Authors: Stan Tatkin
Only now, with just the two of them at home, is Tatiana fully realizing the degree to which their intimacy is lacking. It’s not as if they’re fighting or arguing. There is nothing obviously “wrong.” Well, except perhaps for the infrequency with which they have sex. But even that has never been officially acknowledged as a problem by either of them. In fact, Viktor often declares his love by sending his wife flowers and fancy gifts, something he has done throughout their marriage because he wants her to feel he is perpetually wooing her.
Tatiana decides to talk to Viktor to see if they can plan a vacation that might rekindle the romance in their relationship. Because she knows he’s excited about their upcoming trip and sees it as romantic, she doesn’t want to come off as too critical or disparaging.
“Have you given more thought to where we should go?” she asks tentatively one evening, as they get up from the dinner table, having exchanged only a few words during the meal.
Viktor’s face lights up as he turns to her and thrusts his cell phone into his pocket. “I say we get a penthouse suite in downtown Manhattan. We’ve always talked about being right in center of the action. We can do matinees in the afternoon, dancing in the evening, the best restaurants, the museums—”
Tatiana stops him. “Yes, we’ve talked about that, and it could be amazing,” she says. “But we also talked about Maine, and a cabin with a fireplace. What do you think about something more intimate, like that?”
Viktor scrunches up his face. “Honey,” he exclaims, “this is
our
trip, no expenses barred. We’ve taken the kids to plenty of cabins!” He laughs, then grabs her and waltzes her around the living room. “Just wait, I’ll show you the time of your life!”
Tatiana senses her husband’s genuine enthusiasm and doesn’t want to disappoint him. She tells herself a quiet retreat in Maine could bode disaster if it only accentuates the distance between them. At the same time, she can’t help feeling an extravagant vacation without a free moment to spare isn’t what they need to get back on track with each other.
This is a couple without the ability to continually rekindle their love. It’s not even clear to both of them that the fire has gone out, let alone why. They treat one another almost as strangers. Viktor goes so far as to intentionally cultivate a sense of unfamiliarity, believing it has the power to generate lust and provide a certain thrill. Yes, this couple has made it through twenty years of marriage without considering divorce. But any excitement they feel these days is tepid because it is based on a love that exists only at a distance. They have settled for that because they don’t know what it would take to have love up close.
The Primitives’ Appraisal: Seeking Familiarity
Of course, partners aren’t always up close. At least, we don’t start off that way. At the beginning of courtship, as new lovers, we generally first meet at a distance. We visually appraise one another according to a variety of factors: gross physical anatomy, apparel, grooming, hair color, and so on.
Our brain plays an important role in this process. It relies on different senses to gather information about people in our environment, depending on whether they’re at a distance or close to us. When you see someone across the room, for instance, you use your far visual system (which some refer to as the
dorsal visual stream
) to track if he or she remains still or moves toward or away from you. This visual system works in tandem with your amygdalae and other primitives to determine whether the person is safe or unsafe, attractive or unattractive, and whether you want him or her to approach. Remember, our primitives’ main objective is to not be killed. Beyond that, they are invested in perpetuating the species. For this reason, they are experts in detecting the potential for lust, and do it best from a distance.
When it comes to mate selection, our brain prefers a simple neurobiological load; in other words, it prefers familiarity. A person who appears too unfamiliar is likely to create a complex load and thus repel our primitives. Too much stranger-ness is threatening. (I use the term
stranger-ness—
as opposed to strangeness, meaning weirdness—to refer to the quality of being like a stranger.) Familiarity with just the right amount of stranger-ness to spice things up can cause an attraction that brings us into closer physical proximity. Then, at close range, our ambassadors have a chance to become engaged and begin the process of psychobiological vetting to determine whether this person meets our criteria for a long-term relationship.
In the end, romantic love must pass muster with both our primitives and our ambassadors. Lust only has to pass muster with our primitives.
Love Is Up Close
So, what exactly happens when two people are in close proximity? What makes the sparks—and I don’t mean just lustful sparks—fly? I think it’s worthwhile to examine the neurobiological dynamics that come into play when we first fall in love, because these same processes are the key to rekindling love throughout the relationship.
The Ambassadors’ Appraisal: Close and Personal
Most notably, as we approach a potential partner, our near senses become engaged. These include first and foremost our close-up visual stream (which some refer to as the
ventral visual stream
), reserved for people or objects deemed safe and those being closely observed.
As you move toward another person and come within an approximate distance of two to three feet, you may find yourself hesitating as your brain adjusts to the near visual stream. Meeting another person in close proximity, your brain is predisposed to take in the face: the fine, smooth muscles of the face as they shift and change, the kaleidoscopic fluctuations in skin tone, the eyes dancing and pupils opening and closing in tune with your buzzing nervous systems as the two of you interact. You can see more detail in the face and body. A person looks quite different up close than at a distance.
Most of us initially scan the face in close range, focusing first on the mouth and then the eyes. Because our brain’s right hemisphere specializes in social and emotional perception, we tend to look more at the other person’s left eye (the right hemisphere is cross-connected to the left side of the body). Our gaze triangulates between the mouth and right and left eye, but we tend to focus on the left for cues about safety. There are, of course, many exceptions to this. People in some cultures, for example, consider direct eye contact impolite or inappropriate. Other individuals, independent of cultural influence, avoid eye contact either for safety concerns or because they find it easier to look for cues on the mouth or other parts of the body and are unable to pick up cues in the eyes.
Another near sense that engages in close proximity is our sense of smell. We appraise another’s body odor on several levels, including but not only on the obvious level of perfumes, colognes, and soaps. We also can smell more subtle scents produced by the neuroendocrine system that suggest friendliness, sexual arousal, fear, and even dislike. We may engage in brief or sustained touch. We may even engage a variety of implicit sense perceptions that seem energetic and indescribable, as for example, when someone says, “I felt my heart beat strongly just by standing next to her.”
How We Fall in Love
We fall in love at close proximity. I mean real love, not the imagined kind that some can conjure up through fantasy or at a distance, or that is really just lust masquerading as love.
The eyes play an important role in igniting real love. When you gaze into your partner’s eyes, you can see not only his or her essence, but the entire play of the nervous system. You can witness the live, exciting, and rapidly changing inner landscape of emotion, energy, and reality that belongs to and defines your partner.
It is an unavoidable fact that the body shows signs of deterioration as we age. The most obvious signs, such as changes in hair color, weight, posture, or agility, are apparent at a distance. Closer up, signs of aging include wrinkled skin and gnarled fingers. But have you noticed the one body part that seems miraculously immune to aging? The eyes! As long as we’re mentally and emotionally healthy, they remain beautiful, vibrant, and vital. It’s as though, through them, we have the means to fall in love permanently at our disposal.
A few minutes of sustained gazing can lead to relaxation, a sense of safety, and full here-and-now engagement. Attachment authority Daniel Stern (2004) terms this
moments of meeting.
Meeting Again and Again
Kent and Sandra are in their fifties. They have been married for twenty-five years and have grown children who are now out of the home. Though each remains physically fit, neither has done anything radical to offset the natural aging process. Many of their friends have undergone plastic surgeries and injection treatments, but thus far this couple have resisted the peer pressure to remain unusually youthful.
Kent and Sandra realized early in their relationship that gazing into each other’s eyes had the power to rekindle strong feelings of love. Kent says, “When I look into Sandy’s eyes it’s as if I’m meeting her for the first time all over again.”
Sandra echoes that sentiment. “I never tire of looking at Kent. I see so much in his eyes, beyond anything I could put into words.”
Recently, Kent and Sandra have noticed that friends who complain of boredom and dissatisfaction in their long-term relationships tend to avoid close gazing. These couples often talk and joke about lusting over strangers at a distance, as if that could solve their problems. Kent and Sandra wonder if the tedium their friends suffer isn’t partly due to a lack of close gazing and the inability to rekindle love.
I would agree. In fact, it’s easy for two people to settle into dulling familiarity when they are living off static notions of one another, notions that are easily maintained at a distance. When we look into one another’s eyes close up, it becomes impossible to remain in a total state of familiarity. This is because at close range, as we looking into another’s eyes, what we see is inherently strange and complex. We become aware of each other’s stranger-ness, which makes us aware again of novelty and unpredictability. This allows for just enough familiarity and stranger-ness to rekindle love and excitement.
Exercise: From Near to Far and Back
Try this exercise with your partner. You will need a large room or a large outdoor area where you can be alone together. I suggest doing this exercise when you meet each other at the end of the day, but you can do it at any time that’s convenient to both of you.
Up Close with Islands and Waves
Some individuals, especially islands and waves, have trouble up close. They may not pick up important cues from their partner or simply not pick them up quickly enough, or may not know how to quickly fix misattuned moments. All is not lost, though, because if the wave or island’s partner is what I have termed a competent manager of the other, he or she can make up for the other’s deficits. It is not essential for both partners to be equally competent managers; however, if one is particularly bad at it, the other must be much better.
Rekindling with Islands
Many islands experience some degree of difficulty with close-up interactions, although this may not be apparent during courtship. As their name suggests, islands tend to prefer gazing either inwardly or distantly.
We can look to their childhood to explain why this happens. Many islands did not experience a lot of physical contact as children, or did not receive the mixture of comfort and stimulation that comes from a parent gazing into an infant’s eyes. Rather, the contact they did experience may have been overly intrusive or misattuned. As a result, many adult islands experience aversion at being what they perceive as too close to a partner. This aversion can include not only gazing, but the near senses of smell, taste, and touch. Many islands report feeling inexplicably irritated and even harassed by their partner’s attempts to get near or to maintain close physical contact. They may feel at once intruded upon and ashamed of their aversive reactions, and may attempt to conceal it with avoidance, excuses, withdrawal, or anger.
Judd, an island, loved to gaze at Irene when they were dating in college. He fell in love with her deep green eyes. Her pupils always seemed wide open, as if guilelessly inviting him to merge with her. So beautiful, so engaging, so safe, he thought.
Two year into the marriage, something changed. He began to see her eyes as pushy, invasive, and meddling. Her pupils always seemed constricted, like little pinholes. He stopped gazing into her eyes. He preferred looking at her from afar, while she interacted with others. When she sought physical proximity, he felt annoyed. The sound of her voice aroused anger in him, and her touch sometimes made him bristle. He became oddly sensitive to the smell of her breath and her skin. He stopped enjoying their kisses and began to avoid anything but a brief peck on the lips.