The honeymoon stage: three ways to make the magic last
“We never fight.”
The young couple seated in front of me agreed with each other on this, during our first session for premarital counseling. They were starry-eyed in each other’s presence and had made this appointment only to check the box insisted upon by the pastor who would marry them in a few months.
They told me this as if they believed that their marriage was going to be different from all those other couples who argued, because they themselves got along so well. My job as a marriage counselor at that moment was not to burst the bubble of this honeymoon stage in their relationship. It was to reframe what they were experiencing so they wouldn’t be caught off guard when the power struggle stage of their marriage invariably began.
The honeymoon phase of your relationship can be magical. Not perfect, not without conflict, but powerful in its shared experience of compatibility and connection. You may understand enough about how the brain works to know that a lot of these feelings emanate from the huge amounts of arousal hormones flowing through our bodies when you are falling in love, hormones like norepinephrine and dopamine. You may even realize that these hormones stabilize and retreat with familiarity and time in any relationship, overtaken by more comforting neurochemicals like oxytocin and vasopressin. And yet to be in the grip of that first stage of love can feel like you are an exception to the rule, as though yours will be the relationship that stays this much in love through all that is to come.
What they actually mean.
“We never fight” might actually mean that this couple is able to work out their differences without rancor or bitterness, so that their conflicts seem insignificant. It may mean that they focus more on what they share and agree upon than on what they don’t, and so the conflicts they are indeed having may not even register.
Couples in this phase of their relationship, in other words, are often killing it at communication. Bathed as they are in feel-good neurochemicals, they have all kinds of capacity for the conversations that they need to be having.
If you are in this honeymoon stage of your relationship, it is the perfect time to become conscious of just how you are communicating with your partner and then turn what you are doing into lasting habits. This is where short-term couples counseling can be so helpful, because it gives you that space to reflect on and clarify what works and what doesn’t in your communication. Over 70% of couples who do marriage counseling are glad they did, even if they sought it out just to reinforce what was already working in their relationship!
Whether or not you decide to sit down with a professional, you can still take three pieces of wisdom from that wonderful initial stage of your relationship.
1.Focus on what you appreciate about each other.
Many of us know that the human brain has a negativity bias. We understand that our brains evolved over eons to register possible threats more vividly than positive experience, because we wouldn’t be here now if our ancestors had missed the cues for danger. This means that without realizing it, a few years into your marriage as the dopamine-bath has faded away, you are going to notice the sink full of unwashed dishes while looking right past the cleaned-off counter or the blankets that have been folded on the back of the couch. You can’t help but notice the negative stimuli! But you can become more deliberate and intentional about noticing the positive.
Choose to see the best in your partner, not just when it is easy to do so.
2. Cut each other some slack.
In marriage you are going to have a front-row seat to your partner’s idiosyncrasies, foibles, weaknesses, annoying character traits, and bad habits. In the honeymoon stage, we don’t always get a full look at any of this, because we are often on our best behavior with each other. But on some level we know that this isn’t because those aspects don’t exist; it’s just that they aren’t yet prominent. Fast forward a few years, and you are going to see all of it, up close, over and over, for years on end. As your partner will of you!
Go easy on each other, and yourselves. Offer the same grace that you yourself would appreciate, just as you did for each other so easily at the beginning of your relationship. Even when it doesn’t always feel like it, remember that this is one of your favorite people on the planet.
3. Talk about everything.
When people are falling in love and getting to know each other, they tend to talk, a lot, about everything. It can be so much fun to learn what he or she thinks about all kinds of topics. It can feel like a privilege to hear all their stories. At some point, of course, you will have talked about all those things and it can seem like there is nothing left to learn about your partner. You end up having conversations that are solely about logistics; you go out to dinner and you don’t know what to say if it isn’t about the kids. You wistfully remember how much fun it was to talk in those early days and worry that you will never get it back.
Stay curious about each other. Be interested in your partner’s experience or point of view. Just because you have been together a long time doesn’t mean you know all there is to know about each other.
Remember together those early days, revisit your love story, and you might just recapture the wisdom of your younger selves.
Author Bio
Melinda Yachnin, LCPC, is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in La Grange and Chicago IL. She specializes in couples counseling for people in long-term relationships and has been counseling couples for almost 30 years in the Chicago area. She uses Gottman Method, Imago Therapy, EFT and RLT in her work with couples so that couples can access the practical skills in everyday life and the deeper currents that can transform their relationships. She has been married for 25 years and raised three children with her husband, a perspective that has enhanced her commitment to helping couples navigate the many stages of a life together.
