Keys to passion in a relationship
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Everyone wants passion in a relationship. They want to feel a connection and a sense of intimacy and adventure with their partner. But when you’ve been in a relationship for a long time, it’s natural to start asking yourself: How do I get the passion back in my relationship? What can I do to recover what we had? How can I maintain a bond with my partner if we have no passion in the relationship?
You don’t want to throw away everything you’ve worked so hard for – this is a person you love! So, how do you discover how to rekindle passion and restore what you once shared?
The three keys to passion
The three keys to passion are what creates a truly thrilling, exciting, loyal, trusting, passionate relationship: intimacy, thrill and sensuality. If you’re wondering “How do I get the passion back in my relationship?,” you’re missing one or more of these pillars.
Intimacy is the friendship aspect – the emotional closeness, the feeling that you can tell your partner anything and they will still love you. Maybe you live comfortably with your partner, but you’re missing a sense of deep emotional involvement. The relationship is okay – and that’s it. Learning how to get back the intimacy in a relationship is all about communication.
The second key to passion is thrill – the excitement, butterflies and “can’t-wait-to-see-you” feelings we get at the beginning of a relationship. It may seem like this naturally dwindles in every relationship over time but it doesn’t have to. You can rekindle passion and feel thrilled just to be with your partner.
The third key is sensuality – the physical touch, from holding hands to making love, and all the little things in between. This is the most common piece that falls by the wayside in long-term relationships: You just quit putting in the effort you used to because you’re so busy with your career, kids and other obligations. It’s hard to get in the mood when you’re stressed and exhausted.
How do I get the passion back in my relationship?
You can rebuild the pillars of your relationship and discover a passion that’s even deeper than when you first began dating. You just have to decide that is what you really want.
1. Remember what you have together
Remember when you and your partner first met? When you were first together, you always gave it your all because your partner’s love woke you up to the gift of life. You worked hard to come up with creative ideas for dates and conversations, and you strove to show the very best of you no matter the circumstances. You consistently came up with effective new ways to make your partner feel loved, unique and cherished.
When did that stop and why? What is passion in a relationship if it’s not ongoing?
You initially achieved love and happiness because you were fully, unquestionably committed to meeting your partner’s needs. You were feeling a deep level of joy and fulfillment despite all that work, because your extraordinary devotion made your partner happy and you were building a lasting connection. Those powerful positive emotions you felt were reflected back to your partner and that sharing made them even more positive.
If you need to rekindle passion in a relationship, it means you’ve lost the devotion and energy that was initially there and negative emotions are starting to replace positive ones. And when you start thinking negatively about your partner, you inevitably turn away from them physically and emotionally.
Creating the relationship you want and deserve depends on your level of commitment to a desired outcome. Long-term relationships don’t just happen. They take focus and dedication, but when you prioritize your partner over everything else, it’s much easier to answer the question, “How do I get the passion back in my relationship?”
2. Recommit to your relationship
If the relationship is worth committing to, you need to take risks and make sacrifices to provide elements of uncertainty and passion. Go back to the question of what you would do for the one you loved. Anything, right? If you’ve mastered yourself and you’ve achieved clarity in – and focus on – your outcomes, what’s stopping you from meeting them? What’s stopping you from doing everything possible to make your partner happy and figuring out how to get passion back in your relationship?
If you haven’t committed and you’re weighing your options, your relationship is dying. What do you truly want? What is it that you’re after? If you’ve achieved that level of personal mastery and you’re focused, you must commit. Commit to working through conflict and communicating openly with your partner. Commit to meeting their needs and to creating joy in your relationship. Commit to changing and addressing no passion in your relationship today.
What risks have you been avoiding in your relationship? How have you put yourself out there? What have you given or added to the relationship?
Experiment with ways of giving. Be creative and see what your partner responds to. When you see patterns, think about what those things have in common and give your partner more. Don’t give up if you try something that doesn’t work; trial and error is part of the process and being flexible will lead to a resurgence of passion. Just keep watching and talking to your partner and learn as much from your failures as you do from your successes. Indeed, it’s only a failure if you failed to learn.
3. Focus on yourself
Do you have clarity on what you want? With clarity comes focus, and once you have focus your brain will home in like a missile. But clarity and focus depend on your state. Before you can think of addressing a lack of passion in a relationship, you must master yourself.
The first level focuses on explicit Cognitive Understanding of what you want. You get it – you know what you’re after. At the second level, you achieve Emotional Mastery, where you start to feel an emotional pull that drives you toward your outcomes.
The third level is Physical Mastery. Everyone wants to be here first, but you cannot achieve physical mastery without mastering the first two levels. Cognitive and Emotional Mastery allow you to focus on what you need to do, what works and what doesn’t. It clarifies your emotional commitment. Now you own it, and you’re applying your knowledge consistently and persistently until it becomes muscle memory, a physical pattern or habit.
For example, let’s say that you recognize your tendency to withdraw physically and emotionally from your partner when there’s trouble or conflict and you recognize that this tendency leads to a loss of passion in your relationships. You won’t be able to stop this pattern until you commit to conditioning a new response. One of the 10 cardinal rules of love is to never get stuck in repetitive patterns because they lead to lack of passion in a relationship. You must find a way to interrupt the pattern and create new outcomes.
This may sound like a lot of work, but what would you do for the love of your life? Anything.
What limiting beliefs are keeping you from feeling and expressing passion to your partner? Is your fear of rejection or failure? Which defense mechanisms do you display when you feel threatened and how do they destroy passion in your relationship?
When you can answer these questions and commit to instituting new responses, you’ve mastered yourself. You’re figured out how to bring passion back into a relationship and can now focus on creating the joyful partnership you crave.
4. Transform your perspective
Even the happiest relationships face problems and diminished passion is not always an indication that a relationship is over. Learn to view problems as opportunities to grow, improve and evolve the relationship. Problems can be roadmaps that show us how to repair a broken relationship. Learn to see challenges in your relationship for what they are, and respond to them with purpose, an open mind and a sense of humor rather than fear.
Lack of passion in a relationship can often be the result of mishandling confrontation. When a conflict between you and your partner comes up, cope with the issue right away without blowing it out of proportion. Look at the issue from your partner’s perspective and be empathetic. Don’t jump to conclusions and always give your partner the benefit of the doubt. Learning how to get back the intimacy in a relationship means forming trust and understanding instead of getting upset and always focus on being supportive to your partner – especially during stressful times. Show your partner that you can listen and remind them why they trusted you with their feelings in the first place.
If your relationship is under pressure and you’re experiencing stress, anxiety and difficulty, you are in a defining moment. You have the chance to prove to your partner that they can trust you even when things are bad – even when it would be easier for you to take care of your own needs. Never waste an opportunity to show you will take care of the person you love.
5. Improve your communication
Do you want to feel that passion like you did on the first day you met? You may be ready to listen and give, but how do you know what it is that your partner wants? How does your partner best understand what you’re trying to give? When addressing lack of passion in a relationship, you must get clear on what it is your partner truly needs from you – even if they don’t know how to communicate it.
Most of us have a perceptual bias in the way we communicate. Is your partner more of an auditory person who likes to talk and listen? Or are they more receptive to visual input, preferring lots of eye contact or seeing your words put into action? Perhaps your partner prefers kinesthetic communication or the stimulus of touch and needs to have physical reassurance on top of verbal communication. An inability to speak their “love language” might explain why there is no passion in your relationship.
Pay attention to your partner’s communication cues. If you know their perceptual bias, you can adjust your communication style to work in tandem with theirs and ultimately find out how to make passion grow. By being sensitive to each other’s biases, you will both get more of the excitement and affection you want.
6. Understand the Six Human Needs
Once you’re on the same page as your partner, you can work to better understand how to get back the intimacy in a relationship. These manifest in as many ways as there are people, but they all come back to six fundamental human needs.
The first human need is certainty, the need to be comfortable, enjoy pleasure and avoid pain. A person with masculine energy can meet the certainty need by being emotionally present, open and honest for their feminine energy partners, even when they are upset. Someone with feminine energy can meet this need by showing their masculine energy partners that their love is unconditional – not just saying so, but being present and refraining from withdrawing even when things go wrong. Little to no passion in a relationship is often the result of uncertainty – but not the beneficial type of uncertainty.
Uncertainty is the second human need, because we can exercise and demonstrate our physical and emotional range only when challenges and variety are present. Each relationship has masculine and feminine energy (we’ll dive into that more later). Masculine-energized partners can meet this need by initiating surprise dates or token gifts with their feminine partners. Feminine partners can meet this need by being more provocative and surprising. Lack of passion in a relationship can sometimes be the result of boredom, so injecting a little uncertainty into romantic encounters can shake up the routine and reignite passion.
The third is to feel significant, needed, special and wanted. Anyone can meet this need by thinking of different ways they can show their partner how important they are. What small thing can you do today, this week or this month to show your partner that there is no one else on Earth who could take their place? What can you do to show how grateful you are for their love? How can you show them their uniqueness is appreciated? When you focus on being your partner’s number one fan, learning how to bring passion back into a relationship becomes much easier.
Fourth is love and connection with others. You can best meet this need for your partner by understanding how they experience the world and how they prefer to receive love. If your partner is very visual, they will love it if you gaze into their eyes or wear their favorite clothes; if your partner loves thoughtful gestures, even a small gift will mean the world to them.
The fifth human need is growth, because without emotional, intellectual and spiritual development we cannot rise to our potential. This is true of individuals, but it’s just as true for relationships. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Put in the work that it takes to understand each other and find innovative ways to make things work for both of you to address lack of passion in your relationship.
Finally, the sixth need is contribution and giving. Giving is the secret to wealth and fulfillment. What would you do to make the person you love happy? Would you expect something in return or is seeing them in a beautiful state enough? When we give without expectation and focus on appreciation, we give passion a place to flourish.
7. Unleash the power of polarity
Is your partner holding back, forcing you to initiate every time? Or is your partner the one who takes action? It’s okay if either one is the case – in fact, it’s natural and it does not necessarily lead to a lack of passion in a relationship. You and your partner are different, but herein lies the beauty – the power of polarity. In any successful relationship, there’s a person with masculine energy and one with feminine energy. These energies don’t necessarily correspond to gender.
You may believe that common interests are what bring people together, and sometimes that is true. While common values and goals are important to the success of a relationship, common needs and personalities are not. Although having things in common with your partner is wonderful, opposites really do attract and restoring passion in a relationship hinges on these differences.
Do you remember how attracted to your partner’s natural energy you were when you first met? You never had to wonder, “How do I get the passion back in my relationship?” Is it really that hard to go back to that state? Your natural energies already work together in amazing ways, so there is no sense hiding, denying or suppressing your real selves. Appreciate both the masculine and feminine energies and understand they need each other to thrive.
Explore your natural polarity with your partner. You don’t need a clone – you need an invigorating, exciting life partner who challenges and excites you. You want and need your partner to stimulate you in new ways that are unavailable to you without them. They want you to do the same thing for them, so you owe it to yourself and your partner to be your authentic self.
8. Build a five-stage plan
Because trust is critical to restoring passion, you need some effective strategies for increasing it. So how do you start building trust again when you feel you’ve lost it? Here’s a 5-stage plan that works.
Stage One
Commit to putting your partner’s needs first and declare that absolute commitment to your partner. Say this: “I love you no matter what, regardless of what we’re talking about now or ever.”
Stage Two
Create heartfelt emotion for your partner so you can both heal and feel loved; stop, breathe deeply, hold each other and connect. Stay here until you eclipse negative feelings with love and gratitude.
Stage Three
Share your true feelings and listen to your partner’s thoughts carefully, without judging, correcting or fixing. Accept their feedback and respond with love. When communicating, make sure you utilize all of the important verbs that make up the language of love such as to give, receive and play.
Stage Four
If you don’t see the signs of a passionate relationship, you may not have enough shared interests, experiences and goals. Align your needs with your partner’s so you can connect with a common vision for your relationship and future together.
Stage Five
Always end any tough conversations with some act of love, such as a hug, a promise or a kiss. If you can’t do this, you need to repeat each of the previous stages until you are able to feel at peace with each other.
Passion does not happen on its own. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if passionate actions are not spontaneous, they don’t count. Life is busy, and you need to plan for passion to ensure it’s not lost. This can include learning about and exploring new ways of being intimate and scheduling date nights to ensure you can ignite passion in various ways.
The longer you are with your partner, the easier it is to let other parts of life take over. If you wait for spontaneous desire to overtake you, you may be waiting a long time. Restoring passion is more about working together and committing to a plan than it is about the type of all-consuming passion you had when you first met.
9. Ask for help if you need it
If you’re struggling with how to get the passion back in your relationship, consider finding a mentor to help advance your sex education. A mentor can be a couple’s therapist or counselor you meet with in person, or a coach you learn from virtually. You can even consider an informative book or online course to be a passion mentor. World-renowned sex expert Jaiya Ma notes that a mentor can teach you about the 5 Erotic Blueprint Types (energetic, sensual, sexual, kinky and shapeshifter) and help you discover what type you and your partner are. They can also help you find new ways to express passion in a relationship and learn how to communicate better to enhance your connection.
If you want a relationship full of passion and love, what are you willing to do for it? Answering the question “How do I get the passion back in my relationship?” depends on giving as much or more than you want to receive mentally, emotionally and spiritually to your partner.
Stop settling for boring and predictable
Learn how to get the passion back with Tony Robbins’ free guide, The 9 Keys to Passion & Intimacy.