a moment for a passionate kiss.
You can get creative, though the best ideas will likely be those that are organic and honest. Flirting can reintroduce spontaneity and playfulness to your relationship, two things that can make being with a partner fun and new again.
And fun is something that everyone deserves to experience, especially in a meaningful relationship with someone you spend much of your life and time with.
3. Touch.
While might first bring up thoughts of sex, don’t discount the need for basic physical connection. and affection. We’ve craved touch our entire lives when we were babies in need of a mother’s or father’s loving affection. That hasn’t changed.
Safe, loving touch is another form of communication. Something like a soft caress of the arm or neck, or holding hands is a simple loving gesture that can lead to a feeling of connectedness. Commitment to this will strengthen your relationship. Touch can also help create a stronger foundation for more intimate moments to rest on more authentically and satisfactorily.
Finally…
There is nothing more romantic than falling hard for someone you care deeply about. The feeling of mutual intense attraction is heady.
The trouble is, with time, any relationship can lose steam. We become used to the same person and patterns in our relationship. Consequently, we can become bored and dissatisfied. This is actually quite normal, and there are ways to upend the feeling of monotony in your connection.
These three tips are simple to implement—they don’t take much effort or time. And they can help you reconnect slowly. If you would like to know how we can help you navigate and communicate your fears, please visit our couples therapy page for more information.