A Mindful Approach to Romance
If you’re “not feeling it anymore,” hold on.
Photo by Almos Bechtold on Unsplash. Excerpted from LDS Living, “Love is meant to change: 4 questions to help you find (or save) your happily ever after (February 13, 2024)
A moment of feeling less romantic excitement can be uniquely challenging—even terrifying—for both dating and married couples today. That’s because so many of us now take for granted, as one writer says, that “if human love ever wanes, then it wasn’t love in the first place.” In one study of romantic beliefs, 65% of people reported believing that “the intense passion of the first stages, if it is real, will last, or it should last, forever.”
Is that something you believe too? If so, don’t be surprised if the experience of diminished attraction or settling passion ends up feeling more like a crisis, prompting foreboding questions like: “Did we ever truly love each other? Was this relationship wrong to begin with? Is there any hope for us in the future?”
Like with depressive and anxious rumination, this kind of over-analysis can end up hurting us if we stay trapped in it. It can be so relieving to push back on these kinds of fearful thoughts and feelings and learn to approach everything inside mindfully and compassionately, rather than being driven by whatever we are feeling (or not feeling).
The truth, as emphasized by renowned author Dr. M. Scott Peck, is that “No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love if the relationship continues long enough. This is not to say that we invariably cease loving the person with whom we fell in love. But it is to say that the feeling of ecstatic lovingness that characterizes the experience of falling in love always passes.”
Did you hear that? “Always passes.” That’s true for Brad and Angelina. And for you, too. The real question is what you’re going to do next. The sad reality is that many beautiful couples today are being hijacked and sideswiped—with their own possibilities for wonderful future happiness together overwhelmed by the belief (and demand) that they’re supposed to feel more right now. As summarized by philosopher Simon May at King’s College in London:
“We expect love to be a ... journey for the soul, a final source of meaning and freedom ... a key to the problem of identity, a solace in the face of rootlessness ... a redemption from suffering, and a promise of eternity. Or all of these at once. In short: love is being overloaded.”
By requiring love to reflect “superhuman qualities,” May continues, we force relationships to “labor under intolerable expectations,” ultimately “demanding from the loved one far more than they can possibly be.” Historian Stephanie Coontz likewise describes “unprecedented goals for marriage”—saying, “Never before in history had societies thought that such a set of high expectations about marriage was either realistic or desirable.”
4 Questions for Reflection:
Have you ever felt your own marriage or dating relationships weighed down by these kinds of heavy expectations?
How do you think that relationships could be different if those expectations and demands were lifted?
Have you ever—now or in the past—experienced a shift in your own feelings of attraction or romantic excitement toward someone you love?
If so, were you able to approach that with wisdom and patience—or were you tempted to do something more drastic and dire?
Practice: The good news is you don’t have to approach evolutions in romantic attachment as a crisis or tragedy. Instead, try approaching a softening of feelings as another opportunity to show love. That’s exactly what Dr. Peck suggests next: “It is when a couple falls out of love [that] they may begin to really love. ... True love happens after the love starts to fade.”
For the full article, check out: Love is meant to change: 4 questions to help you find (or save) your happily ever after (LDS Living, February 13, 2024)