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Recapturing the Butterfly Effect How to break out of that relationship rut
Remember when you first started dating your boyfriend or girlfriend? Remember how your heart jumped when he picked you up for your first date? Remember wondering if tonight was the night she was going to sleep over? Remember the butterflies?
Those were the days when everything in your relationship was just starting. But now your relationship may have fallen into the same daily routine. Spending almost every night together, the two of you have become too comfortable with each other and predictability has replaced any spontaneity in your relationship. The "new and exciting" has become the "old and familiar."
Lindsay Crupper, Overland Park graduate student, and her fiance, Timothy Haake, a senior at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, Mo., have been dating for more than three years. They finish each other's sentences, watch reruns of Scrubs and run the familiar errands together. They like to stay in, play board games, wear sweat pants and maybe forego taking showers. Their relationship has fallen into a routine.
Tom Atchity, Overland Park senior, says he and his girlfriend are also familiar with relationship routines. They drive each other to school every day, spend every night together, watch rums of Lost, sleep in until 1 p.m. on weekends, eat brunch at Hayes Hamburger & Chili once a week and read the newspaper together every Sunday morning.
Ruts are common in relationships that have lasted for long periods of time. Eventually you feel you know each other so well there isn't anything new you could possibly learn about each other. Tim Connor, motivational speaker and author of Relationship Ruts and How to Avoid Them, identifies four factors that contribute to a relationship rut: perception, expectation, romance and stress.
How you perceive your partner leads to expectations, which can often result in disappointment. Expecting your boyfriend to suddenly quit being messy or your girlfriend to suddenly become low-maintenance is dangerous because it's important to be careful.
other's flaws early on in your relationship. Couples under a lot of stress tend to repeat arguments and lose communication. All of these destructive factors can create a rut in a relationship.
A study at Stony Brook University in New York looked at how couples can escape these kinds of boring ruts. Arthur Aron, social psychologist at Stony Brook who conducted the study, says its results show that couples that engage in "novel and arousing activities" experience a significant
statistical increase in the quality of relationship. Aron's research studied 60 couples during a 10-week period and found that the couples that participated in exciting and pleasant activities—such as rock climbing or visiting an amusement park—experienced the increase versus couples that participated in more mundane activities (Can anyone say dinner and a movie?).
financial class to prepare for their marriage. Haake wants to try out a cooking class in the near future."I don't really cook, so it will probably help out our marriage," Crupper jokes.
Engaging in these activities alone will not magically fix a relationship that is experiencing an actual conflict, Aron says. Trying new things with each other will only help couples that are feeling bored.
Connor emphasizes that both partners need to want to try these activities. Insisting your girlfriend go sailing with you when you know she gets seasick easily may not be the best idea, Aron says.
When Crupper and Haake grow tired of playing chess, they go out and try to experience something new that they've both wanted to try. In the past they have taken line-dancing classes, and they're currently enrolled in a
Atchity says escaping Lawrence and driving to Kansas City for a night helps break the predictability in his relationship. "We often like to go out and eat somewhere fancy that makes us feel middle-aged," Atchity says.
Aron stresses that trying something
new will not get you out of a relationship rut if you only try it once. Couples should try something new every month. Connor suggests focusing on the relationship as an entity by writing a list of behaviors you want to put back into the relationship on separate sheets of paper and placing them in a jar. Each month, pull out a piece of paper and focus on that behavior for the rest of the month. You can also use this method by compiling a list of new activities you and your partner want to try and pick one out each month.
But are new and exciting activities the only thing that can keep a relationship afloat? Haake says incorporating new activities in his relationship is fun every once in a while, but excitement alone doesn't form a long-lasting relationship.
"What everyone else might call mundane, Lindsay and I just have fun doing it," Haake says. "I admit I usually don't feel the butterflies anymore, but every now and then, Lindsay will walk into the room looking like a million bucks and those butterflies will come flying right back."
14 02.21.2008
VOL. 5 ISS. 21
for more information: www.therelationshipgym.com
photos by: Jessie Fetterling