I have noticed a pattern in my relationships where after a couple of months of getting to know someone new, I feel like the passion and excitement dips and I feel disappointed. I keep trying to interrogate myself about why that is. Are my standards too low or too high? Or is this just normal as you get to know someone better?
I try to be open-minded when I first meet new partners. I know that fairy tale romance is a myth, that real love takes effort sometimes, and that pobody’s nerfect. I also know that ‘sparks’ are not always going to be there and maybe that’s okay?
I know no relationship is perfect and we have to learn to love each other in spite of and because of our quirks and differences and shortcomings. I also feel like our options to find a partner who excites and stimulates us in the right way diminishes as we get older and more people have paired off to mate for life.
What Dan Savage says on this topic resonates with me: “There is no such thing as ‘the one’; there’s only an array of 0.7’s who could potentially be rounded up.”
Normally I hate the idea of reducing relationships and people to numerical equations and values, but I like his point and his wordplay.
How long does it take you to get to know someone and evaluate them as a potential long-term mate? How did you determine what qualities are essential and which ones you can compromise on? What changes happen for you after NRE dies down and how do you process that? How do you know when it’s time to move on and see who else is out there who might be a better fit?
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I’ve definitely noticed this too as I get older.
One major thing I try to do to help alleviate this is make sure you have activities or hobbies you share, so you’re always *having fun* with them on dates and meetups, regardless of the person. I love talking and going to restaurants as much as the next person but it gets old fast, especially when you’re dating new person after new person.
I think this makes sense. You’re getting to know who the person actually is Vs the fantasy you projected on to them.
It takes me a long time to get to know someone, which the app culture doesn’t facilitate. I had to quit apps bc I couldn’t hang with the pace.
> is this just normal as you get to know someone better?
*Some* version of “excitement dropping off” is normal, but there are a few different things that could provoke that feeling. The hard part is discerning which of those is really happening.
When you first meet someone, there’s often an excited butterflies-in-stomach feeling that is born of the tension between what you want/imagine could happen and uncertainty about whether it will. This always goes away as that uncertainty naturally dies down, though sometimes partners can make it flare up again briefly from time to time, just for fun. This feeling is normal, fun, and harmless *unless* you mistake it for a signal of something important and freak out when it dies down. In reality, it’s just what the *will-we-won’t-we* stage of something new feels like, and once the reality turns out to be *oh we definitely will* then there’s no reason for that feeling to stick around. This is a very dopamine-heavy experience, and so it often tends to manifest as being distracted by another person (since the dopamine your brain would otherwise use for task management is being used by the new-person feeling). People who tend to churn through multiple short-term partners tend to be people who chase this feeling and bounce when it leaves.
Of course, at that stage it’s normal for a different form of excitement to take its place, born out of the fact that you’re with someone you’re really into. This form of excitement tends to manifest as a simple joy in the other person’s qualities. The things that made the first stage feel exciting — distraction, butterflies in the stomach — die down and are replaced with just *liking* the other person a whole lot. I think when people talk about NRE sometimes they mean this form of excitement and sometimes they mean the first, or both. This sometimes doesn’t go completely away in a good relationship, but it does die down a lot as you get used to the other person. *Wow this person is fucking great* gets slowly replaced by *yeah, I know this person is great*.
There’s a third, more mature form of excitement that surfaces in longer relationships, too, that blossoms when trust and safety allow long-term partners to explore and achieve things they wouldn’t have been able to in shorter relationships. This is the one that takes the most work, but can also be the most sustainable and rewarding. It takes both partners being intentional about learning what excites and stimulates the other and how to do those things. It’s not a magic, automatic process, and it can sometimes feel a little mechanical when you’re first learning how to do it. But once the two of you figure out how to do it, it feels really, sustainably good. It’s at this stage of the relationship that it’s really important to understand the difference between NRE and long-term excitement. The first two stages of excitement *just happen* if it’s a pretty good match; you don’t have to do much of anything to make your partner feel them. The third stage is different: both partners have to intentionally learn what it takes to excite their partner and intentionally do those things. The fact that you have someone with you who is intentionally going out of their way to excite you is *fantastic*, but it also introduces a common failure point: lots of people assume that because the first two stages just happened on their own, the third should as well, and freak out when it doesn’t.
I’m sorry to categorize this stuff like a scientist looking at bug species, it’s just the way I see the world — in reality each of these bleeds into each other a bit and the boundaries are fuzzy. I’m not sure whether you’re struggling with the second or third form of excitement, but in either case it seems to be born from doubts about compatibility with the people you’re seeing.
It’s difficult one. I am currently in this dilemma. We’ve been together for around 5 mths been exclusive. I think he’s a long term partner. We’re a good fit, we balance each other out. We share similar values. He doesn’t seem to share the financial values. Which could affect long term goals. Whether we’d stay together in a long term partnership. But yeah, reflection is important, so it’s the changes they make cause they want to be with you. I think actions actually speak volumes.
I experienced this a lot and usually it comes down to I may fantasize about them in my head and then I get to know them and realize oh, I actually don’t like that person that much as I thought.
I find ways why we are incompatible (very real reasons) and my feelings slowly dies off.
It’s very rare for me to meet someone I actually LIKE, in fact it hasn’t happened yet in my 7 years as single 😂
But I’d rather be alone than settle or with someone I’m not excited about. I believe I’m very realistic and my heart is guiding me, it’s just very few people that really resonates with me. And I’ve learned to accept that (took me 5 years to accept that – at first I thought something was wrong with me)
All of that advice like the bit from Dan Savage and stuff like “relationships are supposed to be hard” is helpful up to a point, but there’s no reason to stay with someone you just don’t like that much. And it’s ok that we don’t want a future with every person we meet. I think the people we are meant to be with long term are supposed to be extremely rare.
I think it takes a specific personality type with a particular set of relationship values to be able to sustain a high level of excitement over months and years. If you want that in your relationships, you have to choose partners accordingly and maybe sacrifice some other qualities in the process.
I struggle with this type of thinking too. I’ve been in a relationship for the past three months that I frequently second-guess, as I have done to relationships in the past as well. It becomes a kind of obsessive preoccupation, wondering if this person truly is the right fit or if I could conceivably do better. Wondering if I’m in love with them or not. I’d recommend reading about relationship anxiety or relationship OCD because a lot of the focus is on living with uncertainty and making decisions/progressing a relationship despite not being absolutely sure that it’s the right thing to do. The fear is that you wake up one day walking down the aisle with someone you’re meh about at best, but it’s important to be realistic about the path to that point.
It is impossible to tell off of what you wrote that you have unrealistic expectations or have not met the right person for you.
I would say after 3 months some excitement wears off but not completely and it changes into something more stable. Im not very articulate, so its hard for me to exactly describe the feeling. It changes from feeling more obsessive, I need to know more about this person yearning to “oh Im happy around this person”
It should dial down, but not to not interested, if that makes sense.
Also some relationships are a slow-burn, meaning you arent super keen or infatuated in the beginning but over time grow more into the person.