9 minute read

How do you keep the fires burning and desire strong in long-term relationships? Sustaining intimacy with the same person over the years is no joke. And it’s not like there’s a road map. But let me offer you a way to think about long-term relationships that centres on an elegant triad. Here’s the skinny. Intimacy over time requires three things: madness, the value-added project and autonomy. Let’s look at them in turn.

MADNESS

How did it go the first time you laid eyes on your partner? Did your heart skip a beat? Did your pupils dilate? Were you instantly smitten? Maybe it was a slower build that took longer to recognise, a smoulder that became a flame.

When I first met my now-husband, I felt incredibly drawn to him but didn’t register it as physical attraction. Months later, having not seen each other very much in the interim, I visited him at his home in Hollywood. At one point that first evening he put his hand out and touched the top of my head. A volt of electricity ran through my whole system and I knew that I was in trouble and things were about to get complicated (up until that point we were just friends). And while I can’t honestly say that the flame has never dimmed in the past 18 years, the spark has never died.

There has to be a streak of madness, of raw desire, to keep the flame burning over the long term. Sure, it might reduce to an ember sometimes, but without that intrinsic desire to have your partner, to be up close and (very) personal with them, something’s amiss. It’s that thread of desire, wax and wane as it may, that keeps the fire alive through the years and keeps you coming back for more.

But the desire can make you mad. There’s a complexity to desire that’s not just sexual. Think of your relationship with your beloved. Is there anyone else who can get under your skin in quite the same way? Anyone else who can drive you to distraction and cause you to burn up with desire? Sometimes desire masquerades as anger. I’ve heard that thwarted desire becomes anger. The real trick is to transmute anger back to desire, to use it to connect rather than to alienate.

Think of madness as your susceptibility to being influenced by your partner. Not just by physical desire but also the way they can make you angry, or sad, or feel longing. The madness that sustains intimacy is the madness of being touched deeply by another. This kind of intimacy leaves you vulnerable to loss, to heartache and to separation. The core of your being no longer an island, a separate thing, but one half of an atom, a molecule comprised of you and your lover, each half affected by the other.

THE VALUE-ADDED PROJECT

What does your partner bring to your life? How has your life been impacted by your partner’s presence? Sure, you can be glib and reckon all the ways your partner may add complexity to your life, in-laws anyone? Snoring problems. Different dietary preferences. But I’m talking about something more profound, the apertures that have been opened in your world because of your partner’s presence.

This might be anything from their ability to make you laugh and see the bright side of things, to their love of fine dining and how that has opened previously untraversed culinary vistas. Or maybe your partner turned you on to rock climbing, or sea swimming. Who knows? The possibilities are endless.

Reflecting on the many ways my husband has made my life better makes me feel gooey with gratitude. Everything from learning how to use Dropbox and being savvier about computer back-up drives, to knowing my way around playing a harmonium and basics of music theory and how professional recording sessions work, but also how to write a really good professional bio and put together a press kit.

And then there’s the people I’ve met because of him: musicians and yoga studio owners all over the world, some of whom invited me to teach at their studios or festivals. Amazing yoga teachers. A robust community of musicians, yogis, artists, screen writers, actors, and producers here in Los Angeles who welcomed me warmly when I moved here 16 years ago, a little naïve perhaps and certainly not particularly confident. Interesting and quirky friends of his who’ve become my friends too. And not least, my in-laws. His wonderful, warm, and loving family that made me one of their own.

I could go on.

Let me not forget the cuddles, the long hugs, the smoochy kisses and lovemaking with its variegated hues of intensity and meaning. But also let me not forget the ways I’ve grown in this relationship. I met him when I was 30, I’m now forty-nine. I have grown up in that time. Yes, the years would have elapsed with or without him, but staying in the relationship caused me to grow in particular ways.

The relationship has been a crucible for self-understanding, confrontation and ultimately growth.

I respect myself more now. I know that I can hang in there, that I’ve become a better partner, maybe a little less neurotic, a little more easy-going. (My husband might demur).

There have been agonising fights and painful silences, petty cruelties, and mindless deeds. Betrayals big and small. Things have been said I wish I could take back, hurts caused I deeply regret. But more than all of that, there has been love. The cleansing, healing and fortifying balm of love and the power of his heart. Without that, this thing would not have persisted.

But go back further and without the madness, the spark that set the flame, none of this would be so. That desire has surged and diminished, but it has never been vanquished. Quite simply it is the driving force for the whole endeavour. There’s a sweetness amidst the madness, the wheel of desire and that sweetness makes the value-added project of growth worthwhile. By the same token, the growth adds to the sweetness and desire, adds a different hue to the complexity of madness for each other. The one fuels the other in an intricate dance in which the leader and the follower shifts over time and there’s an unpredictability that can never be bested. It’s never boring.

Which brings me to…

AUTONOMY

My Dad used to tell me that the purpose of committed partnership is to make you more of who you really are, to provide the fertile ground for growing into your own self. One of my most important yoga teachers says that yoga is the path of becoming virtuosic in being yourself. I love this symmetry.

A wise and dear friend, 20 years older than me, has always told me that the highest value in a relationship is to protect each other’s solitude. It took me some years to fully understand this. Aren’t relationships about relating, not solitude? Well, yes but without the space between notes, would the music sound so resonant? The metaphor is salient and particularly apt in my life. I’m married to a musician and for the first 12 years of our marriage, he was on the road a lot. He wasn’t always the greatest communicator during that time and I was frequently lonely.

Solitude can be both a blessing and a curse. The upside is that you get a lot of time for contemplation, for your own pursuits, and a lot of space for self-determination. The downside is, well, it can be bloody lonely. I have traversed the lonely roads until I could walk them blindfolded. At times when he was away, I felt so lonely I could barely eat or sleep, felt like I was living inside a heart of darkness.

But over time, as I gained my footing in LA and became more involved in my own life, that journey to the core of loneliness didn’t seem so dark. I discovered that when you go all the way to the kernel, to its imagined void of stillness, something amazing happens, it becomes a pulsation, a radiating field of awareness, of vibrating light illuminating the shadowy shame of loneliness.

By embracing aloneness and vast amounts of time to think and feel, I found freedom in the fire. I became more self-sufficient, more virtuosic in tending my inner flame. More sovereign in myself.

But autonomy in long-term relationships is not just about the ability to be on your own. It’s also about the ability to be yourself, to pursue your passions and goals, to have a life outside the relationship.

A rich inner life is key to your own happiness and resilience, and it relieves your partner of the burden of keeping you engaged and entertained.

Same goes for having your own interests. In an ideal world, your partner encourages you to pursue things you love. It’s great to have overlapping interests and to do things together, whether for sheer pleasure or entertainment, or in pursuit of a meaningful goal. It’s also crucial to spend time apart and do things that feed your own soul. All the better if your partner is happy, or at least willing, to listen to you talk about the things that give your life meaning. But even if your partner doesn’t share in your joy or get the hit from whatever it is that lights your fire, it’s still essential to follow your bliss and keep your inner light glowing.

For the entire pandemic, I studied yoga philosophy and mythology online with a brilliant teacher, usually three times per week. Being the yoga and philosophy nerd that I am, this satisfied me profoundly and put a perk in my step. My husband, on the other hand, spent much of the pandemic in his studio teaching himself new state-of-the-art music recording and editing skills and putting them to use. He’s got his jam and I’ve got mine. We both like it that way; it keeps things fresh and gives us something to talk about over dinner.

I really love reading. In fact, I’m a compulsive reader. When I’m well into a book I will forsake most things to keep reading. I binge books the way some people binge food, sneaking chapters in throughout the day, and will happily spend an entire evening in silence reading without the need to speak to anyone else. Fortunately, my hubby is fully content being down in his studio doing whatever he does and we both give each other the solitude to do what we love.

I’m not pretending to have a perfect marriage, to have things fully worked out. We have plenty of conflict and drive each other crazy at times and there are certainly ebbs and flows in the passion department. But it’s not boring.

This triad of madness, enhanced value, and autonomy functions in a way that each aspect informs the other. To keep desire fresh, it’s necessary to up your game in terms of personal growth. If you surpass your partner in terms of evolving your maturity and emotional intelligence and relationship skills, you’re probably going to outgrow the relationship. The same goes for your partner. Cultivating your own autonomy and supporting, even protecting, your beloved’s staves off boredom. It pays to stay on top of your game.

The longer you hang in there, through peaks and valleys, provided you're both doing the work – and it’s bloody hard – chances are you’re both going to recognise the value your partner adds to your life. This in turn ups your desire so that you choose your partner from a place of autonomy and self-sufficiency. Pursuing your own projects and finding fulfilment outside the relationship allows you to return with your cup filled, which takes the burden off your partner of always having to fill your cup.

This all adds up to something like greatness. A great relationship is different from a successful one. In a successful relationship, things work, the dog gets walked and fed, the kids get dropped to school, the bins go out and the bills get paid. All this happens in great relationships too. But great relationships surpass mere functionality and doing the needful, no matter how essential that is.

Great relationships provide a container for your soul to soar, to stretch and expand but ultimately come home to rest. They push you to become your best self and live your life with purpose and autonomy.

They can also drive you to distraction, to a type of madness that fills you with rage and focuses your desire. They allow you to be fully human, to thrive and love, chase your desires and pursue your dreams.

Intimacy is central to great relationships. With yourself, with your loved one, with life itself. It’s not easy to sustain intimacy and desire over time. Radical self-knowledge and confrontation are necessary and the willingness to walk your own path even as you stay connected to your partner, knowing that your paths might diverge.

Autonomy allows you to choose yourself and also to choose your partner over and over again. Prioritising your own growth and encouraging your partner to do the same runs the risk that either of you might outgrow the relationship and leave. In truly great relationships the value your partner brings to your life prevents that happening, there’s simply too much worth staying for. Part of that greatness is a kind of madness, the kind that makes you still want to get down with your honey a decade or two, or three, in. Let’s hope we all find that kind of greatness!

Dearbhla Kelly, July 2022