How can I rebuild desire after NRE? New Relationship Energy.
So, I mean this question for me is kind of an interesting one, because I guess I'm wondering like what kind of desire are we talking about, and like what's the issue?
A lot of people when they're in NRE, they have a ton of like very spontaneous desire, and they think that once they get out of NRE, and they are feeling less of that spontaneous desire, that they have less desire overall.
But sometimes what that is, is that people who are generally more responsive desire, when they're in that rush of NRE, have more of that spontaneous desire than they usually do, and so when it leaves, they think there's something wrong, or there's something not happening, when they're just back to their baseline.
So, I think one thing you can do to rebuild desire after NRE is figure out where are you on the responsive to spontaneous spectrum for desire, what kinds of things.
You know, Emily Nagoski in “Come as You Are” talks about this really, really well about your excitatory and inhibitory systems for sex and desire, what hits your gas pedal, what hits your brakes, and take a look at like is there stuff that's hitting your brakes, that's making that desire harder to access.
Is there stuff that you need in order for it to hit your gas pedal, so you can feel that desire and feel about like looking into those things?
I think too it's important to think about kind of desire as having different flavors or different appearances as we move through the course of a relationship.
Like the kind of desire you have in the first six months of relationship with someone is not going to be the desire that you experience over the long term, because when we're in that early NRE bubble, we sacrifice a ton of stuff in our life in order to make space for this thing that we're excited about, but it's not something that we can do in a sustainable way.
So we make extra time for people, we stay up later than we might, we do all of these things that are outside of our normal way of operating because we want to like put the energy into this relationship, but at some point you still have dishes, you still have laundry, and when you're integrating that desire into that larger life, that's when you have to figure out what does desire look like in a sustainable way rather than just an excited start of relationship way.
I think that that like heady, excited, super passionate desire is great when we have it.
But for most of us, if we're having a rough week, if we're having a rough day, we're not going to have a lot of that happening for us because there's other stuff in the way.
So, looking again at like what helps hit your gas pedal, what helps get you excited, what helps kind of prompt or build your desire, or what hits your brake pedal, what makes it harder for you to feel desire, what gets in the way, and figuring out how to work with those things with your partner.
And I think also looking at like for you, are you doing the things you need to do to continue investing in this relationship and building this relationship and building that desire, or are you just expecting it to happen on its own?
I think there's a very big misconception that if the relationship is right, it'll just happen on its own and you'll just have desire all the time.
But like if you're interacting with your partner, like they're a roommate or they’re like your activity buddy and you're not doing things to actively build that desire, if you're not working on like wooing each other and romancing each other and dirty talking each other and, you know, dressing up for each other and like talking about fantasies with each other, like if you're not doing that continual work of investing in that desire, eventually it's going to run out and you're going to be left with a deficit.
And so, I think that like finding ways to continually keep investing in like that desire pool makes it easier for desire to continue after that NRE passes.
Hi Zach, good to see you.
Glad you made it.
Yeah.
So, I hope that answered the question.
I think that even though the framing of like how do you rebuild desire after NRE kind of implies that there's this complete distinction between like what you do in an NRE and what you do in your relationship and I think that it's important for us to figure out ways to spend more of our time in NRE operating in the way that is sustainable for us rather than doing all of those short-term unsustainable things that we feel like doing during NRE.
Because if we keep pushing past what is sustainable and past what our normal boundaries will be, then when we end up having to pull back and readjust, it can feel really jarring to ourselves and to our partners.
I think that's where some of those like wobbly like dips in NRE happen is that real life has reentered the chat and the relationship was not built to accommodate real life.
It was built to accommodate dreamland.
So, I think it's important to figure out like how do you like understand the NRE and feel it and not like tamp it down and pretend it's not there.
But make sure that you're operating in a way that is sustainable in a longer-term fashion so you don't end up in a situation where everything feels like it's gone just because the NRE is past.
