Infatuation is a rush. During this phase, everything is simple. However, eventually infatuation fades. Then couples have to do something to sustain their love. In order to stay in love for the long term, you need an idea of what you want to achieve as a couple. You need common goals and a unifying vision. Otherwise love gets lost along the way. Love disintegrates in different wishes and hopes, in routines and in the stresses of everyday life. Eventually partners drift off into parallel lives – with the help of frustration, fights, or affairs.
Couples can do many things to sustain their love. They can preserve and develop their love. Couples can provide each other with a feeling of commitment and security and at the same time preserve lust and adventure.
If you haven’t been successful at this so far, it’s not too late. Couples can learn this at any time. Those who believe that happiness can only be found with a new partner often have to admit that this is not true – after infatuation once again fades. It would have been better to refresh old love.
If love is lost, if the stress of the relationship becomes too much, or the relationship is nothing but a habit, it is easy to have affairs. You can re-infatuate yourself. But when affairs are discovered, the intoxication ends. It is replaced by anguish – usually for everyone involved. And what then? An affair can bring a relationship to an end. But this does not give rise to a better partnership. Alternatively, an affair can lead to a new beginning, and result in the old love becoming stronger, more stable, and more lustful than it ever was.
