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How to get the spark back in a broken relationship
Sean Hyde • November 3, 2020
Why settle for an average relationship when you can have magic?
For most of us there comes a time in a long term relationship when it shifts from being an exercise in passion and excitement, the sparks fade away, and it suddenly changes to feeling more like work. Work we are underpaid for.
So where did that spark, that passion, that energy you used to have go? Did elves steal it? Is it a secret plan by “The Man” to keep us all down? Is it just the way life goes?
Believe it or that phase doesn’t have to happen, the excitement doesn’t have to leave the relationship, and the phase where it starts to feel tiring and mundane isn’t required. And those adorable older couples that are still chasing eachother through retirement don’t happen just by chance.
Today I want to talk about how to keep the energy and excitement in your relationship, and how to put the spark back into your relationship if you have lost it.
Most of you are familiar with the 80-20 rule or Pareto principle. Sometimes people will tell you it’s actually a 90-10 rule. I agree with the latter school of thought.
If you are unfamiliar with this concept, it’s the idea that 80-90 percent of our results on any given task come from 10-20 percent or our actions. Meaning that if we can identify the 10-20% of our actions that are the most productive, we could remove 80-90 percent of the other stuff we are doing, and still get pretty closet to the same result.
Who wouldn’t want 80-90 percent of their time back to do whatever they want with?
You’re probably asking yourself how my bringing up boring productivity principles can help add excitement to your life and your relationships, but I promise I’m going somewhere.
Most of us when we are trying to create positive relationships get so caught up in what we think they are supposed to be, that we don’t notice what they actually are.
What do I mean by that?
If you are single, you are supposed to go to bars, get on tinder, dress a certain way, stay fit and attractive, etc etc, right?
How many of us have ever actually gotten into a healthy relationship with someone we met at a bar on an alcohol fueled night of fun? Or after swiping right?
Those behaviors have probably gotten you hookups, sexts, attention, and some short term feel-goods, but if we are honest, most of us will admit that our best relationships grew out of connections we had already created in our life.
Speaking for myself, almost every quality relationship I’ve ever had came from one of three places: My friends, my work, or my passion projects. I’ve certainly met some interesting women on night’s out or through random online connections, but they’ve never turned into anything interesting.
For those of you already in relationships, I swear, I’m about to get to you too.
So if so many of us, if we are honest, have to admit that we don’t meet quality partners, friends, and love interests through “traditional” dating behaviors like going out drinking, online dating, etc…then why do we do it?
Because we ignore the Pareto Principle.
If we paid attention when we were single, we would have noticed that the activities that produced the most results were building quality connections and putting ourselves in circles of people with similar interests. People with similar interests as us probably have single friends who like people with our interests right? And if it’s solo synchronized underwater basket weaving you have a passion for…no judgement…then name a better place to find someone you could be compatible with then a solo synchronized underwater basket weaving class, competition, club, or whatever other gatherings “interesting” people like you have.
Worst case scenario, you make more friends, more connections, and get exposed to more experiences…with more people who share interests and passions with you…who probably can introduce you to people that could be really good partners and lifelong friends. Seems like a reasonable consolation prize to me.
Now that I’ve just shown the single people how to find the perfect partner while eliminating 80-90 percent of the bullshit out there, let’s move on to our people already in relationships.
So those of you in long term relationships wondering if I’m about to tell you to give up your partner and start dating again with my new Pareto Principle dating strategy, I’m not, so stop creating that tinder profile.
Want to get the energy and passion back in your relationship? What if you got 80-90 percent of your time and energy back and still got the same(and probably better) results? Ahh you see where I’m going now don’t you?
Most of us in relationships are stuck in even worse patterns than single people when it comes to doing things over and over again that don’t make sense.
You put in allllll this effort that your partner doesn’t notice, because he or she doesn’t care about what you are focusing your effort on, and you feel unappreciated, exhausted, and eventually start to feel like you have nothing more to give and why do all relationships suck, and why are people so lazy and selfish and you don’t think you are asking all that much for them to notice what you are doing for them geez.
But the thing is you probably aren’t doing it for them, you are doing it for yourself because it’s what YOU think you are supposed to do in a relationship…the problem is…drumroll…they don’t care because it’s not what THEY think matters in a relationship.
How many of us have been in a relationship where we spend all day being thoughtful of our partner, doing the little things that show we care, putting in serious time and effort to plan the perfect things to do, find the perfect gifts, solve our partners every problem, and make rainbows and butterflies appear wherever they go…just to have them tell us they really wished we had gotten them a pizza today.
Hours slaved away at being the best partner the world has ever seen, and not only did they not notice, or care, or reciprocate, they asked us to do something else on top of all that, and it was something ridiculously simple and mundane and steam is coming out of our ears?
Ask yourself this. If you had not spent the hours doing all the amazing things your partner never notices anyway(which means they are really just for you), and had just gotten a pizza, how would you feel? And how would they?
You could have spent those hours focused on yourself, chasing your passions, learning, exploring, becoming more, and you would have been happier, and then just spent ten minutes grabbing a pizza on the way home, and then your partner would have been happier, so why didn’t you?
Your brain is probably screaming right now “That’s not how relationships are supposed to go! Relationships are about investing everything in your partner and giving them everything whether they know they want it or not!”
But are they really? Or is that just something we’ve all been trained to believe?
Aren’t relationships about growing together, supporting each other’s growth and happiness, and putting our partner first so they put us first?
Is spending hours a day focused on activities your partner will never notice and getting frustrated over and over again that they don’t notice and “they just won’t change!” Supporting your happiness and growth, or theirs? It’s not.
So why do we do it? There are a lot of theories, but my personal opinion is that we have this old leftover drive from days where our survival literally depended on being a useful part of a group. That old part of our brain nags us that we aren’t doing enough, that we aren’t good enough, and that we have to be right….
It nags us so much that we don’t notice that many times we are actually doing way too much…that we aren’t good enough to ourselves…and that we are too busy doing and never observing to notice that in fact, we aren’t right.
So here’s my challenge to you. For the next week, make your focus of every day to just notice what’s actually working in your life. You can focus this on your relationship, but it can also be work, parenting, dating, fitness, friendships, anything you’ve lost your passion for that now seems mundane and you don’t know why.
Make a real effort to notice what is actually getting results and not what you think SHOULD be getting results. What actually makes your partner happy, what actually makes your boss happy, what actually makes your more money, more fit, more happy, or helps you meet more quality people.
And then just do that, and forget the rest for now. Once you get your passion and energy back you can add in little things to get that last 10-20% in there, but for now focus on only putting your energy into actions that create results. And then use all of your extra free time and energy to make yourself happy. Read more, walk more, do more, dance more, whatever.
I promise you that the perfect formula for getting your excitement and passion back in your relationship and your life is to stop putting energy into things that frustrate you, and start putting it back into yourself and the things that make you feel passionate and alive.
And if I’m wrong I offer a double your money back guarantee on what you paid for this free blog post, so what do you have to lose?
Go live a life full of love and passion again, go get that spark back in your broken relationship, and go start right now. You’ve got nothing to lose but a lot of frustration and wasted time. your own from a different source.
Wayyyyy back in 1938 a sociologist named Willard Waller first coined the idea of the principle of least interest in his book The Family: A Dynamic Interpretation. Waller put forth that in all of his research around relationship dynamics, that he almost never observed equal power between people in a dating relationship. He theorized that the primary cause of this was the due to the principle of least interest, the idea that the person with the least interest in continuing a relationship has the least to lose, and therefore the most power. The idea is that one partner always gets more out of the relationship, whether it's money, physical stimulation, ego stimulation, or just all the warm and fuzzies, so the person giving that fulfillment gets less for their investment and will be more willing to walk away.
It seems like more people than ever are battling loneliness and a need for connection as the pandemic makes us more hesitant to connect with new people than ever. If you find yourself alone more than usual and wondering how you can find love in the new world that just added a whole bevy of new challenges, we have tips that will make sure you are ready to find and create new love under any circumstances. 1. You might “find love when you stop looking for it”, but only if you are ready… One of my closest friends likes to regularly say “You know who catches the most fish? Fisherman.” And then coyly follows that statement up with a not-so-subtle request for a compliment. So you know who probably gets the most dates? The person trying to have the most dates by regularly asking for them. But if that’s not you (it’s not me either it’s ok), then the next best option is to be the person fisherman like to bring their fish to first. Ok, I don’t think I’d like people walking up to me and offering me fish randomly either, but we all appreciate the compliment of someone requesting our time and attention…don’t we? So what if instead of being the person constantly chasing down dates and playing the numbers game, you became the person that people wanted to chase? You might be saying I’m not “insert self deprecating comment here” enough for that to ever happen, but I promise you that’s not true. How do I know? Because I got more dates when I was old, overweight, and cranky then I ever did when I was young, super fit and excited about everything. And it’s just logical. Think about it, if you want to find the perfect job, do you just go look for the perfect job, or do you also do what you can to become the perfect person for that job? And if you actually become the perfect person for that job, do people just start seeking you out for those kind of jobs? They do. Kind of like how a bank never wants to lend you money when you desperately need it, but will literally throw money at you when you don’t…when you don’t need a date, when you don’t feel needy for companionship, it shows up all over the place. We’ve all seen the darker side of that when people talk about how they suddenly got so much more attention from the opposite sex once they got married. Does that little ring of metal around your finger have mystical powers, or could it be more than that? If you become the perfect partner, ready for the perfect relationship, the perfect partner will show up, and now is the perfect time to do that. For more on that, check out our blog on becoming the perfect partner here, but for now, consider that falling in love with yourself, and giving yourself the gift of becoming the perfect partner, might just be the first step in finding true love. How are you even going to fall in love with someone else completely if you can’t even do that for yourself? 2. Go where your tribe is You want to know the best way to meet the perfect person while also becoming the perfect person? Spend more times in the places and with the people that help you grow. So many of us obsess over where to meet the perfect person. Is it online? Is it at a bar? Am I told old for that bar? Should I ask my friends to set me up? Is it ok to date that girl from work? Is it ok to date that guy from church? What better place to find the ideal partner, than the place that makes you feel your best? If you love dancing, then dance events, dance lessons, dance parties, holding your own dance party, galas and other fundraisers that offer dancing, public music events where dancing is encouraged, dances held by local organizations, dance camps, dance conferences, weekend dance workshops, etc. etc. etc. offer ideal settings for meeting people that share at least one of your passions as a mutual interest. And as a bonus, you will feel amazing while meeting these new people. Meeting people doing what they love, while you are doing what you love at the same time sounds like a halfway decent recipe for success doesn’t it? Even if Mr. or Mrs. right isn’t at that event, their sister/brother/coworker/mom/best friend probably is and what a way to start getting into the right circles…while also giving yourself the energy and attention you deserve to grow and thrive and become the best version of yourself. If you can’t think of many good places that bring your passions together, sign up for our free mini-workshop here, and in five minutes you’ll have more activities than you could imagine that will put you in place to meet the perfect partner, while also developing into the perfect partner. 3. Stay focused on the prize If you spend all day focused on how there aren’t any good partners left out there, that’s all you will see…and more importantly that’s what you will start to embody. There is no faster way to become undatable, unlovable, and downright unhappy than to believe that finding love is impossible. Because guess what? We’re humans and we like to be right, it’s a survival mechanism at our basest level. So if you get up every day asking what’s going to go wrong on your date tonight, or what crappy thing is gonna happen today to prove that men suck or that women are all crazy, your brain will spend all day focused on proving your right. Get focused on possibility and things that will excite you and watch the world around you change instantly. Also, stay focused in general. If you have your face in your phone all day like 90% of the people out there, you will (literally) miss Mr. or Mrs. right walking right on by. Not to mention even if they walked right up to you and started talking to you that you wouldn’t’ be able to hold a conversation because your brain would be screaming “Check Instagram to see how many hearts that post got!!!!!” Get clear on what you want, instead of clear on what you don’t, and stay focused on it and the world around you. 4. Plan for the long term Unless you are just looking for a temporary distraction, it makes sense to get into a relationship planning to create a partnership not just a whirlwind romance. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement and make a lot of concessions to keep feeling passionate and alive in the moment, but that never works long term. What's important to you is still going to be important to you once the rose colored glasses of new love go away, so make sure you and your new crush are compatible in all of the critical ways. He or she won't change, and neither will you with (extremely) rare exception, so accept them and yourself for who you are and be honest about if that can work long term. If security is important to you, that live for today mentality of the empty bank account might be exciting for a bit, but it will be a big point of contention before you know it if your dreamer isn't dreaming up a long term plan for creating that security you crave. 5. Create the feeling first. Too many of us are searching for someone to make us feel better...when the truth is the only one that can make us feel good is ourselves. If you aren't happy single you won't be happy in a relationship long term either...and you won't attract the right kind of partner. People who feel good about themselves attract people who feel good about themselves. People that feel broken attract other broken people or people looking for projects. The problem is most people looking for projects are doing that to hide from the fact that they have a lot of self improvement projects they've been avoiding themselves. Becoming the best version of yourself is one of the best ways to attract the best possible partner for yourself. So if you find yourself constantly attracting the wrong people, it's time to accept that you are the common denominator in those relationships and somewhere along the relationship journey you are accepting less than you deserve. So take time to remind yourself of what a rockstar you are. Handle the unfinished business in your life, start that project you've been putting off, try something new and exciting, and create the life you want now, a life the perfect partner will just naturally fit into.