Best Behavior Bye-Bye?
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“Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain”
-Vivian Green
Does the passion party inevitably end after the “honeymoon stage”? Or is it that we simply stop dancing?
A friend of mine got a cute apartment through Airbnb in Astoria for a weekend. She and her husband live in Hoboken but wanted to spend a weekend in an area that they rarely go but didn't want to travel too far. No celebration or special occasion. Just because. I thought it was such a lovely idea.
When I ask couples what they believe attributes to their lack of quality time, novelty and sex…..the most common responses are, “Life gets in the way” and “The passion is just gone.”
They appear resigned to the idea that the passion has forever dissipated with the ending of the “honey moon” phase.
Let’s say that falling in love is a dance party.
Hope dancing is your thing…if not, just go with me….
When you first arrive, the disco lights are spinning and the bass is just right, and every song is your favorite song. Although a crowd surrounds you, it feels like you two have your own private dance party.
You both dance all night. You pop-n-lock. You do the moonwalk. You do the worm on the floor frontwards and backwards. You breakdance. You salsa. You dirty dance…..and you didn’t even know you could dirty dance you sexy beast.
Every song equals another month in Pure Infatuation–Disco-Heaven.
Several songs in, you find that one or maybe both of you is simply two-stepping. A few songs later, you are slow dancing but distracted and fixated on all the work emails you’ll have waiting for you. You are barely keeping up with the tempo of Cher’s greatest hits.
Eventually, maybe a year or so later, you say that work is really crazy and you’re going to just sit this one song out. One song turns into two and two into three…..and so on. You took your shoes off long ago. Where did the will to dance go?
Think about how creative we are to make time for our new beau and the effort that we put into tap dancing into the very best of ourselves while still balancing life’s demands and responsibilities when first falling in love.
I am not discounting the scientific evidence of the surge in dopamine, serotonin and hormonal upheavals that are impacted by falling in love. Essentially the music is the oxytocin.
Even still, there’s one thing that is intermingled yet separate from those hormones and that is effort. Yes, Effort with a capital E. The thing that you had and still have is the willingness and effort that you put into getting onto the floor and creating the rhythm of your relationship.
Where did the effort go? It didn’t simply vanish. The oxytocin creates the initial playlist but once the volume goes down, it’s up to you to drive the passion (which takes work and intention) and remind yourselves of the reasons to dance.
I’m not saying that once your hormones level out that you can feel those exact crazy intense overwhelming-can’t-think-about-anything-else-I’m-so-obsessed-with-you-I’m-watching-your-every-move-on-social-media-love-and-I-physically-feel-faint-at-the-sight-of-you-type-infatuation”.
By the way, who wants to stay in the infatuation stage forever? Just typing that above run-on-sentence exhausted me, imagine living it indefinitely!
Perhaps it’s simply the narratives around the all-too-familiar concept of the honeymoon phase? Perhaps because we expect the passion to end around a certain time frame, we live out that story by foregoing the effort voluntarily.
So what are the dances that you haven’t tried or need to step back into? Maybe it’s to sign up for a cooking class or to get a bed-n-breakfast for a night in Brooklyn even though you live there! Maybe it’s to have Naked Scrabble Night after the kids go to sleep. Stretch your mind, create the music, and the dancing will follow.
If you would like to explore finding your dancing shoes, contact me for a free 15 minute consultation to see if we are a fit to get you back on the floor.