To Keep a Marriage Hot, Stoke the Courtship Fires

After years of familiarity between spouses, the embers of love may start burning low, and in order to keep the flame lit, long-term couples must continue courtship behaviors for life, a clinical psychologist says.

The reason a relationship is so alive at the beginning is that the two people involved are working very hard to keep it vibrant, said Dr. Susan Regas, a lecturer in marriage and family counseling at California State University, Dominguez Hills, in Carson.

“They tell each other how attractive they are and what they like about each other,” she said. “When people are just getting to know each other, they do a lot of things to get it going. They do romantic things such as sending love letters, sending a rose. People, as soon as they get married, stop doing this.”

The early fire won’t be kept alive without hard work, she said, noting that it was hard work at the beginning but a little easier because the relationship was new.

‘A Lot of Thinking’

“You did a lot of thinking about how to keep the other person happy. That has to be done even in the 15th year of marriage, or else it will die,” said Regas, who offers some suggestions on keeping a marriage fresh:

- Learn to love yourself first, something you must do before you can love anyone else. People who don’t feel good about themselves don’t give to relationships; they pull things from other people.

- Really identify what you want in the marriage. A lot of people don’t think about what they want in a relationship. They just feel unhappy, so they nag. Recognize what you want and communicate that to your partner in a way that doesn’t blame him or her. Don’t say, for instance, “You’re a crummy husband, you’re never home.” Say, “I feel sad when I’m left alone every night at home.”

- Always keep the relationship alive sexually and romantically. Keep up or start doing the candlelight dinners, romantic walks and handholding. Set aside time to be devoted to affection and sex.

- Have friendships outside the marriage. There’s no way one person can meet all your needs. Each spouse needs his or her own friends, and the pair need joint couple friends. These need to be good couples, not troubled couples. The basis of the friendship should be strength, not trying to rescue the couple. However, outside friendships can’t be more important than time spent alone as a couple.

Avoid Being Enmeshed

- Beware of becoming over-involved with each other. A couple can get enmeshed, too involved. So when one spouse is in a bad mood, the other takes it as a personal offense because every need is being met by the spouse. Unless there are other people in your life, you can’t stop that over involvement.

- Be able to enjoy being alone and have outside activities or interests. As long as you’re having fun together regularly as a couple, the activities you do without your spouse, such as sports, reading, photography or other hobbies, will add excitement and interest to your marriage.

- Trust each other. Without trust, you cannot know if the other person will stay around to work out problems. Commitment to stay together is the underlying basis of a good marriage.

Commitment means you will not only be there for the highs of passion but also for the lows, as when your spouse loses his or her job or you find out your child is on drugs.

“If you’re doing all these things, you’re in for a good marriage,” Regas said. “Your partner also has to do them. Your partner has to have the same values. It takes at least one to ruin a marriage and always two to make it work.”