Date Night for Lovers: Keeping Desire Alive

Passion fades when The Lover starves. Desire needs attention. This week we plan a date night for The Lover in your relationship.

Most people focus on the activity for their date night, and while activity matters far more for The Lover Role than either Partner or Friend, I’m still going to invite you to start with a dream. What do you want this date to do for your relationship?

If you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, you know that I believe there are three roles inside your singular relationship: Partner, Friend, and Lover.

• The Partner helps you ACHIEVE and you feel bonded as teammates.
• The Friend understands you and, thus, you feel like you BELONG.
• The Lover WANTS you, and when you feel wanted, your confidence soars.

Our goal today is to understand what The Lover needs in a date night.

 

What is The Lover Role in your relationship?

The Lover is the foil of The Partner. Where The Partner wonders, “What needs to get done?” The Lover wonders, “What would be fun?” The Lover is enthralled with novelty and excitement.

The Lover keeps your life vital. Exciting. Juicy.

You know you need a date night with The Lover when life feels flat, boring, or just too much work. The Lover is all about play. And play is energizing.

Where The Partner helps to keep life’s details maintained, The Lover reminds you of the reason you want to be alive.

Where The Friend fosters a sense of belonging and comfort, The Lover wants to take chances and try something new.

 

The Lover can feed your relationship a giant dose of vivacity with the right date night

The Lover inside of you is as unique as you are.

Desire. What do you WANT? What feels good? What energizes you?

If these answers are easy for you, celebrate. Truly! One of the common denominators for my clients is that they’ve lost touch with their desire. Life feels flat.

This is common in our culture because we value work, so we forget how to play. The other thing that alienates us from our desire is electronics. Your organic relationship with desire is nourished by a connection to the natural world.

Electronics mimic this connection by offering you a dopamine hit in a video game, or when you get a juicy comment on your social media. But this is a sad imitation of what’s available to you when you nurture your sensual body.

The Lover is embodied. That means The Lover is wide awake to how something smells.

 

A story about The Lover Role from my life

I remember when my 21-year-old daughter asked me why I married her dad.

I paused.

A list of reasons flew through my head: he’s calm and kind and I love the way he looks. But she had heard our love story over and over. There was something in the energy of her question that felt like she was asking a deeper question. “How will I know, Mom?”

My body answered her.

I found myself taking a deep breath, and then, without thinking, I said, “I love the way he smells.”

She burst out laughing. Laughter is a sure sign you’ve accessed your own body wisdom. Your body full of desire. The body you have that connects you to The Lover inside your own skin. “You fell in love with my dad because of pheromones?”

 

Listen to your senses to hear your deepest truth

Now, you need to know my daughter to understand why her response cracked me up in return. She’s an academic. She has a PhD in philosophy and loves that moment when the data confirms her hypothesis.

And…

Like any other human, she is a sensual creature.

You, Sweet Reader, are a sensual creature too. You are a human animal, and, as such you have an animal body. Your animal body understands things that will forever remain a mystery to your mind.

But your animal body will never lie to you. When you listen with your senses, you will hear your deepest truth.

 

The Lover houses your desire

That day, in my kitchen when my daughter asked her earnest question, how will I know? She got to watch me take a deep breath, tune into my animal body’s intelligence and answer on my exhale. Trust your sensual body.

The Lover inside of you houses your desire. The more deeply you are rooted in your animal body the more carnal knowledge you’ll have about the love growing between you and your partner. You’ll feel what wakes you up and turns you on.

Sensual bodies love to interact with other sensual bodies. Obviously, love-making is a great example of this, but there are so many others. And exploration of all those others will make your sex life that much more vital and alive.

 

Connect to your body to plan a date night for The Lover 

You feel your heart pound as you shush your skis in the squeaky, cold snow. You notice your skin soften and your jaw loosen when you lay your body back in a tub filled with warm water. Your mouth waters when you smell the rich chocolate of a layer cake.

All these senses connect you to your body that is the birth place of you. And this is where you know what you desire.

Quenching your desire makes life fun.

Hungering after your desire awakens your vitality.

Chasing your desire builds your muscles of capacity.

When you gain more awareness of what your animal body wants and you build your capacity to hold more and more of whatever that is—be it the ability to put paint on canvas, or use an axe to chop down a tree, or whatever it is your desire is hungry for—your ability to love deepens.

You will feel more connected to your partner. So your relationship needs date nights dedicated to awaken your inner Lover’s desire.

Let’s take a deeper look:

This week’s discussion is designed to help you and your partner discover what lights up The Lover Role inside your relationship.

Your Lover wants excitement. Novelty. Adventure.

But once you have an adventure, then that adventure becomes “old news” to your inner Lover. Your Lover has an insatiable appetite. More! More! More! Says your Lover.

While this more, more, more approach to life can be a little frustrating, especially for The Partner, who needs time to get things accomplished, I assure you that having a Lover with a big appetite is good for your relationship.

 

Pleasure is a muscle. It wants to be exercised.

Your Lover’s desire is like a muscle. The more you exercise that muscle, the more capacity for joy and enthusiasm you have. This is good. It’s also scary.

You strengthen your capacity for desire by first wanting, then receiving what you want.

Learning to truly receive is the key. But receiving—truly receiving the desires of your heart—is super vulnerable! So we back away from it. We’re afraid of our own desires.

Consequently, I recommend Lover Date Nights that strengthen both your capacity for desire and your ability to receive those desires of your heart.

In order to help you understand what I mean, I’m going to tell you a story about skiing.

 

Learn to leap into your fear

I’m not a great skier, but my boss at the ski area, Kate, said she can teach anyone to ski and teach them to teach skiing. “I can’t, however, teach people to be kind,” she said.

I am kind, so I got the job.

The job—to teach skiing—came with an hour of ski instruction every morning with Stephanie Reynolds, one of the great ski instructors in Colorado.

Stephanie taught me that skiing moguls expertly is about learning to leap into your fear rather than run from or resist fear. Moguls are big bumps on the ski hill. The goal is to weave your way down the mountain, bouncing off one mogul and into the next. They terrified me, so I avoided them.

Backing away from the bumps is called skiing in the backseat and it’s a guaranteed way to fall down when you ski.

If you ski in the backseat, you feel off balance. As you lean back on skis, the front of the ski slides out from under you. Your arms flail around and you look like a pinwheel in a tornado.

“In order to ski moguls well,” Stephanie told me, “you need to fly through the window at the top of the bump.”

The top of the bump is the scariest place to be. Lemme tell ya, flying into that terror was hard. My body didn’t want to do it. But Stephanie broke it down. “Bend your knees as you’re coming up to the bump. Then push the ground away at the top, that way you can really explode through the window.”

 

It’s not easy to face your fear. It takes practice.

Stephanie followed me down the hill, and each time I got to that scariest part of the bump she encouraged me to fly into the window of fear instead of backing away.

Stephanie skied right behind me and called out moment by moment directions. “Bend. Push. Bend. Push.” She was so encouraging and had such belief in me. “Fly, Rebecca. Leap now. Leap now.”

The bigger my leap, the more easily my skis negotiated the bump. I began to find a rhythm: up, top, TERROR! Leap! Up, top, TERROR, leap.

After several times down the mountain, the TERROR became merely terror and the rhythm changed: up, top, terror, leap.

After a few more runs down the mountain, the terror shrunk to a baby fear. And after a few more, it shrunk until my rhythm became up, top, fly! Up, top, fly!

I was skiing! And not only was I skiing, by leaning into my fear instead of away, my body found the buoyancy of flight.

Confidence replaced my fear.

 

How will your date night benefit when you overcome fear together?

Even when you really, really desire something, you might also be afraid of having it. This is true for every Lover I’ve met in my coaching practice.

When you give into the fears about your desire, your capacity to receive what you want shrinks. And your world gets smaller and smaller. Then guess who you blame for your ridiculously tiny life: your partner.

Bummer!

But when you and your partner learn to practice embracing those desires, you become bonded by the magic of overcoming fears…TOGETHER.

This is a bond like no other. It’s magical.

When you fly into fear, you become the best version of yourself
The invitation into intimacy is possibly the hardest one to accept. Intimacy leaves us vulnerable to all sorts of hurt. You might get rejected. You might not be valued. You might get taken advantage of. You might actually—TERROR ALERT!—be seen for exactly who you are. And then… what if you’re actually LOVED for exactly who you are?!

As you discuss your desire and your fears about receiving what you want with your partner this week, answer this question:

• When have we done something together that scared one or both of us, and then, afterward, we felt a surge of joy, confidence or connection?

Here’s an example:

Almost every year, my husband and I look at the year as a whole and we look for windows of opportunity to plug in an exciting date for The Lovers we want to cultivate.

We do a lot of camping and outdoor adventuring. So we see where we already have plans to travel. Travel and being outside? That feeds our Lover Role and electrifies the bond between us.

We plan a few bigger adventures like a backpack trip or an extended ski vacation. Last year we got to hike in The Alps!

These big adventures give us lots to look forward to and lots to remember. While we were hiking in The Alps, there was one moment in particular that I was struggling. It was very steep and I was slipping a lot. It scared me.

But that same fear, once I was down off the mountain, filled with me confidence. The Lover is ecstatic about conquering fears. And The Lover rewards conquered fears with a huge boost of confidence and energy.

All that shared energy electrifies your relationship.

 

A strategy to plan a date night (or day) for The Lover Role

Once my husband and I have our big trips planned, we look at the holes in between our trips. We plug the big holes first. Wherever we have more than two months between a big adventure, we look for a day we can dedicate to something fun.

When can we put our kayaks on a river? And where is there a good section of river close enough that we can get our adventure done in a single day?

Or, is there a big day hike we’ve been wanting to take?

Once we have an adventure on the calendar every 4-5 weeks, we look for ways to punctuate the time in between with an hour or two of something that keeps our Lovers tuned up.

When can we cross-country ski this week? Do you want to take a hike up The Wood Road with me? Getting outside together is what feeds The Lovers inside of us.

 

Think about what kind of date night feeds YOUR inner lover

Are you like me and outside adventuring is it for you?

Or do you light up when at the thought of getting inside The Metropolitan Museum in New York City? Is a cooking class where you find your experimental edge? Or dancing at the club?

Where does life feel like a party for you and your partner?

Describe the types of date nights (or days) that light up your inner Lover:

• The most exciting thing I enjoy doing with you outside is…
• The most exciting thing I enjoy doing with you inside is…

Dream your biggest dream. Create a dream vacation that is completely out of reach for you right now either financially or because of a skill you need to learn or practice.

• What is your giant dream?

 

What is a smaller version of your dream date night?

Now, talk about dates that mimic that big dream.

For example, if your biggest dream date is to go scuba diving off the coast of Mexico, the smaller version of that dream might be to take diving lessons.

When you create a giant dream for your Lover, you electrify your relationship.

Now think about WHY that biggest dream appeals to you?

• Is it because you love the water? The fish you’ll see? Or is it learning how to actually scuba dive?
• How can you apply the same fascination closer to home?
• If you love water, but you live in a land-locked state, what is the best way to get some water into your life on a regular basis? Is there a lake nearby where you could learn to paddleboard?

If New York City and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is your dream date, but you live in Louisiana, how can you mimic that love of the big city?

• What museums ARE available to you?
• Is there a class at the local community college that would help you and your Lover learn to draw?

 

It’s important to make room in your life for your dreams

Have you got your big hairy dream date? Do you know what dates mimic that big dream so you can feel this vitality regularly in your life?

Now, get out your calendar and begin to position those dates. When you do this, you’re putting your dreams on your schedule. Dreams that can otherwise get lost in the mayhem of life. These dreams keep you creating the life you want.

We all want to be wanted by our partner. But wanting energy is just like a fire. If you neglect it, it goes out.

Fill in the tiny spaces because a date for your Lover keeps you vital. It’s much easier to keep a fire stoked than to let it go out and need to start that fire from cold.

When you take care of the Lover Role in your relationship, you find yourself WANTING to be around your partner. That wanting energy gives you confidence and vitality for every other place in your life.

Would you like more resources to help you understand the role of The Lover in your relationship?

• Is Your Marriage Filled with Warm Kisses or the Chill of Rejection?
• What happens when you’re not in sync with your lover?
• Learn how water can transform your date night
• What Sean & Heather Don’t Know About their Sex Life