A guy and a girl go on a date. They have a nice time and are attracted to each other. They go on another date. This time they are a little smilier, and a bit more at ease with each other. So, they go on a few more dates. Before you know it, these two individuals are pretty single minded. When she is in class, she sees her date’s face instead of her professor’s. While he is standing on the train doing his best not to tip over, he hears her giggling at his jokes. They are officially Smitten.

Many skeptics and critics would argue that this cannot be called love. How can there be any real, lasting love when there is zero commitment and only a hair of history between this couple? Infatuation, Lust, Obsession. That’s what these naïve youngsters are experiencing. Just wait till they survive real hard time, then they’ll know what love is.

Well, Dr. Sue Johnson, along with couples in the know, begs to differ. Using fMRI to track brain activity, recent studies have found that couples who are in that “fresh love” stage have the same brain activity as somecouples who are in long-term, committed relationships. The only characteristic that the newbies had that was missing from the older happy couples was that they were no longer obsessed with each other.

What does this tell us? It tells us that there are some really fortunate couples whose are in that new stage of love for their entire lives. It tells us that it is possible to have “that old feeling” when you are old. It tells us that we weren’t young, stupid, or clueless in those first few months when we felt so good in the presence of the other. That was real. It was real and it is quite durable. It just takes a few milestones to overcome.

Most of us are not able to maintain the level of connection that we had when we first fell hard. Most of us hit a cold stage very soon after the initial connection begins. The obsession wears away within a few months, and we begin to distance ourselves. Those who make it through this stage and are able to reconnect a bit, and can move on to the next stage. They feel more connected and are enjoying each other’s company.

But when that delicious first baby comes along, an earthquake rumbles through the household and the couple finds themselves juggling while walking across a tight-rope. Not too fun…

The most stressful times in a relationship are during the years of raising the kids. It is a marathon of activity. A pre-schooler will request attention about every 6 minutes. Carpool, groceries, dishes, dentists, doctors, and a specialist every now and then. Whining, messes, with some light violence toward asibling thrown in.

How in the world is this couple supposed to connect, let alone have an uninterrupted conversation? In fact, if this is a typical couple, they will try to have a short conversation about when to schedule little Aliza’s cavity filling, and all of a sudden it will turn into a full surprise attack from one spouse to the other. Where did this come from? How did it happen how so fast? And why am I feeling so angry over nothing?

This is something that seems so mysterious and powerful. It creates distance that is sharp and painful. In fact, in other brain studies, it has been found that the part of the brain that registers physical pain is activated when we are feeling the pain of distance from others. In other words, this is serious stuff. And it is stuff that we can’t really solve in the way that we are accustomed to solving other problems.

We don’t realize that what our partners do triggers us, and our reaction to that will then trigger our partners. We keep going around in this manner, and if we don’t do anything differently, it could go on for years like this, while we feel powerless against it.

An example of one such cycle is this: When I am scared, I withdraw. When you see that I am withdrawn, you get scared that I will not be there for you, so you try to engage me. You try to engage me by criticizing me. When you criticize, you are scary, so I retreat more. Then you get more scared because I am not responding to your plea for “Are you there for me?” So you try to engage me even more by yelling louder, or criticizing harsher. And so it goes.

The only way to stop this is by stepping out of the game. Either step above it, or go in deep. Imagine two athletes are competing in a tennis match. That is the couple when they are fighting like this. Stepping out of the game would be as if the tennis players met at the net and said something to the other like, “Wow, that was a really tough match.” Going deeper would be if the couple then went out for lunch and talked about what drives them to play tennis or how scared one was when the other slammed his serve across the court.

If a couple is able to regulate themselves and have conversations on this level, they will be able to move very smoothly from their full house into a cozy empty nest.

A great guide for having these conversations is the book, Hold Me Tight, by Dr. Sue Johnson. I hold my autographed copy tightly nearby.

Aviva Lauren Rizel, MA is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Cedarhurst, NY and the clinical director of The Five Towns Marriage Initiative. She can be reached at 347-292-8482, or [email protected].