I'm Danae Logan.
I'm a marriage and family therapist who specializes in couples work.
And you know,
It's so funny,
Whenever people hear that I'm a couples therapist,
They always sort of make the assumption that I spend my days with couples sitting on my couch having a lot of conflict.
And in reality,
What I find is that people that come in for couples therapy are often the most committed to experiencing a sense of authentic fulfillment in their relationships.
But what I will say is the number one thing that comes up with almost all of the couples that I see is how challenging it can be to maintain a sense of passion in our relationships over time.
So today,
That's what I want to talk about.
I want to talk about why it is absolutely possible to do that,
And why being in a long-term romantic partnership does not need to mean that it is the end of passion and romantic love or eros.
Yeah.
All right,
So let's get into it.
Why is it difficult to maintain passion in our relationships over time?
We all know the classic tropes,
Right?
Couples who basically become like roommates,
The inevitability of losing a sense of desire for one another,
Or even that it needs to become normalized to schedule sex that ends up being pretty bland and nobody's that excited about it anyway,
Right?
I have found with the couples that I work with that there's a very specific reason why this happens,
But that this absolutely does not have to be the case.
So let's back up for just a second and talk about what passion in our romantic relationships actually is.
From my perspective,
Passion is the eros.
It is desire,
Magnetism,
Aliveness,
That erotic charge and excitement we feel for someone when we're first discovering them,
Spontaneity,
Sensuality.
It's transcendent energy,
Right?
And really more than anything else,
To me,
Passion is life force energy.
So what starts to make this dissipate in our relationships over time has a lot to do with the models that we've been raised with in terms of what romantic love should be.
Now,
Most relationship experts will tell you that we can cultivate a sense of passion by prioritizing connection through things like date nights or normalizing scheduled sex and that this is just an inevitable part of what our relationships start to look like.
I actually don't agree,
And that's not what I'm going to tell you at all.
I think that regardless of the relationship modality,
What I have found is that underneath what everybody is speaking to,
There's pretty much an agreed premise that all of our relationships require two things in order to thrive.
They require a sense of stability,
But they also require a sense of adventure.
But what I find is that most relationship modalities put a considerable amount of emphasis on the stability,
Creating better communication,
Creating a sense of safety,
But not really prioritizing a sense of aliveness,
That eros,
That charge,
That excitement towards one another,
Right?
This is because we live in a society that really looks at relationships through a more attachment-based lens versus a more differentiated lens of what a relationship is.
What this leads to,
I find in the couples that I work with,
Is a sense of romantic possessiveness,
Really.
And as my mentor,
Acclaimed couple therapist Esther Perel often speaks to,
The verb for love is to have,
But the verb for desire is to want.
Now,
If we have really secure attachments in our relationships,
We can certainly have a deep sense of love for our partner,
But a lot of times what this ends up looking like over time is love that resembles a parentified love or almost a sibling-esque love.
And so,
I can love you so much,
But there won't be a sense of desire for you if I don't have that element of that authentic aliveness and discovery and curiosity that it's so important for us to maintain in our relationships over time,
Right?
And so,
The premise that I'm going to ask us to start with as we do a little bit of exploration today is that our partners are never ours.
And this is a very different way of looking at partnership than most of us were raised with.
But it's this idea of like sort of dismantling this belief that our partner ever belongs to us,
Right?
That two autonomous beings,
Two people coming together to walk a path together does not mean that two people should ever belong to one another.
So let's talk about the practical work of what it looks like to maintain passion in our relationships.
And to me,
This is really the work of attempting to balance out our relational polarity.
So polarity is like the erotic charge that exists between two people.
We're like magnets,
Right?
And so it's what draws two people towards one another or ends up repelling two people over time.
And what's interesting about our romantic relationships is that normally we are drawn to our opposite,
Right?
You hear people say all the time that opposites attract.
But what ends up happening in our relationships is the same thing that we were drawn to in another person in the beginning is the same thing that we start to feel a deep sense of frustration about in terms of that person not experiencing the world the way that I do.
And so normally in our relationships,
One person is oriented towards a longing for a little bit more stability,
While the other person is oriented towards a longing for a little bit more freedom.
You'll hear people describe this as being the more anxiously attached person versus the more avoidantly attached person.
But essentially what we're talking about is one person longing for a little bit more connection in the relationship while the other person is longing for a little bit more autonomy.
But what's most important to understand about romantic polarity is that it's not a fixed state of arrival.
It should be like a constant dance that exists between two people where each person really does their own work,
Checking in with themselves and noticing where they are in any given moment in terms of their energy so that they can work to bring a sense of healthy polarity and harmony back into the relationship dynamic,
Right?
So let's say you're the person who longs for more connection in your relationship and you're in a relationship with someone who works a lot,
Likes a lot more freedom than you do.
Sometimes it seems like they feel overwhelmed by the relationship responsibilities and what it is to be in a relationship,
Right?
You feel like you're in a state of constantly attempting to communicate your relational needs in a way that it feels like they're just not getting it.
They're just not attempting to meet you there or really attempt to understand how you're feeling,
Right?
What's happening here is that a pursuer distancer dance has ensued between you and your partner.
And so the more that you attempt to pull that person in towards you,
The more that they're going to be an energetic resistance.
Now this has to do with each person's attachment wounding and what ends up feeling like love to each person energetically in a relationship,
Right?
And so if this is you and you're the person who is longing for a little bit more connection in your relationship,
What I want to ask you to think about is a couple questions.
So first off,
What feels historic here?
What parent or caregiver used to behave in a similar way,
In a similar energetic to the way that I'm experiencing my partner?
What parent did I long to have a little bit more time with,
A little bit more connection with?
What parent did I maybe feel rejected by often,
Right?
And so once you've sort of explored what caregiver that might be for you,
I want you to think about if I had a magic wand and your partner could behave in the ideal way,
Right?
If exactly the way that you are longing for them to show up,
Inevitably they just started to show up in that way.
What would that look like,
Right?
What would they say?
What would they give to you?
And here's the important question to think about from there.
How could you start to work on giving yourself some of the things that you are longing for from your partner,
Right?
So the stability that you're looking for from your partner,
You start to play with providing that stability to yourself first,
Right?
Now let's say you're the person,
On the other hand,
Who longs for a little bit more autonomy,
A little bit more freedom normally in relationships,
Right?
So you might be in a relationship with someone who is constantly pointing out the ways that they feel disconnected from you,
Or the ways that they would like to spend more time together and that they don't feel like you're prioritizing the relationship.
Maybe you're experiencing this person as critical,
Maybe a bit needy,
And it's starting to breed what feels like resentment on your part,
Right?
Maybe you even feel like a caged animal and that you're unable to be the fullest,
Boldest expression of yourself when you're in this relationship and you find yourself feeling a sense of ambivalence often,
Like,
Do I want to be in this relationship or not?
And maybe you're even imagining that you might be a little bit happier if you were single,
Right?
So the questions I want you to play with asking yourself are,
What was your relationship to being responsible for other people's needs when you were in childhood,
Right?
Were you a parentified child?
And a parentified child is sort of a term that we use in psychology to describe children who were really brought in on the emotional needs of their parents before they were emotionally prepared to be responsible for those needs,
Right?
So maybe your parent brought you in on the relationship conflict that they were experiencing with your other parent,
Or maybe they were telling you about all of their stresses and you felt responsible as a child for what your parent was experiencing emotionally in a way that often maybe felt overwhelming to you,
Right?
And so if this is something that is feeling familiar or something that you resonate with,
What I want you to play with is leaning into the idea of how you might start to be a little bit more vulnerable with your partner about where you feel overwhelmed by the relational needs between you,
Right?
Ask yourself what it might feel like if you were the one receiving from your partner,
If you were receiving support,
If you were receiving space to be who you are with them bearing witness to you versus you always being the one witnessing someone else's needs,
Right?
I also want you to play with thinking about where might you be able to lean into experiencing a little bit more pleasure in your life in general,
Right?
Where can you lean into having a little bit more fun?
Where can you make space for play and creativity and imagination?
Maybe in some ways that you didn't get to have access to when you were younger.
How can you start to give yourself some of those things in your adult life,
Right?
So this is about taking ownership of the fact that the freedom that you're looking for from your partner,
You can start to offer a little bit of that freedom to yourself first.
And so I want to ask you to take a few moments to do a little bit of a journaling exercise for me.
So as we explore this conversation around relationship polarity,
What comes up for you?
Where do you feel like you fall in the spectrum of that person that longs for a little bit more connectedness or that person that feels like they need a little bit more space in your relationships?
And again,
It's not a sort of fixed state.
So it might be a little bit different depending on the energy of the person that you're in a relationship with,
But either thinking about the relationship that you're in currently or maybe some relationships that you've been in in the past.
Just take a moment,
Do a little bit of freeform writing and notice,
First of all,
What this conversation brought up for you,
What it made you think of in terms of yourself and your relationship patterns.
But also,
You know,
If you resonated with being the person that longs for a little bit more connectedness,
Maybe do a little bit of writing about what feels historic,
About longing for connection and relationship.
So growing up,
Was there a parent or caregiver that you long to have a little bit more connection with or maybe that you felt rejected by?
Can you give yourself a little bit of space just to explore and write about what that felt like for you?
And then.
Also,
Take a moment to think about,
You know,
What things in your life do you tend to do where you feel most empowered,
Where you feel clear on your mission,
Self-assured,
Really self-contained.
And notice how you might be able to incorporate some of those activities into your life right now and maybe do a little bit of writing about that.
Right.
And then if you're that person that longs for a little bit more freedom,
A little bit more space in your relationships,
I also want you to think about and maybe do some writing about what feels historic about that.
Right.
So where in my life in the past have I had a lot of responsibility that felt overwhelming to me,
Maybe from a young age?
Did I have a relationship with my parents or caregivers where they expected a lot of me or shared a lot with me?
Can you do a little bit of writing about what that felt like for you?
And then maybe notice what comes up when you think about being in that space of a child and what were some of the things that you might have longed to do,
Some of the things that you like to do when you weren't responsible for a lot,
If you can remember.
And if that feels really hard to tap into,
Maybe think about what you might want to give your inner child some space to do now in terms of creativity,
In terms of play,
In terms of just being free to do whatever you feel like doing for a little bit.
And notice what comes up as you think about it.
So let's just take a few minutes,
Do a little bit of writing and notice what comes up for you as you think about those questions.
All right,
So I want to ask you to take a moment just to reflect on what that exercise and polarity brought up for you.
In each case,
The work is really about shifting out of that space of romantic possessiveness and into the space of taking personal responsibility for what is being brought up for us in terms of our own energy.
Right.
And,
You know,
The point of this model is really how do we think about what we're highlighting,
That it's not our romantic partner's job to reparent us as much as it is our own work to reparent ourselves.
And this way,
As we bring our inner adult into the dynamic with our partner,
This leads to a lot more adult interactions with our partner and hopefully a lot more passion in our relationships.
Right.
So it's about giving ourselves the experiences of stability before seeking them from our partner.
It's about giving ourselves that freedom rather than believing that someone else has the ability to take freedom away from us.
And to me,
This is the new frontier for romantic love and what ultimately leads to an increased sense of passion,
Discovery,
Curiosity and life force and,
You know,
Two autonomous human beings walking a path side by side,
Not from the space of enmeshment,
But from the space of finding authentic fulfillment in their relationships.
Yeah.
So I'd love to ask you to take a little time,
Reflect on what this session brought up for you.
Thanks for being here.
