Giddy excitement, hours-long conversations, and strong feelings of sexual desire are hallmarks of a new dating relationship. But fast forward a couple of years and partners often do not feel the same passion that they did at the start of their relationship. Why is it that even in happy relationships, sexual desire can be difficult to maintain? One reason is that opportunities for novelty and excitement with a partner, which can fuel desire, tend to decline in ongoing relationships. But our recent research suggests that this is not inevitable.
Thankfully, sex and relationship researchers are beginning to understand how it is that some couples maintain desire years into their relationship while others are not. In the 1980s, psychologists Arthur and Elaine Aron argued that a key benefit provided by romantic relationships is opportunities for personal growth, or what they called self-expansion. Self-expansion is the idea that through novel, shared experiences with a partner, we learn new things and broaden our sense of who we are.
As partners progress in their relationship and become more familiar and comfortable, there are fewer opportunities for self-expansion. Hearing a new partner tell stories about their world travels or having them cook us a delicious new cuisine is very attractive but hearing the same travel story five years later and eating the same delicious meal every week is less likely to make sparks fly. As a result, satisfaction tends to decline over time.
But Hope is Not Lost
In their classic experiment, the Arons had partners engage in a novel and exciting activity together (compared to a mundane activity) and found that they could immediately boost how satisfied partners felt with their relationship. It has since been found that partners who experience more growth in their relationship as a result of shared experiences in their daily lives are more satisfied and feel greater sexual desire for their partner, too. In fact, when a person did something with their partner that provided more self-expansion than they typically felt, both partners had more desire for each other and were more likely to have sex on that day.
Is simply trying something new with a partner, such as venturing out of your comfort zone on a road trip or taking up dance lessons, the trick to keeping the passion alive in relationships? In our research, we wanted to understand why higher self-expansion is linked to higher desire. On the one hand, the Arons have shown that self-expansion keeps partners satisfied by bringing them closer together. Yet, some couples describe too much closeness or overfamiliarity with their partner as stifling their desire and, instead, require what famous clinical psychologist Esther Perel refers to as "otherness," or seeing your partner in a new light, as the way to keeping desire alive. So, we wanted to see if increased closeness or seeing your partner anew explained why novel activities could reignite that romantic spark.
How Self-Expansion Works
In two studies we asked couples to report on their level of self-expansion, closeness, otherness, and desire in their daily (or weekly) lives, including during an isolation period in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a third study, we had people recall a recent shared experience of self-expansion with their partner (compared to a familiar experience or no recall) and tested whether recalling a self-expanding experience boosted their feelings of closeness, otherness, and desire for their partner compared to the other two groups. In all three studies we found that when people engaged in (or recalled) self-expansion with a partner, they felt closer to their partner, but also saw their partner in a new light. Furthermore, both enhanced closeness and otherness were linked to higher sexual desire. The findings show that both feeling close and seeing a partner differently are important to maintaining desire.
Otherness is a relatively new idea in relationship research, and we are still learning about its role in relationship and desire maintenance. Although closeness seems to be beneficial for both desire and satisfaction (it was linked to both higher sexual desire and higher relationship satisfaction across our studies), otherness, while also linked to higher desire, was not associated with higher relationship satisfaction. It is possible that seeing a partner in a new light can have both costs and benefits. This was highlighted in our study of couples during the COVID-19 pandemic in which the "benefits" of otherness were the weakest.
The pandemic was a life-altering experience that may have forced both partners to work from home, possibly while caring for children, and in some cases spending more time together than ever before. Change brought many opportunities for partners to see each other in a new light, but this was not always positive. People may have been irritated by their partner's different persona in virtual work meetings or annoyed by a new hobby they took up during the lockdown. In these instances, seeing a partner in a new light was unlikely to promote desire. For other couples, seeing how their partner rose to the challenge of homeschooling their children or how they fashioned a birthday celebration in the living room highlighted their positive qualities and led to greater desire.
Overall, our research suggests that one route to boosting desire is to balance closeness and otherness. That is, partners should aim to feel connected and comfortable but use that comfort to express new sides of themselves and still try to surprise each other. Our results show that engaging in self-expanding activities together has the potential to provide comfort and novelty, both of which help couples keep the passion alive over time. For couples looking to reignite the spark from the start of their relationship, try doing a new activity together and pay attention to opportunities to feel close to a partner and see new sides of them.
For Further Reading
Aron, A., Norman, C. C., Aron, E. N., McKenna, C., & Heyman, R. E. (2000). Couples' shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 273–284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.273
Goss, S., Raposo, S., Balzarini, R., Rosen, N. O, Benyamin, V., & Muise, A. (2022). Feeling close and seeing your partner in a new light: How self-expansion promotes sexual desire. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39, 2478-2506. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075221081137
Muise, A., Harasymchuk, C., Day, L. C., Bacev-Giles, C., Gere, J., & Impett, E. A. (2019). Broadening your horizons: Self-expanding activities promote desire and satisfaction in established romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116, 237-258. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi/0000148
Sophie Goss graduated with an honors degree in psychology from York University and is currently coaching couples in which one partner suffers from PTSD. Her research interests are at the intersection of physical intimacy and trauma, including posttraumatic stress and borderline personality disorder.
Amy Muise is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at York University. Her research interests are at the intersection of sexuality and romantic relationships, and she aims to understand the factors that are associated with the maintenance of desire and satisfaction in relationships.
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