Keep the fire going long after Valentine’s
Steve Dorfman
Making the romantic gestures on Valentine’s Day, anniversaries and birthdays is easy — it’s those 362 other days of the year that can present a challenge.
Especially for longtime couples.
“When we first fall in love, that feeling of constant excitement is hormonal,” explained Dr. Deb Sandella, a psychotherapist and author of the bestseller “Goodbye, Hurt & Pain: 7 Simple Steps to Health, Love and Success.” “But it’s not sustainable. At some point — usually after anywhere from one to three years — we transition from infatuated excitement to coziness and comfort.”
That transitional phase, she said, is also biochemical.
“Your body produces different hormones in the early stages of a relationship than it does after the relationship has matured.”
So, how then to re-ignite those early-stage hormones?
Sandella, who’s been married 37 years and has two adult children, has a few ideas.
“One of the reasons why my husband and I have been happily married for so long is that we prioritize stimulating that sense of discovery and excitement about one another,” she said.
Early in their marriage, when they were raising their son and daughter, they set aside time away from the kids in order to “remember what it was like to be a couple.”
For young families, this can be especially challenging, Sandella said.
“When you have both parents working, rushing around, and money is tight, it can seem like a luxury to take a ‘second honeymoon’ every year. But having a version of that second honeymoon — even if it just means checking into a hotel in town together without the kids — is vital for maintaining your connection as a couple.”
Sandella said that, often at the outset of her annual sec-
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If reading about relationships counts as expertise, Daniel Jones could be America’s master of “Modern Love.”
He edits the weekly column of that name in The New York Times’ Sunday Styles section.
The column is so popular, cons i d e r t h i s : One 2015 installment l i s t e d 3 6 qu e s - tions that could make strangers fall in love with each other. This became the most popular story The Times printed in 2015, based on metrics and reading time.
S o many p e o p l e re a d a n d shared this column, The Times calculated that the equivalent of 100 years was spent reading it.
Clearly, people want to fall in love.
Clearly, William Shakespeare was right when he wrote “the course of love never did run smooth.”
If it were smooth, there would be no “Modern Love” column, and no piles of essays for Jones to sift through.
Frequently, the stories in “Modern Love” are heartbreaking anecdotes of relationships gone wrong, messy and painful divorces, difficult breakups and family situations that can only be defined as pure tests of strength.
But the column also shows the other side: relationships that have been heavily challenged, salvaged through work and patience, bordered by difficult compromises and much gritted teeth, pulled through the quicksand and emerged even stronger than before.
The overwhelmingly human aspect of “Modern Love” is what draws readers in, allowing them to walk for a while in someone else’s shoes, to understand the many ways relationships can go wrong — but also to see the ways they can be incredibly right.
During a phone interview, Jones talked about the column he has edited since 2004, and he confesses that there are a lot of things about love that still surprise him.