The 4th of July is almost here, and it’s an excellent time to start thinking about how couples can keep the spark alive in their relationship. Are you looking to inject a little romance into these lazy summer days? You might also want to use this time to sort out the differences between positive fireworks and sparks in your relationship, and the kind of fireworks that can be explosive and blow up your relationship.
What do sparks mean for your relationship?
When you’re in the early stages of going out with an interesting new man, the idea is to get to know whether he’ll make a good partner, so we’re not discussing what to do in the bedroom. This article is about how to keep his interest when your goal is to discover whether he’ll make a good long term partner for you. If sex is his main focus when you first meet, he’s probably not going to make the best partner long term. If he’s really into you, he’ll wait to have sex, even if that’s not his first choice. So, the “sparks” in your relationship aren’t necessarily referring to sex.
Good communication is vital to any budding new relationship. This doesn’t mean you have to tell him every little detail about how you’re feeling about the relationship. But it does mean that you are aware and attentive about the things that are bothering you so that you can figure out what you want to do about them.
What could be a “bad” relationship spark or firework?
Of course, it’s important to put your best foot forward in a new relationship, but that doesn’t involve suppressing your feelings when something is bothering you. When you let things smolder, they can later ignite. Or you can be less fun and engaging because something is on your mind, and he can lose interest. That’s a bad spark. Check out what happened to Alexandra and Peter when things festered, and later ignited.
Alexandra met Peter through mutual friends, and they hit it off. Peter asked her out and suggested they meet at a restaurant for their first date. They had a wonderful time. Alexandra found him cute and funny and enjoyed his company. She was delighted when he asked her out again.
But when he suggested they meet somewhere again, she was a little disappointed, thinking it would be nicer if he came to pick her up. She didn’t want to rock the boat, so she didn’t say anything, and they had another lovely evening. When he asked her for their third date, he again suggested meeting in a public place, and she agreed again, but now she was concerned.
Was he just not that interested in her? Was he too shy to move things forward? What was holding Peter back from suggesting he come to pick her up? She was annoyed, and a little distant on their date, and that was the end. Peter never asked her out again.
Alexandra let her concerns about the relationship smolder, and she helped to extinguish the sparks between them. Rather than just saying to Peter, “I’m happy to let you pick me up here,” she didn’t address what was bugging her, and it got in the way of their budding chemistry. One simple statement would have taken care of the situation, but it never occurred to her to suggest what she wanted. Alexandra let the initial misgivings she had about their budding relationship create a spark, which was left unattended. Later, it blew things up.
Whether you let things smolder or make incendiary comments that can cause tempers to become combustible, becoming aware of your feelings and expressing them constructively is a healthy way to keep the good sparks and the romance going in a new relationship. Having excellent communication skills is absolutely critical to keeping the romance alive, and allowing to grow into the relationship you’ve always dreamed about. But a lot of people have trouble learning how to communicate.
How do you keep the romance alive?
No one is born knowing the best way to approach potentially thorny relationship issues with a new partner. A lot of us may have grown up with divorced parents or were raised by single parents, so we didn’t get the opportunity to see these things modeled for us. Worse yet, some women may have grown up around adults with terrible communication skills. This makes it doubly tricky to learn how to do this right as an adult. It’s one thing never to have seen it modeled in the first place. But it’s another thing when you have to unravel and detangle toxic ideas about communication in romance. If you want to have only the good fireworks for your relationship, sometimes working with a therapist or relationship coach can help you reach your romance goals.
So, how do you handle your concerns in a new relationship? What do you do to keep the romance alive and extinguish those combustible, bad sparks when they arise? Leave us a comment below and let us know how you would handle a similar situation to Alexandra and Peter’s.
