love connection
Lost that
Lovin’ Feeling? Photo: Strawberry Mood Photography/GettyImages.
10 tips to recapture the romance by merci miglino
F
rom all outward appearances Diana and her husband Fred look like many other couples in Ballston Lake. Married for 40 years, with a house, two dogs, aging parents, grown children and a half-dozen grandchildren, they have a full and busy life. So when asked if she is still in love and if the spark is still there with her husband and childhood sweetheart, Diana answers without hesitation: “No.” “We used to do things together,” says Diana, a petite blond who looks younger than her 58 years. “We’d take a ride, go antiquing, find new restaurants to discover. But now, we’re either too tired or busy, or my husband complains that his legs hurt, or he has to use the restroom every 20 minutes; hardly the stuff of romance, and not the way we fell in love in the first place.” While Diana’s name has been changed, her situation is not likely to, unless she and her husband start paying more attention to their marriage. “If you were in love at one time, you have the basis to fall back in love again,”
says Mo Therese Hannah, professor of psychology at Siena College, who has been counseling couples for more than 20 years. If your intention is to love your partner to the best of your ability, to give your partner what you can, ask for what you need and eliminate criticism, you can probably have a good relationship. “If you don’t do those things — and you don’t have to do all those things all the time — it’s sort of like tending a garden. Your garden isn’t going to be beautiful all by itself. You have to water it. You have to make sure it has the right kind of soil, etc. This is even more true in human relationships because they can be more complex than growing a garden,” says Hannah. SUNY Albany professor Mary Valentis agrees, adding that a relationship can never really remain the same since “that first stage of romantic love is really infatuation, which can last a night or two years. What’s left behind once the chemical reaction wears off,” says Valentis, “can be a passionate and incredible friendship … and a sense of falling back in love.” With this in mind, we asked local experts for their best tips on how to fall back in love. continued on page 52
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