Why Couples Lose The Spark (And How To Get It Back) | ft. Monica Tanner

Couples often say, my relationship, my marriage, my family are the most important things to me. Then I'll ask, show me your calendar, show me your to-do list, show me your bank account, and I'll tell you what you value. I believe that happily ever after is possible and so worth it, but it's not gonna happen by accident. You have to put your energy, your intention, your financial backing on what you really, really want. And so if you really want to have that forever kind of love where you just can't keep your hands off each other late into your 60s, 70s, 80s, whatever, you've got to prioritize it. You've got to put it on your calendar. You've got to be intentional and you've got to make it important to you.

Hi, this is Suzanne Noble, and you're listening to Sex Advice for Seniors. And one of the questions that comes up over and over and over again, and I think it's a pretty obvious question if you ask me, from people who have been in long-term relationships is how do you keep the spark alive? Because it's so difficult. And I've spoken before about the fact that I was incapable of doing it in my own marriage. So I know that it's really difficult, but my guest today, all the way in Boise, Idaho, is Monica Tanner. She's a relationship coach. She's a Relational Life Therapy certified practitioner, and she's host of her own podcast called Secrets of Happily Ever After. And one of the things that she really specializes in is helping couples strengthen their communication, connection, and intimacy. So that they can rekindle the love and passion at any stage of their life. So I'm really excited to talk to her, and she's also got this best-selling book called Bad Marriage Advice, which I love the title of. And she's got an online community. So welcome, Monica, to Sex Advice for Seniors.

Thanks for having me, Suzanne. I'm excited.

Yeah, so let's get right into it, 'cause I know that, you know, many long-term couples— and I was one of them— fall into the friend zone or the roommate zone or just the no-sex zone over time. And are there signs when this starts to happen so that they can course-correct it before it's too late?

Yeah, I think one of the most important and notable things to point out is couples often say, my relationship, my marriage, my family are the most important things to me. And so then I'll ask, show me your calendar, show me your to-do list, show me your bank account, and I'll tell you what you value. And it's usually kind of surprising, like couples will be like, oh, and I'll— and so I'll ask, are you doing a date night every week? Do you spend time together every single day getting to know each other? And people will be like, no, we're too busy. We don't have time for that. And that is— I believe that happily ever after is possible and so worth it, but it's not going to happen by accident. You have to put your energy, your intention, your financial backing on what you really, really want. And so if you really want to have that forever kind of love where you just can't keep your hands off each other late into your 60s, 70s, 80s, whatever, you've gotta prioritize it. You've gotta put it on your calendar, you've gotta be intentional, and you've gotta make it important to you, so.

Yeah, I agree. And I, how much does, I mean, it's a bit of a sideways question, but you talk about kind of intentionality and about people spending time with each other. But I think also, you know, from what I've heard and read about like love languages, people have different ways of expressing their love for each other, right? So for some people it is like, I really want quality time. And for others it might be something like, you know, turn up with something unexpected, do something. How much do love languages play into that? Or do you think that quality time is just numero uno, that's a non-negotiable, and the other stuff is kind of like, well, that's, you you know, things that are a little bit more give and take?

Yeah, I think there's two things that I would say. The first one is you've got to teach your partner how to treat you. So I think that the Five Love Languages are a really good way to describe ways that you feel loved or understand how your partner feels loved. But I think, you know, the second chapter of my book is, if you, if they love you enough, they'll just know. And we live under this delusional fairy tale that somehow our partner can read our mind, and we shouldn't have to tell them what's important to us and how to treat us. And it's just not accurate. Nobody can read your mind. It doesn't matter how much they love you. It doesn't matter how long you've been together, you're going to change. And so you always have to be teaching the person that you love the most how to treat you, how to show you love, how to support you and your happiness and the things that are important to you. So that's not something— nobody, nobody gets to bypass that. We have to learn how to make requests. We have to learn how to lovingly and skillfully teach our partner how to treat us. The Five Love Languages are valuable because, you know, is it time that you crave? Is it, you know, thoughtfulness in the form of gifts? Is it Is it physical touch? You know, what makes you feel loved? How do I make you feel loved? And so that's a good language to describe it. And then the other thing I was gonna say is, it's not necessarily time, but it is, time is the great equalizer. Nobody gets more or less time. That's the really cool thing about it. Like it doesn't matter how much money you have, you can't buy time, you can't earn more time, you can't bench press your way to more time. We all get the same exact amount of time. It's how you decide to use your time. And I have talked about this for a really long time, but I had a good friend who put the math to it and made me realize that it's— this is my 3% rule. If you want to stay connected emotionally, physically, sexually in your marriage, you have to commit 3% of your time, energy, effort into that. And what that looks like is 20 minutes out of the 1,440 minutes that we all get in a day, if you will spend that time emotionally connecting with your partner, that's not, how was your day? That is, what's exciting to you? What are you learning? What, how are you growing? What are ways in which you feel held back? What, what's giving you anxiety right now? What weighs heavily on you? What can I do to make your life easier? Those types of questions. If you'll spend 20 minutes talking to your partner like that every day, That's extremely connecting. You will avoid daily kind of roommate ships passing in the night type of that. Then if you will spend 3 hours out of the 168 hours in a day doing something fun, we call this date night, but it can be any time of day. But that this is an intentionally planned activity for the two of you to do where you have fun, right? So how do we make time for fun? You put it on your calendar and you schedule it 3 hours a week. You go and you do something that you enjoy. It doesn't have to be expensive, elaborate, or far from home. My favorite date night my husband and I do often, I would say weekly, is we go for a walk on the Greenbelt when the weather's nice, and we go grab a cookie afterwards or a milkshake or something. It's not expensive, and but, but it's very intentional. We love to just hang out and talk to each other, and we, we spend 20 minutes a day, but we also spend 3 hours a week. And then one week out of the 52 weeks of a year, you go away. It doesn't have to be, again, far from home tropical vacation. I mean, those are the best. But if you can go camping, if you can have a staycation, if you can get away from your daily responsibilities for one week and dream, plan, envision your future together, that's what you do. So those, I call it the 3% rule, time, energy, and intention. If you will do that, you will have a much, much greater chance of staying connected in all the ways you wanna be connected than if you just think that that's gonna happen by accident.

Yeah, I know what I'm hearing is that it's like when you break it down into time blocks, it's actually not a lot of time, but I suspect— 3% of people that have never had these conversations, I think, there's two things that come up for me. One is lots of people have never had these conversations, never, right? So they don't know how to have the conversation. And there's, I suspect, a lot of people who just operate the blame game, which is, especially in long-term relationships, which is, he just does this all the time. Every time I try and do it, he just does this. Or you are so X, Y, Z. And so without support from an expert, and I've always said this, like, without support from an expert, it's kind of hard to get this on your own. And do you think it's possible? I mean, what you're talking about is deeply ingrained communication behaviors in the case of a lot of long-term couples. Like, they have a dynamic. It's built up over time. One person does this. The other person does this. They respond in a predictable fashion. It's all been working in its non-workable way for some significant period of time. Is it really possible to take that and turn it around? Because I can see, I can see, Owies, how easy it can be to start as you mean to go on. So if I started a new relationship and I was like, look, here's how this is going to work out, like 20 minutes, just going to have a chat for 20 minutes. We're going to do this. It's like quite easy to implement that pattern, but much more difficult, I would imagine, to, to unwind all of that learned behavior that could have taken place over decades. Or have you seen that successfully work?

Oh, I see it every day. I mean, that is what relational life therapy, that is the modality that I work within, is literally you get a couple and they come in and whether they've been married for days or decades, they've created a dynamic between the two of us, between the two of them. They are colluding to keep in place because, right? And so there are three phases of RLT. The first phase is figuring out the dynamic. So it's really helpful. I always say you can't see the label from inside of the bottle. So you have two people that are participating in a dynamic that they can't see. And so you bring in a third party who is like from a different perspective looking in and can see and diagnose this dynamic. The more— we often describe it as the more, the more. The more you pursue, the more you withdraw. There's several different versions of whatever dynamic this couple is in. You name the dynamic, that's phase 1. Phase 2 is where, as you talked about, these patterns that people have had in place for their entire lives, right? It's— we call that inner child work or trauma, right? It's these adaptations that I learned in my family of origin. How do I get the things that I need in the environment that I'm in? And so I created some adaptations according to trauma or whatever, whatever I had to do to survive my environment. And it was extremely adaptive then, right? It got me the things that I needed. It helped me become the person that I am. So we always want to honor the infinite wisdom of the inner child. However, adaptive then, maladaptive now. The person you're in relationship with now is not your family of origin. It's different. And so you've got to look at those behaviors, those adaptations, that knee-jerk reaction, the protective behaviors that you have, and you've got to re-parent that. You've got to give it guidelines. You've got to strap in the backseat so that your wise adult can now deal with the person who's in front of you, not the pattern that you grew up in. Okay, so that's stage 2. And then stage 3, now that you've dealt with those protective adaptations, you teach new skills. So these are the skills now that are going to give you the connection and intimacy and passion that you want to carry into your relationship. So that is a very fast process. I've seen that happen in 3 days.

Wow.

Intensive with couples. Yes. I work with couples in, in what we call an intensive, which is like 3 days of just 8 hours, 6 to 8 hours a day. You're working with a couple. I've seen it happen in a few months with weekly sessions. So it's, it's an incredibly powerful way to create characterological change quickly.

Wow, that's incredible. That's incredible. And you know, you talk about ditch the resentment. What are some of the most common resentments that you see in midlife marriages? And how do couples unpack those?

Yeah, so what you did earlier, what you're saying, like what I see a lot is, you know, he doesn't do this, he does this. It's very human. It's very— what's the word I'm looking for? It's very Oh, it like, we don't have to think about it. It just comes very naturally to complain.

Yeah.

It's very easy to see what we're not getting. Resentment is typically something that we're not getting, something that we think is unfair. And so as humans, we just naturally complain. We can call our mom or our girlfriend or our weightlifting buddy or whatever. And we complain about our partner, what we're not getting or what we don't like. Here's the thing. Once you learn how to do this, it changes everything because complaining is not going to get you more of what you want. I mean, logically, we know this. It's just really difficult in practice. You know, it's easier said than done. But if you're complaining about something, you're probably resentful about it. And underneath the complaint is either a desire, a longing, and a request. So if you're like, my husband always does this thing and it drives me crazy. Your desire would be for him to do something different, right? Like, let's make it real clear. Like, let's say my husband never helps around the house. He always leaves his floor, he leaves his clothes on the floor. He's such a slob. He just thinks I'm going to do it. That's a lot of complaining. What's the desire under there is for my husband to pitch in more. And so I teach a 3-step process of making requests, which is essentially teaching your partner how to treat you. It's— this is like the antithesis of resentment and complaint. So first got to figure out what is the request underneath that, that complaint. So I just kind of taught you how to do that. Now you've got to bring it up to your partner skillfully. How do we do this? Step 1 is to remember love. Remember that the person we're talking to is the person we love and we live with. And the reason we're bringing this up is because we want things to get better between us, because the alternative is resentment and complaint, right? So I want to bring this up to my partner. Step 1, I'm bringing it up because I love him and I want things to be better. 2 is to get stupidly specific. So a lot of people are like, ah, you never help around the house. You're such a slob. Like, you know, that's really hard to like mine that what is it you actually want from me? How do I actually do the thing that you're asking me to do? Because it's super broad. So we got to get stupidly specific. Is what I call it. So if your desire is for more help and support around the house, you— the request you're gonna make, the stupidly specific request that you're gonna make is, I would like for you to be in charge of cleaning the kitchen 3 times a week. That means clearing the dishes from the dinner table, uh, washing them off, putting them in the dishwasher, cleaning off the counters, sweeping the floor, and taking out the garbage. That's what it means to clean the kitchen. I need you to take responsibility for that 3 nights a week. That's your stupidly specific request. Now, most partners are going to be like, yeah, I probably could do that, or they have a reason why they can't, whatever. Now, here's your bonus points. If you say, how can I make it easier for you to give me what I'm asking? And your partner might come back with something like, if maybe if you take the kids in the other room, or, you know, you do something, whatever, it would make it easier. And then you, you either can do that you can't. So there's a little bit of negotiation involved in this request in step 2. Step 3, and this is what most people don't do that solidifies like that you're gonna get what you want, is that you appreciate any progress your partner gives you. So let's say one day next week your partner cleans the kitchen, does a fantastic job, but that's it. You're gonna— step 3 is that you're gonna say, oh my gosh, on Monday night when you clean the kitchen, that was so amazing. It helped so much. I appreciate your attention to detail. You did such a phenomenal job. Can we try to do it 3 times next week? This is how we get more of what we want. We appreciate what we're getting, and then we still stand up for what we still want. We always keep fighting for what we want skillfully.

There's a part of me that listens to this and thinks, you know, when things like— in my own marriage, part of the reason it broke down was one of these very similar conversations, which is, I would like it if you could empty the dishwasher, right? I mean, that was it. And the the relationship counselor said, is there a reason why you're finding it so difficult to empty the dishwasher? To which his response was, because it's boring. Oh, yeah, you know what, it is boring. Like, emptying the dishwasher is fucking boring. It's, it's not giving me an orgasm, I can tell you that right now. And it's probably not going to give you one either, but it still needs to be done, right? And there is, there is, there's always a part of me that plays devil's advocate here and thinks the fact that we to congratulate men for doing things that should just be something that they're willing to do or able to do without needing some sort of like massive show of gratitude. I do kind of have to laugh because of course as women we do these tasks all the time without anybody saying thank you.

But we do love some gratitude. I mean, right?

I think we don't love gratitude.

Everybody loves gratitude. But how do we train? How do we train an animal to do the things we want them to do? Is we reinforce their, their good behavior. And so if you want an animal or a man to do what you want them to do, chances are you're going to get, you're going to get further by appreciating their efforts than complaining about what they're not doing. But the other thing I was going to say is when, when your husband was like, because it's boring, like, Okay, well, maybe you can put on a book or some music, or like, we have so much technology now that like my husband, he will go to town in the kitchen. He's listening to a book that he loves. He drowns out the kids and their needs and everything else that's happening. He's listening to a book, right? So yeah, we can do things that are hard. Like, let me— do you want me to list out all the things that I do that are boring? We sometimes we just, that's part of being married, but I will say that appreciating their efforts to do things that are boring is going to get you much further than just being like, why are you such an a-hole? We all have to do stuff that's boring.

Look, I totally, I totally, and I think appreciation is a big part of just, of just being in a relationship, right? Like weekly, weekly. Affirmations with your partner of like, I really loved it this week when, you know, you did a really great job cleaning the kitchen and it really helped me out a lot, you know, and stuff like that.

Or yeah, it's amazing, right? Like I tell young married women, I'm like, listen, if you catch your husband doing something that you like, even if it's like he should be doing it, like that, like how hard is it to like walk by and pinch his butt? Or like, you know, like give them a little like, hey hun, I recognize you're doing this thing and I really like it. You are setting the foundation for more of that, right? Like it's amazing what men will do for a pinch on the butt from their wife. Yeah.

I mean, look, it's little simple things, right? That often are the things that motivate them. And we often know what those things are, which leads me to my next question about, you know, sex and intimacy, because they do change as people age. And, you know, what are the dynamics that tend to undermine healthy sexual relationships in, in later life? And how can couples address these with compassion? And I think that's the key that we're talking about here. A lot of what we're talking about is like, how can we be compassionate? Yeah.

Listen, I love talking about sex and sexual dynamics, and my answer is the same. How do you improve any aspect of your sex life, whether it's, you know, early on or later when you're starting to face challenges? It's going to be communication. The more you communicate about what is happening, the better you're going to fare, because sex and sexuality is so vulnerable. It has so much charge and so much history and so many beliefs around it that— listen, when I have couples literally on the brink of divorce, one of the things people are like, what leads to the breakdown of a marriage? It's not being able to share completely who you are with your person. It's not feeling chosen because you feel like you have to hide some parts of yourself or protect some parts of yourself or can't share some parts of yourself. And there is nothing that brings that out more than sex.

Yeah.

So being able to create an environment between the two of you of safety, love, compassion, curiosity, vulnerability, where you can share the innermost parts of yourself, the parts of yourself that you grew up learning you should be ashamed of, or, you know, the mistakes that you made, or the things you think about that are like, I don't I don't know if you're going to judge me about this. It feels a little crazy. Like, if you can, between the two of you, create an environment of compassion, curiosity, vulnerability, safety, unconditional love, that is going to create a really, really erotic, awesome sex life.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

All throughout. If you're struggling with erectile dysfunction or dryness or all of the perimenopause, like all of the things, like there is nothing that better, more honest, like vulnerable communication can't solve.

Yeah, and I think, you know, from speaking to people, sometimes it's only when we have some significant health challenges that we're able to actually have these conversations. 'Cause when things are kind of bumbling along, in a way that is not great, but not awful either, then it's easy to just stay quiet because it's why, why disrupt the equilibrium that you've established over years. And from the people I've spoken to, especially men who have had, you know, radical prostatectomies, women who have had, you know, significant issues around maybe vaginal dryness or, or had a hysterectomy or whatever, it's oftentimes when some very significant event has occurred that's almost forced a conversation that probably should have happened ages before, only because it can't be avoided. Because if a man is not capable of having an erection at all, that's— and that's clearly been brought on by a surgical procedure, you got to talk about that. Otherwise you know, you're going to end up in a, in a horrible place of feeling ashamed. And, and, and I know all that from speaking to men. And the interesting thing is that sometimes it is those significant events that actually force a conversation that should have happened years before. You know, I always find that actually quite interesting. Not that it makes it any easier, but it just means that it's almost something that two people have to learn how to deal with, rather than one person just kind of dealing with feelings of shame or discomfort on their own. Do you see that with some of the people that you work with, that it's— they come to you because they've reached that kind of crisis point in their sexual life that's been sometimes a result of a health issue?

Absolutely. I mean, there's always like the stimulus for the you know, why the couple, where they've gotten to in the, in the thing. But at the root of our humanity, we want to feel chosen, we want to be chosen, and we want to feel chosen, and we want to have the opportunity to choose our partner. And so the, the maturity of the relationship is based upon how much honesty is there in the relationship. So Yeah, if you're struggling with discomfort around something or shame around something, or, you know, you, you, you, we want to know that if I can't provide this thing for you, or if I can't be this thing for you, or if, you know, I make mistakes in this area, do you still want me? Will you still choose me? Right? I mean, that's at the heart of, will you be there for me? Even if I can't get an erection, even if I don't like having sex, Even if, you know, this or that or the other, right? We want to know, will you still be there for me? Do you still choose me? Will you still want me? And so when we can be really honest about these feelings, about our experience, about the stories we're telling ourselves, you know, this is how intimacy is built. This is it. And being able to repair after after times of disharmony, right? Like, like, we're so afraid of conflict and we're so afraid of, of disharmony and disagreements. And, you know, what if we— this doesn't go well? It's like the couples that are really healthy are not the couples that don't ever have challenges or conflict or disagreements. It's the couples that understand how to repair Yeah, yeah. This is how resilience, intimacy, passion are built. Trust.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it all boils down, as it does in every conversation I've ever had with anyone too, how do we improve our communication skills at whatever stage of life you're at? Doesn't matter whether you're just a young person embarking on one of your first relationships or an older person who's been with your partner for 20 years. Like, how can we improve the communication between ourselves to be honest about who we are, to be vulnerable and to be, you know, compassionate with each other and with ourselves? And I think that's what it always boils down to. And it's really hard. I think I always say you can't underestimate how difficult it is to be, to be that honest because we're all at risk of rejection, I think. And rejection is, is a painful place for, for many of us. But to round this all up, I want to ask, what's the one daily or weekly habit you recommend for couples couples who do want to keep love, sex, and connection alive long term?

Hmm, curiosity, daily curiosity. Ask your partner. If you just— a lot of people in long-term relationships, or as they age, start to take each other for granted. Like, I know what she's gonna say, I know how he thinks about that. Like, but we're so malleable, we're so— we're always changing, evolving, and growing, right? I mean, That's the idea, right? And so if you will stay curious and open to who your partner is and who they're becoming and what they care about, what they're learning, you'll never run out of things to talk about.

Yeah, I think that's a great way to end the show. Thank you so much, Monica. It's flown by.

Thank you.

And I will, like usual, post your socials and where people can find you and Suzanne Noble, have a wonderful, wonderful day.

Thank you so much.