After 10-20 years together, both partners have changed but couples keep using the same emotional and sexual patterns. The speaker argues relationships need a conscious restart: get to know each other again, add new skills and experiences to break repetitive cycles and revitalize intimacy.
For people that are wanting to kind of enliven that relationship between a primary partner, especially after 10, 15, 20 years, you know, you have to start again. You have to come to a place of, I actually don't know you. We might've gotten together when we were 20 years old, or we got together when we were 30, and now we're, we're 45, we're 55, we're 60 years old. I am not that same person. As when we got married, and I don't expect you to be either. So who are you? Like, can we relearn one another? And this is where my work with couples comes in a lot, is it's sort of like, okay, we're interested in learning each other, except we're still working with the same toys in our toy box as we were when we were 20 years old. So our skills have not changed. We're still having the same sex as we did 20 years ago, and It's sort of like, you don't know what you don't know, and you can be conscious and aware of all the things, but if you're not putting new information into the piggy bank, it's sort of like, we're going to keep repeating the same patterns, right?
