Can you fall in love with your spouse again?

On this Valentine’s Day, I’m reminded of a New York Times article from 2015 written by Mandy Len Catron as she experimented with the famous 36 Questions to Fall in Love. Most of the couples that I see in my private practice have spent so many years in disconnection that they do worry if they can ever have that special feeling again. They ask me, “Can I be in love with my spouse again?” While I can’t make promises, the countless couples that have sent me notes after completing couples therapy allow me to hold genuine hope and belief that it is certainly very possible to fall in love with your spouse again.

The 36 questions are based on the psychological experiment designed by Arthur Aaron where participants were split up into two groups: one group spent time doing small-talk while the other group answered the carefully crafted questions. There was a significantly higher degree of closeness in the group that answered the 36 questions versus the other group ( to say that every dyad fell in love would be inaccurate), which is what peeked Len Carton’s interest.

In addition to answering these increasingly more personal questions back and forth, the expriment ends by spending 4 minutes staring into each other’s eyes. You might not think that 4 minutes is a long time, but as Len Carton’s notes

“ I know the eyes are the windows to the soul or whatever, but the real crux of the moment was not just that I was really seeing someone, but that I was seeing someone really seeing me. Once I embraced the terror of this realization and gave it time to subside, I arrived somewhere unexpected.” This is the part that makes my heart skip a beat!

In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples, we create moments of clarity and vulnerability, with a build up for each partner to share this by holding eye contact. So, how does this work? Well, I will begin by engaging with one partner to deepen their experience, leading them to touch a vulnerable emotion/feeling. While being a witness to that exchange can in and of itself be a moving moment, the real heart of the process is to have this partner share with their spouse this deeper experience. This requires Partner A to turn to Partner B and share the vulnerability while making eye contact. I cannot tell you the courage and risk it takes to do just that part. It can take many attempts and even sessions before partners can truly engage in this essential bonding moment. Eye contact is where we begin to feel truly seen by our partner and while we say that’s all we ever wanted, it’s a scary place to be this exposed. As for the receiving partner, really seeing the sharing partner from a place of open-hearted ness compels us to led our guards down.

Beyond these emotionally moving engagements, there’s real science to the transformative power of eye contact: this non-verbal exchange primes intimacy.

On a basic level, when the caregiver and baby are gazing at each other, this exchange is what creates and fosters bonding and emotional security. Fast forward to your adult romantic relationship with its years of stress, when we have stopped truly seeing each other in our essence, you can appreciate how taking the time to slow the thoughts and emotions down, and distill them to our purest fears around our worthiness for love would be incredibly hard to do. And yet, in continued, repeated and sustained eye contact in those very moments of vulnerability is when the neurons in our brain begin to form new connections of love and compassion for each other. As the researcher Donal Helb coined the term, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” (For more on this, I encourage you to watch this Ted talk). In other words, there is a mirroring and reinforcing effect from continued engagement in vulnerability that help us re-wire the circuitry of our brain. When your partner used to arouse threat, he/she now represents love, security, and safety.

So back to our original question: can you fall in love again with your spouse?

The answer is: Are you willing to expose your heart And have it been seen completely?

***If you’d like to improve your relationship or marriage, contact me to schedule an appointment in-person at my office in Westport, CT (I provide counseling throughout Connecticut and New York) ***