Not very long ago, in order to get to work on time, I would have to get dressed in the bathroom with the door shut, because if I walked around in my underwear in front of my new husband, Ted, I knew I would definitely be late for work. Yes, we were that frisky. Flash forward to one morning last week, when Ted looked at me - all freshly lotioned and curvy with pregnancy, in a striped tank bra and matching panties - and declared, "You look like a Dr Seuss character!" before kissing me on the cheek and leaving for work.
At moments like these, you can either laugh or cry. I chose to cry, a little bit later, in a call to my older, wiser, married-for-10-years sister. "So much for passion - he thinks I'm funny-looking!" I moaned. "You'll see," she calmly responded. "He'll be all over you again. Just when you think the relationship is stuck, you push through it, and it's different - in fact, it's better."
Okay, that's fine. But how and when, I wondered, would we reach the next level? When did we reach this level? And, is there any way to predict levels? Actually, as it turns out, yes! There is in fact some rhythm to the seemingly random mood swings of every relationship after all - or so say the friends, love experts and even perfect strangers that I interviewed for this article.
Every couple, they claim, encounters certain fairly predictable emotional landmarks if they love each other for the long haul. Some of these landmarks are fun, others test your stick-to-it-ness, but all of them let you know you're getting somewhere. It starts with?
Level 1 Infatuation
You're jittery-excited; you lost a kilo without trying. But if you've been around the block, you know you're not truly in love yet. Infatuation, that intense passion you can feel for a near stranger, is a deliciously superficial, selfish state. Until you know more about this person, you're imagining what you'd like him to be.
Between dates one and two, you imagine an entire life with New Guy, along with kids and a country house. While you've zoomed ahead in your mind, the relationship is still at square one. "When I met my ex," says Ashley, "I thought the fact that he owned my favourite book was a sign of our compatibility. Eventually I realised I was projecting my fantasy of the perfect guy onto him, when in fact he'd only ever read about five books and was cheating on me. I learned to trust what people do over time, rather than what they seem to be at first."
Says couple therapist Carolyn Perla, "Differentiate between being in love with the mythology you've built around a person and loving the actual person. Once you've dropped the initial fantasy, you're a step closer to having an authentic relationship."
Level 2 Free falling
"Normally, I'm very polite," says Emma, "but my rules went out the window in the early months of my relationship with my now-husband. When I invited my friends to meet him, the two of us couldn't stop making out. My friends booted us from the room and we didn't even mind. We'd lost all perspective."
"When you're falling in love, your edges get porous," says Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love (Henry Holt & Co, R263, Exclusive Books). "You lose yourself to include the other person." "Include the other person" - that's a nice way to phrase it, but it's more like devouring them. Says Cara, "I had loud, downright obscene sex with my fianc? while his parents were outside the door. Our brains shut down and our bodies took over. Mortifying!"
Emma and Cara did get their wits back, which is what nature intended. Psychologist Terri Orbuch says, "The chemicals driving passionate love decline after about 18 months. That's a good thing. We need to get back to reality. Plus, I'm pretty sure our bodies weren't built for that much sex!"
Level 3 Getting Emotionally Naked
Once your hormones have ebbed and you've put your clothes back on, it's time to unwrap emotions. Admitting to your insecurities, demons and dreams is a daunting rite of passage - even when you've met The One.
Says Max, "I was dating an amazing, funny, beautiful girl. Before her, I'd been a romantic disaster, and I was determined not to blow it. But one night after we had sex, she told me that her dad died years earlier, and that she'd never had a good relationship with him and never felt loved. She wanted me to hold her all night, and I did - but then didn't call her for a week.
I was clinging to the idea that she was going to be the buoyant one, keeping me up. But she never trusted me again after that." Max and his girlfriend broke up.
But for Donna, vulnerability took her relationship the other way. "My boyfriend and I spent the first six months together in a party phase - drinking and going out," she says. "The first time I saw him being insecure was when I dragged him to my rich friend's house. He went quiet and finally admitted to me that he felt out of place around my privileged buddies. I was in love with him from then on."
Level 4 Call It Intuition
Jo had this non-conversation with her husband of six years as they drove home from a party: Him: "Do you have any cash?" Her: "No, but we're stopping right?" Him: "Oh yeah, they have an ATM at the place." "The place" was an ice cream parlour down the road, where they were headed, without discussion, to satisfy a simultaneous craving for rum and raisin.
Ted and I often want the same things at the same times. Being so mentally in sync is sexy - even if the actual sex has slowed down while I've got a baby on board. One night, the two of us ditched our usual TV night to hear an amazing, otherworldly band. Walking home, dazed and moved, neither of us felt the need to discuss the show. The silence itself sounded a little like music.
Level 5 Breathing Room
"I went through a love depression," my sister, Cathy, tells me. "I was tired of being defined by my relationship." She and I are following up on our last talk - the one in which she assured me that love gets better. How was this better?
"It was good because of what came out of it," she says. When Cathy married Martin, she also married his high profile job. He needed her by his side at countless events. It was exciting at first, but then she started to feel like his extra limb.
When she confessed this to Martin, he let her out of "spouse required" occasions, encouraging her to spend time exercising, shopping or taking walks. "Being out and about on my own energised me," says Cathy.
"Our marriage felt much stronger." My friends Mona and Matt are photographers who've made a great career working as a team. "Now that we've been ?Matt and Mona' forever," says Mona, "we're starting to take separate assignments sometimes. Now, when we shoot together, the work looks fresher - at least to us." It's a metaphor for their relationship as a whole, she says, and another way of ensuring that they really are forever.
Level 6 The Second Fall
It may not be possible to recover the intoxication you felt when you first discovered your man, but monogamy veterans say that couples can fall in love many times, and the second time is amazing.
"I'd been dating my boyfriend for six years," says Val, "when he was cast in Shakespeare's Coriolanus. I was feeling bored about us, but then I saw publicity photos for the show, and I fell in love with the villain: he was shirtless and covered in stage blood.
Then I realised that it was my boyfriend! The boredom was gone, and as soon as he got home that night, I pounced on him and ended the cold streak." As George says of his wife of 17 years, Lucy, "On her 40th birthday, I looked at her and realised that if we could've gone back to being 20 and shagging like rabbits, I wouldn't. I was so proud of Lucy - not just for looking so hot at 40, but for becoming as impressive a woman as I've ever met. I couldn't believe my good luck."
Level 7 As Good As It Gets
What comes after the growing apart and the reconnecting? Often it's the best part, say the experts, and it's something I'm looking forward to with Ted. I'm confident we'll make it because we have pretty great role models in our parents.
I love the way my dad speaks with humour and affection about being married for 46 years, as when he said to me, "I woke up the other day and said, 'Who is this wrinkly woman in bed with me?'" It's not the most romantic sentiment, unless you consider that my mom's 60. And my dad just noticed she had wrinkles?
According to psychologist Terri Orbuch, the empty nest years are often a time when couples reconnect - or go their separate ways. "Some find out they have nothing in common," she says. "Others can't believe all the years they've missed out on."
Liz sums it up: "When my youngest went to university, my long-term boyfriend and I fixed up a beautiful house, filled it with our joint possessions and got married," she says. "Now was our time to create our own life. It was brilliant. You always get back to that love thing, don't you?"
Published on the Web by IOL on 2007-04-12 14:15:54
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