Week 6: MAKE IT SUSTAINABLE: Commit to and Create your Future

In previous generations, most families stayed together out of duty, religious beliefs, or out of fear of social sanctions. In modern times, the success of a family depends on the success of the relationship.

Now that we have built a connected, loving, passionate relationship, our next step is to make it last. People in long term relationships report higher levels of happiness, live longer, and tend to me more successful than their unpartnered counterparts.

This Week’s Tools

The Triangular Theory of Love
Re-romanticization
Become Conscious
Responsiveness
Creating your Love Map
Commit to Safety and Security

This Week’s Theory

Our first task in making sure our relationship lasts is to understand the stages that almost every relationship goes through. These stages are wired into our brain from millions of years of evolution designed to make sure our species propagates from one to the next. It is important to know how these stages work if we want our relationship to continue in the long run.

Most relations go through three distinct stages, and each stages corresponds to a part of the evolutionary courtship process, reflecting certain functioning of the brain and even corresponding to specific neurotransmitters.

These phases are attraction, romance, and mature love:

Relationship Stage:	Also known as:	Feelings associated with this stage:	Neurotransmitters
Attraction	Mating, Lust, Passion	Strong sexual desire, interest	Testosterone, estrogen, acetylcholine
Romance	Courtship, Limerance, Falling In Love, Intimacy	Joy, buoyancy, newfound energy, obsessive and intrusive thoughts about the other, idealization of partner, fear of loss	Dopamine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, lowered serotonin
Mature love	Attachment, Commitment	Companionship, connection understanding, contentment	Oxytocin, vasopressin, endorphins

Many couples find that at the beginning of their relationship, the courtship phase, passions ran hot and they are very sexually attracted to each other. However over time, this fire can slowly go out to cool embers. When this happens, couples can turn to the practice known as Re-romanticizing, where they treat each other the same way you did when you were first courting.

Now that we know the stages, we can intentionally cultivate the qualities that we deem lacking, by filling in our love triangle.

When filling in our love triangle, it is important to note that the stages of a relationship can be an additional challenge as they interact and overlap with the changes in the stages of our lives. Our relationships will change as some of us enter graduate school, change jobs, raise kids, see the kids go off to college, deal with physical of mental health issues. Sometimes we may want to stay committed to our partner and not worry about sex, for example during times of financial instability. Sometimes we may be on a beach vacation and really want hot sex to happen, but having trouble dropping out of “Mom and Dad” mode.

That’s why when filling out your love triangle, it’s important to note where you are now and where you actually want to be at this moment in time, knowing that it can change.

Now that we know the stages, we can also more gracefully transition from one stage to another. One of the more challenging transition is that from romance to mature love. This requires a shift from idealistic love, where we think we just found the perfect person, to realistic love, which requires more work and awareness. Some therapists call this transition the power struggle part of a relationship, because it brings up the most challenges.

Romantic partners have to work together to continue growing. They have to become conscious, set goals, exercise patience, and make good choices if their relationship is to progress to the next level. During this stage of a relationship, it is important to become conscious, which involves two crucial tasks:

Getting more information about your own and your partner’s formative histories, childhood wounds, motivations, dreams, and needs, and
Learning how to interpret what is happening in your relationship in a systematic and meaningful way.

In the process of becoming more conscious, we can cultivate our responsiveness in conversation and communication. Responsiveness consists of three core components:

Understanding, which involves “comprehending the partner’s core self (e.g., needs, desires, strengths, weaknesses, etc.).”
Validation, which involves “respect for or valuing of the partner’s view of the self.”
Caring, which involves “expressing affection, warmth, and concern for the partner’s well-being.”

Throughout this process of becoming conscious in our relationships and being responsive to our partner, we are gaining more and more knowledge about this other person. We can continue to gain knowledge about are partner–who they are, what they like, what they want to do with their life–by building a richly detailed love map. As the saying goes, “to know you is to love you,” and a love map is a term for that part of your brain where you store all the relevant information about your partner’s life.

Our last and final task in making sure our relationships lasts for the long run, is it fundamentally understand why we are in a relationship in the first place. It’s not for the hot sex, or the joint bank accounts, or the sharing of household chores. Evolutionarily and neuroscientifically, our love relationships are designed to serve one crucial role: a deep sense of safety and security. Like a mother comforting her child, love makes the world less scary.