Can long-term couples really experience that honeymoon high again? Sarah Pollok chats to an expert in sex and relationships about a study that suggests they can.
We call it the honeymoon period – that blissful time when novelty abounds, desire burns red-hot, and a couple is intoxicated by the thrill of discovering each other and being deeply known.
It’s no accident we call it a period. Eventually, whether it’s months or years later, novelty fades into familiarity, desire softens into a steady hum of companionship and sex no longer feels quite as exciting as it used to.
Most committed couples quietly accept waning desire as an inescapable reality but it may not be so inevitable according to Amy Muise, the Associate Professor and Director of the Sexual Health and Relationships Lab at York University.
In 2018, Muise and five other researchers discovered couples could bolster their desire by doing one simple thing; pursue self-expanding activities. Not only did couples report increased desire but men and women were more likely to have sex, report it as enjoyable and feel increased satisfaction for their relationship overall.
Self-expansion, Muise told the Herald, describes how our sense of self is broadened or shifts when we have new experiences, encounter new perspectives or gain new skills.
“When you’re first in a new relationship, you’re self-expanding typically quite a bit, because when you’re with a new partner there’s so much to learn,” she said.
You’re meeting their friends and family, trying activities they enjoy, sharing stories about your life and listening to theirs; events that broaden and reshape your sense of self.
Eventually, months or years down the road, the relationship’s innate novelty wanes and can take desire with it.
“It makes sense; after a long time, there’s not as many new things to learn,” Muise said, adding that although it’s very normal, it’s not necessarily ideal.
Fortunately, the 2018 study found couples can recreate this novelty by pursuing new experiences together.
“Even in a long-term relationship when you know each other quite well, there are still novel things to do, new conversations to be had, so that potentially could provide those opportunities, even when you know someone quite well,” she said.
Roughly defined as something that provides novelty, excitement and a moderate challenge, a ‘self-expanding activity’ could be anything from learning pottery to hiking a new trail. Travel was another rich source of novelty and challenge, Muise said, whether you’re visiting a new country, taking a domestic road trip or visiting a new part of town.
Scaling these ideas down is important as it makes them achievable, Muise added.
“Of course, you could think of things like bungee jumping or going on a European vacation, but that’s not stuff we’re going to be doing every day or even every week,” she said.
In a secondary study about everyday self-expansion, couples said simply cooking a new recipe together or having an interesting discussion about a new book one of them had read or a work event was self-expanding.
Before you drag your partner to a pottery class or sports match, buoyed with the knowledge it’ll boost your sex life, Muise notes mutual enjoyment is important.
“It depends on whether you can suspend your dislike of something and just dive in,” Muise said. “It can still be good, even if it’s not maybe your number one preferred activity, as long as it’s fairly amenable to you.”
If playing 18 holes of golf or discussing a bestselling novel feels truly punishing, encourage your partner to do it solo; it’ll still have the same benefits.
“I do think it’s important to remember that self-expansion in the relationship is very important, but you can also self-expand outside of the relationship,” Muise said.
“If there’s something you’re really interested in doing and it’s not your partner’s cup of tea, maybe do it on your own or do it with a friend, and then try to find something else that would be a bit more amenable to your partner.”
With a relationship hack as virtuous as shared activities, you’d think it could take eight-10 business days to see results. According to the study, it took mere hours.
“I think that it can be fairly immediate and especially for something like desire,” Muise said of the time it took for couples to feel desire after self-expansion activities.
The study couldn’t pinpoint exactly how many minutes or hours it took for self-expansion to translate into desire but both partners typically reported more desire the days they did something self-expanding and were 34% more likely to have sex.
Since sex essentially ‘sates’ desire, these couples didn’t experience quite as much desire the next day, even if they did another self-expanding activity. One quality that did continue to increase, however, was relationship satisfaction.
“When people reported higher self-expansion than typical, they felt higher relationship satisfaction as well that day,” Muise said.
“That also carried over to the next day and the findings accumulated over our three-week diary and predicted satisfaction months down the road.”
As a sex and relationship researcher, Muise has also heard countless myths and misconceptions people have about reigniting the sexual spark. One of the most common is zeroing in on the physical sex itself.
“I feel like some of the media messages we get can over-focus on things like new toys, lingerie, or techniques,” Muise said.
“While that stuff can be fun and incorporated, I don’t think that’s at the heart of what is maintaining those connections over many years.”
Another stubborn misconception Muise has studied is the belief that a great sexual relationship doesn’t take effort if you’re with the right person.
“They don’t think that you have to really work at it. If they bump up against a sexual problem, or if they do experience those declines in desire, which are very common in relationships over time, they start to have more negative consequences, feel less satisfied, and be more avoidant in the relationship,” she said.
People who know a great sex life takes work and effort? Those couples thrive.
“There are so many other things in our lives we would never think that we don’t have to work at,” she said. “In most important things in your life, you do have to devote, time and effort and energy to and relationships and sexuality, I think, are no different.”
Most things we devote time and effort into can be found in our calendars, whether it’s that 5pm Pilates class or weekly Saturday coffee date. What you won’t find in the diary, Muise discovered, is sex.
During a study on spontaneous and planned sex, Muise was surprised by how adamantly people believed impromptu sex was superior.
“It’s like people feel there’s something unsexy about saying, ‘Hey, like, can we find time on like Saturday to connect’,” she said.
Similar to the idea of sex requiring effort, it’s an approach we wouldn’t apply to other areas of life.
“There’s barely anything else that we would think we could do regularly and enjoy without planning it,” she said.
Sarah Pollok is a multimedia journalist from Tāmaki Makaurau who specialises in travel and lifestyle. She joined the Herald in 2021 and writes about everything from travel insurance advice and the best tools for planning a trip to the psychology of happiness and the pros and cons of Botox.
Matariki celebrations will be taking place across the country throughout the weekend.