Falling in love is easy. But staying in love after years of being together is a whole different story. Why are some couples crazy in love while others barely manage to look at each other?
Long-lasting love is a practice, behavior, and skill that you can develop. We will talk about the 5 things all couples do to stay crazy in love with each other.
“Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.”
– Sir Arthur Pinero
At 65 this romance writer and his wife of 27 years are still crazy in love. Here’s how they do it.
I proposed to my wife on Valentine’s Day 1988. I chose the day on purpose so I wouldn’t forget. Some days are forever part of the trivia challenge in life that is very important to women. When did you propose? What’s your anniversary, your children’s birthdays, your wife’s birthday? Heaven helps you if you can’t recall. I want to remember, but sometimes I need help.
Ours is a second marriage for me. My first was a complete mulligan that left me embittered and doubtful that I could or would tie the knot again. I’m sure glad I did.
When you stand at the altar and recite the phrase, “for better or worse, richer or poorer in sickness and health,” you don’t really know what your signing on for, and it’s probably better that you don’t.
My wife and I have tagged all those bases, especially the sickness and health, with my wife’s depression and a baby born with a formerly fatal congenital heart defect. (He’s doing quite well at 23, thank you very much for asking, but you’re never out of the woods with a heart baby. However, that’s a different story.)
I’m still holding out for “the richer” part, but our lives have been rich. We’ve endured the “poorer” thing too. When I lost my job just before the birth of baby number two and couldn’t find work,
I decided to become an at-home dad. We had to work our way out of a lot of bad debt and poor spending habits to pull that off, but we found a way to live large on less. I had to make a major overhaul of my weltanschauung—my life view. I had no preparation for the life of an at-home caregiver.
“When you are madly in love with someone, even when sanity tries to rescue you, you wrestle it.” – Matshona Dhliwayo
Here we are twenty-seven years later and I’m still crazy in love with my wife. I’m 65 and I still chase her around the house trying to get her clothes off of her. She’s my best friend and sexual fantasy. That’s saying a lot. I write erotic romance for a pastime now. I can have any woman I want between the covers (of the books).
It’s always funny though how my female characters have some of my wife’s personality traits. She still has me wrapped around her little finger.
Everywhere you turn in the media, the prevailing stories about love and marriage seem to center around its breakdown, heartache, and disappointment. That hasn’t been our experience. It occurred to me that we must be doing something right, so I’ve given it some thought, and here are five things that we do:
Read: How To Make A Man Fall Deeply In Love With You? The Ultimate Cheat Sheet
5 Things To Stay Crazy In Love
1. Choose Joy
Everyone wants to be married “happily ever after.” The problem is that darn happiness thing. It is a temporary state of emotional satisfaction. It never lasts. Joy, on the other hand, is a state of mind where your suffering has meaning. You have to choose joy.
The childbearing thing is such a good example. My wife longed to be a mother. She had a very difficult first pregnancy but the smile rarely left her face. On the day of delivery, instead of the Lamaze experience, we had trained for — a couple of pushes to Yanni music and then, bliss — we had a five-alarm fire.
Our baby got stuck too far into the birth canal to do a C-section. Both my wife and child were in extreme jeopardy. The troops poured in. I counted over 20 people in the delivery room in the final minutes. In a last desperate act, her OBGYN performed an episiotomy with hedge clippers and no anesthesia. I’ve never heard such a scream of agony.
In the aftermath, I was expecting to live the rest of my life without sex. About an hour after our son was born, my wife told me she’d do it again. I pulled a nurse aside and asked for a psych consult. The woman was out of her mind. If men had babies, we’d be extinct by now. But that’s the joy thing.
2. Stay Sexually Connected
The needs, sexual triggers, and responsiveness between men and women are so different, it’s amazing that we ever get together. Before children, there is time to work those out. Children bring a heightened level of responsibility and much more work and stress in and out of the home. For all the joy and fulfillment children bring, they kill intimacy. Sex devolves to stolen moments, in the dark, under the covers.
When I lead men’s spiritual development groups, one constant lament among men with children was the loss of sexual connection with their wives. Loss of connection makes men vulnerable to temptation and leads to resentment and emotional detachment.
I’ve done my best to keep romance and tenderness in our relationship, but it’s my wife’s continued receptiveness to my sexual advances that have made it work for us. I guess “brace yourself!” isn’t really all that romantic. I never told the men in my groups how much sex my wife and I have managed to share, they’d kill me out of jealousy.
Sex after children has to be a commitment and not an idle intention. My wife suffers from depression, the demons attack her self-image and the drugs kill her libido. If I had to wait for her to initiate sex, it would be a long time between sessions. Still, she has found the time and the tenderness to keep our sex life alive. I’ve never strayed. I’ve never even been in a situation where that was a possibility. I cherish what we have too much.
3. See The Good In Your Partner
“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” – Sam Keen
My wife is a big believer in “signing up for the whole package,” the good and the bad. She’s been tested on that belief. It’s so easy to find fault with our partners. We just don’t go there. I still refer to my wife as my “bride” and she is. She brags about my handyman skills to her friends. We never air grievances in front of others. We laugh about our Mars/Venus moments. I often remind her that I’m not a mind reader.
We support each other’s outside interests and we give each other a lot of space to enjoy them. A few years ago, at age 54, my wife entered the Mrs. Minnesota Competition, having never been in the beauty pageant game before. We spent money we didn’t have so she could have a chance at something she wanted to do as a little girl. She didn’t win a thing but I was so proud of her for trying.
I took up writing erotic romance at age 62. She could easily dismiss me as neither erotic nor romantic. I haven’t made a dime in royalties yet, but I have publishing contracts for four books. Who knows? She lets me play in my sandbox without ridicule or expectations.
Read: The Science Of Love: Beyond Lust, Attraction And Attachment
4. Say, “I Love You” Every Day.
“One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love!” – Sophocles
I tell my wife I love her every day. I never heard that from my father growing up, but it crucial. My boys are 23 and 20 now and don’t flinch at saying “I love you dad” in front of friends. I also add a frequent dose of “I’m so proud of you”. I believe if men added those two phrases to their lexicon all this transformation we want for men would happen much faster.
5. Have Cocktails And Pleasant Conversation Together
I come from a family that drinks, but doesn’t tolerate drunkenness. Growing up, our family tradition was to have cocktails and pleasant conversations every evening. Obviously, we couldn’t do that while our children were young, too many activities happen after dinner. Now that they are older and we don’t have to do the incessant chasing around, we have taken up the practice again.
Many nights it’s just my wife and me. It’s very civilized. We talk about the big events of the day, about the things we achieved. No human endeavor is outside our purview, the only rule is civil discourse, which eliminates a lot of talk of politics. It serves as a delightful signal of the end of the day and a connection.
My mother enjoyed her cocktails right up until her last day. We even brushed some of her beloved vodka martinis on her lips when she became comatose, just to let her know she was still part of the cocktail conversation.
We’ve lost the art of pleasant conversation. Especially between men and women. We need to get it back. Try it, you’ll like it. But don’t drink and drive.
There you have it. Being crazy in love is all about the dreaded “C” word: commitment to finding joy, commitment to staying sexually connected, commitment to seeing the best in each other, commitment to expressing love, and commitment to staying socially engaged.
Related: How We Use Falling In Love To Make Meaning Of Life
Here is an interesting video on how to stay crazy in love that you may find interesting:
Relationships can be challenging and maintaining them, in the long run, can be definitely hard. If you become too comfortable and let things get out of your hand, then it can adversely affect your relationship. Taking conscious effort is crucial for nurturing a romantic relationship in the long term.
Read: What Does Being In Love Actually Feel Like? For Those Who Can’t Figure It Out
“Choose to love each other even in those moments when you struggle to like each other. Love is a commitment, not a feeling.”
– Dave Willis
If you want to stay crazy in love with your partner in the long run, then make sure you practice these strategies every single day. Moreover, you also need to ensure that you avoid falling into complacency. Appreciating and admiring your partner and cherishing your relationship is the key to long-lasting love.
We hope that with these hacks to stay in love, you’re able to strengthen your emotional bond with your partner – stay connected, nurture your relationship and continue to be crazy in love with them for years to come.
Written by Spencer Dryden Originally appeared in The Goodmen Project
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