In the second episode of Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz, the marriage counselor, psychotherapist, and author shares a difficult truth: Date nights won’t save your sex life. Neither will lingerie, vacations, or simply “trying harder.”

The reason passion dies in long-term relationships isn’t a lack of effort.

Listen as host Mel Schwartz names the real culprit and shares two exercises that have helped couples reignite their passion and their sex lives.

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You remember what it felt like early on in your relationship when you just started? The anticipation? Maybe it was electric? Hopefully you couldn’t keep your hands off of each other.

And now, years later, what happened? Does sex seem to happen on the same night of the week, or worse still, the same night of the month, in the same room, in the same way? Is it all predictable, if it happens at all?

It’s like watching the same old movie over and over again. You already know how it’s going to play out, so you really stop paying attention. You’re not passionate. You’re not even present anymore.

Here’s what nobody taught you: Passion doesn’t die from lack of love. Passion dies from too much certainty.

Let me repeat that. Passion dies from predictability.

Predictability and certainty are the killer of passion. And most couples have no idea that they’re suffocating to death. The very thing they’re trying to protect, their passion, they’re destroying.

Today, I’m going to show you exactly why passion fades in long-term, committed relationships, and how to bring it back and keep it back by breaking the rules that are boring you to death. Please let me know what you think about the tips I’m providing you to restore and recreate passion. Let me know what works for you and what doesn’t.

You ever sit by the fire, fireplace, start a great fire, watch the logs start to spark up. It’s a great feeling, the warmth of those logs on fire. What happens after a time, though? If you don’t stoke the logs, the fire goes out. Exactly the same thing happens with passion. If we don’t stoke the passion, it goes out.

I’m going to be introducing to you the benefits of embracing uncertainty and the perils of too much certainty and predictability. My book, The Possibility Principle, is all about how to embrace uncertainty and possibility. We live life from false reality. We think things are fixed and inert and not moving. Not true.

And that’s what causes so much of the grief in our lives. Passion being one. Quantum physics reveals that everything is in a perpetual state of flow and uncertainty is the rule of the universe. Uncertainty is the rule of the universe.

Now, uncertainty is full of awe and excitement. It’s what gets us to pay attention. We don’t know what’s coming next. But in a committed relationship, we forego uncertainty and default to predictability. That is the death knell of passion.

Uncertainty is exciting. Falling in love was uncertain, wasn’t it? Why do we fall out of love? Because we make it predictable.

We need to keep the uncertainty alive through exploration and curiosity. Marriage, like all institutions, operates by rules and expectations. And these rules and expectations format our engagement. They are predictable. They are the antithesis of passion.

Now, understanding that we have some rules and expectations to a point is necessary, but when they become the formatting and the predictability of a relationship, passion is going to die.

When we become indoctrinated to predictability, guess what happens? We go to sleep. Your sex life disintegrates. Everything becomes rote and predictable. And even if you are having sex now and then, it’s not all that exciting. Once again, we’re not really present.

The great writer Oscar Wilde wrote, “uncertainty is the essence of romance.”

Let’s think about that. Makes sense. Falling in love is uncertain. But now what happens over time? We make our relationship predictable.

I wrote in my book, The Possibility Principle, if uncertainty is the essence of romance, then predictability is the death knell of romance. It is the death knell of sex and passion.

Uncertainty makes us present. We don’t want to know how a sports event is going to end. We don’t want to know how the movie is going to end. We are engaged and passionate and excited because we don’t know what’s coming next. Certainty and predictability suffocate passion. Boredom sets in.

Once our relationships, once our words, and once our actions become predictable and rote, nobody is present, nobody is paying attention. And guess what? That ain’t passionate. Passionate.

We’ll get back to the show in just a second. But real quick, if you’re finding value in these conversations, if you’re starting to see your relationships, your thinking, or your life in a new way, I’d love to stay connected with you beyond the podcast.

I send out thoughts, insights, reflections, and practical tools straight to your inbox, things that can help you apply what we talk about here so your own life and relationships can prosper.

So if you want to keep the conversation going, head to the link in the show notes and sign up for my email list. It’s free, and I think you’ll find it genuinely useful.

Okay, back to the show.

Now, how to have and maintain a passionate sex life requires stepping back from predictability.

You know, so many people end up having sex by appointment. Either they literally make an appointment or they fall into routine. It’s the same night, in the same room, in the same way. Nothing varies. There’s no curiosity. There’s no playfulness. It becomes regimented.

Or sex becomes used in a relationship as a control mechanism or a reward for good behavior or punishment for bad behavior. And our sex lives also become hurried and perfunctory.

What should they really be? They should be emotionally alive and awake and intimate and spontaneous. Again, not focusing on the outcome, but focusing on wonder and play and curiosity, not regimentation, not sex by appointment.

When you’re having sex, do you talk to each other? Do you share your fantasies? Do you open up to play and curiosity? Or do you close your eyes and succumb to predictability?

I have found this predictability through my many, many hours of marriage counseling to be the core element of the default into passionless relationships.

Stoking the fire. Let’s take a look at what that looks like.

I created an exercise some years ago with a couple struggling around the vitality in their sexual relationship. I proposed that they leave their house in separate cars, go to a local bar or a restaurant with a bar, not that you have to be drinking alcohol, but whatever, and sit down at the bar and play a game whereby they don’t know each other. They’re strangers. Have a conversation and try to pick each other up.

But when you’re doing this, you can’t be talking about your children. You can’t be talking about anything familiar. You don’t know each other. When you don’t know each other, which is where you were when you first met, it’s passionate. It’s full of wonder.

Another technique I employed with this couple was, and it was in a session alone with him, and I don’t mean to be sexist in this approach that the man has to initiate the sex, but it’s just the way I did it.

I had him book a table for dinner in an inn. There were rooms and there was a restaurant. And I told him to secure and reserve a room in advance, not tell his wife what was going on. And when he went out to use the men’s room to actually acquire the key to the room.

Now, when dinner was over and he paid the check, he took her by the arm and instead of heading to the parking lot, headed to her room. Instead of going home to the same house and dismissing the babysitter, there was this excitement. There was this vitality. It was new. It was spontaneous. It was passionate.

Bring passion back into your lives by breaking out of the bondage of predictability and certainty. That’s how you do it.

Instead of experimenting and being playful with wonder, with curiosity, we get stuck inside the constriction of these boundaries. We have to melt those boundaries away. We have to come into the sense of oneness and playfulness.

Passion is about oneness. Two separate people for a period of time become more like one.

Let’s also talk about the difference between sex as opposed to making love. Lovemaking transcends the physical. When you’re making love, you’re fully engaged. You’re immersed in each other’s physical being and spiritual being. Sex tends to be focused just on the result, on the climax, on the orgasm, which is very exciting. But the experience needs to be scintillating all along the way.

You know, the distinction between making love and having sex can blur. Ordinary sex is grounded just in the result, just in the climax. Making love requires vulnerability, no fear about your performance, no concerns about how you’re seen.

Here’s your uncommon sense. To keep your sex life exciting and awake and alive or to recreate your sex life and your passion, remember predictability and conformity is the death knell of passion.

This has been Uncommon Sense. If you want to thrive in your relationship with others and with yourself, be sure to subscribe to the channel. I’m Mel Schwartz and I’ll see you in the next one.

The post Why Passion Dies in Long-Term Relationships, and How to Save It first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.