Is The Romance Gone? Here Are 3 Tips For Sparking Passion And Getting More Of What You Crave From Your Partner

by Pat Love

Do you crave more romance in your relationship? Have things gotten too “comfortable”?

You want more passion and excitement. You want to feel more loved and adored by your partner, but lately, his or her attention seems to be elsewhere. For example:

You want him to spend time with you, to talk and share about his day, but instead he’s off cleaning the garage or fixing things around the house while you watch TV alone.

You wish she would be more physically affectionate with you. It seems like it’s been years since she did something as simple as taking your hand while sitting on the couch together, or kissing you passionately out of the blue.

He hasn’t told you he loves you in a long time, and he never brings home flowers or cards the way he used to when you were dating. He just works, works, works.

Why isn’t your partner being more loving and attentive? Has your partner fallen out of love with you? Or have you both gotten too busy/complacent/comfortable?

You want to connect emotionally with your partner, but you’re not sure how.

In this article, I’ll give you 3 tips on how to get the romance back, spark passion in your relationship, and revitalize your love, even if you’ve been feeling distant from your partner for months.

And the first tip is probably the most obvious. But many people can’t see that.

A Tip People Have Paid Me For That I’m About To Give You For Free

For years, clients have come to me wanting the answer to this question: “Pat, how can I get what I need from my partner?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this question posed in one way or another.

So, here’s a simple tip that people have paid me for, that I am giving you here completely free. Ready?

It doesn’t hurt to ask.

Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Either ask your partner to do something for you that would make you feel loved. Or ask them what would feel romantic to them or would make them feel loved.

People are usually surprised by my answer. It’s too easy, they say. Or they reply, “Yeah,but if I have to ask, it doesn’t count!”

Why doesn’t it count? Your partner can’t read your mind.

Expecting your partner to anticipate your needs or read your mind is a relic from infancy. Those days are over. You’re an adult now, and you have to have the courage to ask for what you want.

It may not be easy at first if you’re not used to asking for what you need, but you’ll have to manage the emotions that come up (like resistance or resentment) and just do it.

Ask them to give you what you need. And then ask them what they need in order to feel loved.

Maybe you’re not sure HOW to ask, or what you should say. Maybe you’re not sure what it is you want, exactly, except that you know that your partner isn’t giving it to you.

That’s okay, because my next tip will help you figure that out.

Tip #1: What Says “I Love You” To Your Partner?

Whenever I was a guest on a television show and the host asked me for a quick soundbite on how to spark passion in a relationship, I would say:

Find out what says “I love you” to your partner, and give it as a gift.

But how do you know what says “I love you” to your partner, right? That’s the tricky part!

The answer is that you have to learn what your partner’s “love language” is. A love language, according to author Gary Chapman, who wrote the book on it, is the preferred way in which we give and experience love. There are 5 love languages, and they are:

1. receiving gifts
2. quality time
3. words of affirmation
4. acts of service (devotion)
5. physical touch

Let’s say that you absolutely get giddy when your partner surprises you with a heart-felt “I love you” and a hug. That means your love language is a combination of words of affirmation and physical touch.

Your partner, on the other hand, may really feel loved when you spend quality time with them. They like it when you tell them, “I love you,” but they don’t FEEL love unless you spend time with them. Their love language is quality time.

Or maybe you feel loved when your partner cleans the kitchen after dinner so you can relax, or proactively cleans the garage. Your love language is therefore acts of service.

We all have a love language, or a combination of them. If you think back to the kinds of things that made you feel passionate about your partner when you were first dating, it will give you a clue about your love language.

Did you love it when he or she couldn’t keep their hands off you?

Did it spark passion in you when he or she took time out of their day to call you?

Did you revel in getting cards, flowers, or jewelry?

What about your partner? What did they enjoy from you?

Here’s your tip: don’t just assume you know your partner’s love language, ask them. Is it just one main one? Or do they have a combination of two or three?

In the beginning of this article, I gave examples of how partners show their love in different ways for each other, without necessarily knowing if they are “speaking” each other’s love language. What happens then?

A disconnect! Why?

Because you act out of an assumption based on your OWN love language, not your partner’s. You have good intentions, but all the while your partner feels unloved and neglected in some way.

This can lead them to complaining to you, “I don’t feel like you love me,” to which you might reply:

“But I do so much for you!”

or

“But I tell you I love you all the time!”

Do you see how doing things and saying things can have different results, based on someone’s preferred love language?

That’s why it’s important that you don’t assume and that you ask.

Once you learn your partner’s love language (and discover your own), the next step is to:

Tip #2: Ask For At Least 3 Examples Of What Would Make Their Heart Sing

A lot of times, when we’re with someone in a relationship for a long time, we may expect that they should know us. That’s probably why we don’t ask for what we want, or we don’t think to ask about what they want, either.

You may assume you know your partner’s love language, and even if you are just learning it for the first time, you may think you know what it means when they tell you that they like words, or touch, or time with you.

It would be a mistake to assume you know what they mean. Again, it doesn’t hurt to ask!

Ask your partner to give you at least 3 specific examples of what you could do for them that would make their heart sing. You may be surprised by their answer.

They may say they love it when you hold their hand in public, but they don’t like it when you kiss them in public.

Maybe they’ll tell you they love hand-written cards but they think other gifts are too impersonal.

After you listen to your partner’s examples, feel free to share with them what would inspire romance and passion in you, as well.

Here’s a caveat if your partner tells you they like receiving gifts: don’t give them a self-serving gift. In other words, don’t just get them something because YOU could get pleasure from that gift, like a camera or a vacation. Get them something that really speaks to their heart, and what they love. That may take a little more thought on your part, but it’s worth it.

Once you learn all about what your partner needs in order to feel loved, and what you need to do to make your relationship stronger, you’ll need to do something that’s perhaps a bit more challenging, because it takes being consistent, both with your words and actions, from now on:

Tip #3 For Creating Many Magic Moments To Come: Act Congruent

What does it mean to act congruent?

It means bringing your behavior in harmony with what you know about your partner, their needs and desires, and with what you know makes your relationship work.

For example, if you’re working out of town and you know your partner wants you to text to stay in contact with them (the love language of words and time spent), but you don’t text, you’re not acting congruent with what you know your partner longs for in the relationship.

Acting congruent is owning your own actions.

This is a skill that you need to practice over and over in order to create a deeper, more passionate connection with your partner.

You can’t just give them flowers one day, or clean the kitchen on another day, and call it good, and then go back to your usual behavior.

Your actions must be congruent to what you have learned your partner needs in order to feel loved, from now on.

That doesn’t mean that you are limited to doing just the few things they told you they like. It means acting congruent to what you know works to keep relationships strong, resilient, and passionate for life.

And that can be a plethora of things. It can be better communication, more awareness of your partner, more understanding. How will you know what exactly to do?

That’s where I can help you even more…

Master The Skills That Will Help Keep Your Relationship Passionately Connected For Life

As a marriage and family therapist, I spent many years evaluating research on what works to keep marriages and relationships strong and loving, so I could develop simple skills and tools I could demonstrate to my clients.

I would ONLY use the findings that matched my clinical experience with thousands of couples. In other words, I had to see proof that these theories actually worked to make relationships more connected.

Over decades, everything I’ve learned and applied about how to create a happy marriage can be summed up by this:

Nothing changes unless something changes.

If you want your relationship to feel more connected, and you want to feel supported and adored, you have to change something. You can’t just complain about it to yourself, or say that, “If I have to ask for what I need, it doesn’t count!”

You must change something, and preferably it should be something that can make a big difference.

The good news is, you can be the one making the change, and your entire relationship can shift toward the positive over time. If both of you are on-board, then your results can skyrocket.

So what changes should you make?

That’s where my video program, Wake Up In A New Marriage, can really help you. In this 8-hour video program, you’ll learn the 5 critical skills that help you reconnect and stay connected to your partner, so you can solve any problem and grow to love each other more than ever.

You’ll get tips and tools on how to become more tuned-in to your partner. Your partner won’t be able to help notice there’s something new and exciting happening in your relationship, and will likely respond with more closeness, more affection, and greater openness.

The skills and tools you’ll get in Wake Up In A New Marriage are simple, practical, and take almost no time at all. For example, you’ll learn:

• A communication strategy, demonstrated in real time, that’s designed to reflect and understand a point of view to the satisfaction of both you and your partner
• A simple, 2-second exercise you can do upon waking that increases your connection with your partner and sets you up to be more loving during the day
• How to avoid the sentence that shuts down communication (and what to say instead)
• A simple touching technique that gets a man’s attention and increases his oxytocin
• And so much more! It’s 8 hours of video content

You can start watching Wake Up In A New Marriage risk-free today, and start applying these simple tips as soon as possible in your relationship:

Everything you’ll learn is designed to help your ordinary, ho-hum, comfortable relationship go from ordinary to EXTRAORDINARY. I am sure that once you go through the program and try out the tools, you’ll agree.

May you have an extraordinary day,

P.S. Did you know that research has shown that your private thoughts, moods, and attitudes can affect your relationship, even if you’re not saying a word about your internal state? It’s true! And it’s pretty amazing.

In Class 1 of my Wake Up In A New Marriage video program, you’ll learn how to be proactively positive with your partner, so you can make your connection stronger without having to talk about it.