A good portion of the enjoyment of a pleasant date is in the anticipation. We have a date for Friday night and we think about it throughout the week. We think about what we will wear, where we’ll go, what we’ll eat, what we’ll say and do. We plan on how long it will take to get ready and whether we’ll need to leave work a few minutes early.
When we enter a relationship, we stop dating. We see each other, of course, much more than we did in our dating days. At the onset of living together, we still have that sense of anticipation before seeing that beloved face. We hurry home to the most important person in our little world.
After years together, we become used to the routine. We may enjoy seeing our significant other as much as ever but the exhilarating anticipation has become normalized. We have become habituated to the lives together we have created.
We need to start dating again. We need to create special events that we can look forward to with keen relish. Thinks about when you last took a vacation or a pleasure trip. The days and weeks leading up to it were times of mounting excitement and planning; we saw it in our mind’s...