Maintaining 'Good Love' in a Long-Term Relationship

Heart of the Matter
by Linda Austin, M.D.

(Page 3 of 3)

As challenging as it is to be aware of your rule book for starting a relationship, it's even more challenging to be aware of the gazillions of rules you unconsciously impose when your relationship becomes permanent. The rules cover every breathing moment of your relationship, and they define what does and doesn't happen in your love life. Most importantly, they determine what the relationship feels like to you and your other.

People fall in love in a thrilling storm of attraction, lust, and excitement. Once that storm has passed, however, people remain in love for a simple reason: they like the way their other makes them feel.

Psychiatrists use a word, affect, to describe those moment-by-moment feelings that you experience in the course of the day. Mood is the emotional climate you experience over a period of days, weeks, and months, while affect is the much more fluid, reactive emotional coloration of the moment. Affect isn't commonly used in lay language, but it describes a really important aspect of how people relate.

Think about each friendship or relationship you have, and you'll be quickly aware that each one has a distinct affective profile. You probably have a few friends who reliably make you laugh. Maybe you have a family member who makes you feel guilty, anxious, or worried. Perhaps you have work associates who make you feel bored and flat, or an in-law who makes you feel withdrawn. All of those are feelings triggered by subtle aspects of your interaction.

What's more, you'll observe that in time your affective response to an individual begins to take on a life of its own. When you know someone well, he or she hardly has to say or do anything to trigger a cascade of feelings. Maybe all your mother-in-law has to do is walk in the room to make you feel irritated. Or perhaps all your best friend has to do is roll her eyes to make you start to laugh. Your affective reaction to an individual becomes an ingrained reaction that is difficult to change, even when you try hard. That's why it's so hard to refall in love with someone you've fallen out of love with.

Just as you react to others, others are reacting to you with affects triggered by your behavior. You do this in two ways. First, feelings are contagious. If you are happy, you will make others happy just by your presence. If you're anxious or depressed, those feelings will also infect others. The feelings you engender in others will not be as strong as your own. But like whiffs of perfume — or sour body odor — they can influence whether your other is turned on or off by you. Take a moment and think about what your typical emotional state is throughout the day; that's what you're making other people feel, too.

The second, more powerful way is by specific interactions with your other. The things you say and do, as well as the things you don't say or don't do, all trigger emotions in others. That's a no-brainer, right? But what's so hard to appreciate is your repetitive pattern of subtle responses, postures, and behaviors that are unconsciously determined and communicated. It's challenging enough to become aware of the explicit things you say in a relationship, for at least you can think a moment about your words before they leave your mouth. What's harder, though, is to become sensitive to the slew of behaviors that you never even consciously scrutinize. Two categories of behavior are especially challenging: sins of omission and nonverbal behaviors.

Why Are Sins of Omission So Destructive?

As you learn about the essential behaviors of good love and sharpen your observations of how you react in relationships, I will repeatedly call your attention to the things you neglect to do — sins of omission. If you have trouble finding someone to love, you are not fully aware of all the opportunities for connection you let slip through your fingers, and you'll never even know what you've missed. If you are in a relationship, you may not be aware of all the tiny behaviors you're not engaging in that might really build a stronger love. It's relatively easy to observe big, obvious things you do to damage love. It's so much harder to become aware of the relationship "glue" you're not creating. You rationalize why you act the way you do, without asking the really important question: Yes, but at the end of the day is my behavior "working?" Is it bringing me the love I want?

Listen to the words of Clem as he described why he bailed out of his relationship with Leigh:

"I've dated a lot of girls, and Leigh was a really sweet girl. We had some good times together. But there just wasn't enough — I don't know, chemistry, or electricity, or something — to keep it together.

"Part of it was that she was always sort of low-key. Like, if I suggested we do something, like go to a game or a movie, she'd never be really enthusiastic about it. We could go to a great movie, and I'd want to talk about it afterward, but she never really wanted to get into it. She'd always change the subject and want to talk about something practical.

"But the thing that was really hardest for me was that I never really knew what she was thinking. She was extremely quiet and kept a lot to herself. I don't think it was the quietness itself that bothered me, but the fact that I felt like it was just hard to know what was going on inside her."

Clem wasn't talking about bad things that Leigh did — he was talking about what she didn't do. When people talk to me about why their relationships fail, they speak of the acts of omission at least as often as the acts of commission. I hear:

"She just was so unaffectionate."

"He just didn't have much of a sense of humor or willingness to have fun."

"She seemed uncomfortable around my friends."

"He just lacked spontaneity. Everything had to be planned."

"She just seemed so unmotivated in her life."

Acts of omission are difficult to grasp because they are more unconscious in origin than acts of commission. They may pervade your relationship, but it is much harder for you and your lover to talk acts of omission than the tangible problems you have. It may literally never dawn on you that you are leaving out a vital nutrient of a relationship unless your lover is able to tell you. And if your fundamental problem is not having a relationship at all, it's especially important to address what you don't do that keeps you alone.

Why Are Nonverbal Behaviors More Powerful
in Love than Verbal Behaviors?

Nonverbal behaviors are all the ways you communicate in relationships that do not involve talking. They include behaviors such as how and where you sit in the room when your other is present, and whether you make eye contact or laugh at his jokes. But they also include such things as how you decide to spend your free time, whether you initiate sex, and whether you remember and respect your other's likes and dislikes.

The vast majority of interactions are communicated nonverbally, rather than verbally. The challenge is that others are far more aware of your nonverbal messages than you are; the unconscious mind never really sleeps, and we are constantly communicating to others our real feelings. Further, when others are disturbed by our nonverbals, it is often difficult to address the problem up front. Your other might feel silly saying something like "I hate it that you make poor eye contact with me" or "Your body odor signals to me that you don't want to be close." But even if others don't address the issue with you, they react to your nonverbal cues.

Many affects contribute to the erosion of love, but anger, tension, and guilt are the royal three that are particularly damaging. Jean described how chronic guilt killed her friendship with Marge:

"Marge and I were great friends for a long time, really we were. We would have such a blast together, and there was a long period of time when we were inseparable.

"But then I just started having less time for our friendship. I had started dating Jeff, so that made me less available, and work was pretty demanding, too. So instead of seeing Marge once or twice a week, it went to once or twice a month. I know that was hard on her, but realistically, what was I supposed to do? Dump Jeff so that I could stay friends with Marge?

"But I knew it was an issue, and so I tried to keep contact by calling her frequently and making sure that we saw each other every couple of weeks. But then she started guilt-tripping me. Nothing big, but whenever she'd answer the phone I'd hear this sad little 'hello.' This tragic little voice. And she wouldn't call me, but when I called her, she'd say something like 'Well, I haven't heard from you for a while.' And so I'd apologize, because I really did feel guilty.

"But then one weekend I called her and she didn't call back. On Monday she e-mailed me, and I was busy but I e-mailed back just a couple of lines. So then she e-mailed back this note: 'Well, so kind of you to surface for a moment.' That did it for me. I knew that if I confronted her, she'd tell me I was making a big deal over nothing, that it was just a joke — and I'm sure it was. But I just got so tired of feeling guilty every single time we had contact that I just withdrew completely."

On the Horns of a Dilemma

So here's the question you face as you begin to think more carefully about your love relationships. If the "devil" of relationships is in the "details" of tiny, repetitive behaviors, is the solution to become more vigilant about your every move, your every breath? Of course not. The best and happiest relationships are the most spontaneous. You want to be more free to be yourself, after all, not more self-conscious about your every move, right? So how in the world do you improve the way you interact with loved ones without becoming paralyzed by self-scrutiny?

Answer: By developing your ability to practice the Five Essentials of healthy loving. The Essentials target the underlying themes and issues that organize your behavior and emotional responses. While the Essentials are a set of specific behaviors you can begin to practice right away, they work from the outside in to change fundamental ways you think about yourself and your relationships. It's impossible to practice the Essentials without challenging basic ways that you think about love. And as you evolve in your capacity to love, your unconscious mind will automatically begin to reprogram the tiny nonverbal ways you interact with others.

It all starts with engagement, the first Essential. Engagement is a way of approaching your relationships that emphasizes loving interest in, rather than ownership of, your other. It's the simplest of all behaviors, and yet it is the most precious gift you can give another human.

Copyright © 2003 by Linda Austin, M.D.

About the Author

Linda Austin, M.D., is a practicing psychiatrist in Bangor, Maine, and a Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina. A frequent lecturer, she is best known for her nationally syndicated radio program, What's On Your Mind? She lives with her husband in Bangor, Maine.