Several months ago, I read about a study by Dr. Arthur Aron, a psychologist, who tried to figure out how people fell in love. That question that has mystified people for decades! Dr. Aron decided to try a laboratory approach to answering this profound question. He provided two people, who didn’t know each other, with a long series of questions to discuss, with honesty. They then stared deeply into one another’s eyes for 4 minutes. The outcome was that several of the (previously strangers) couples fell in love.
The main idea that I got from this study, and from my experience, is that love is an action. In the course I’m getting ready to launch, there is a lot of information and a lot of getting into action exercises. We need actual ACTIONS to nurture and to sustain our relationships.
In Dr. Aron’s study, the series of questions that the couples discussed were about topics that were increasingly personal and intimate. People were revealing their hopes, dreams, vulnerabilities and fears much more than is usual in early dating experiences. They were getting to know each other on an accelerated time line, falling in love with someone they didn’t know before the study.
Many of the couples I have worked with over the years had stopped having these intensely personal conversations, or else they rarely had them. In addition, they fell into patterns of avoiding having conversations about crucial things, for fear of having arguments. Or else they had recurrent fights with each other instead of coming to a solution to the important topics.
My online course, Reignite Your Romance (a new name, previously Reconnecting Couples), addresses these problem–head on. We must talk intimately with our partners to keep out relationship from becoming stale and distant. We must talk about the difficult topics (for example, sex, money, vision for the future, complaints) if we are to reconnect or maintain our connection. We really don’t have a choice—The Conversation is the Relationship, as Susan Scott said (in her book, Fierce Conversations).
Don’t let your communication challenges doom your relationship to being stale, disconnected, avoidant or high drama (many arguments). Go for vibrant, connected, peaceful and real (talk about real things without “broken glass”).
