think of them constantly, we want only  to spend more time in their company,  

we delight in their many  skills and accomplishments:  

but this early phase of powerful  admiration and longing rarely lasts.

The world often explains this cooling as an  inevitable result of sheer exposure. It is,  

they say, typical to neglect what is  always around. But the true reasons seem  

more complicated, more psychologically rich  and, in their own way, a lot more hopeful.

If we stop admiring, it is chiefly because we are,  at some level, furious. Anger destroys admiration.  

We cease to love because we unknowingly grow  entangled in various forms of unprocessed fury.  

We can’t cheer the partner on because, somewhere  deep inside, we are inhibited by trace memories of  

certain letdowns, large and small, of which they  have been guilty. Perhaps they caused us immense  

difficulties around an examination - and never  apologised. Maybe they flirted with a friend of  

ours - and refused to admit to the fact in a way  that left us tricked and unsure. They may have  

have booked a holiday without asking us - and  then insisted that they’d done nothing wrong.

Every infraction was not, on its own,  necessarily always particularly serious,  

but taken cumulatively, a succession of minor  disappointments can acquire a terrible capacity  

to dampen and ultimately destroy love. Yet it  is not the simple fact of being let down that  

counts very much, the true problem comes about  when there hasn’t been an opportunity to process  

our disappointment. Irritation is only ever toxic  when it can’t be rapidly and thoroughly discussed.

Perhaps we tried to explain what was  wrong but we got nowhere. Or, more subtly,  

we might have felt unentitled to make a fuss  over so-called ‘small things’ and therefore  

said nothing, even though, in our depths,  the small things mattered immensely to us.  

With great unfairness to our partner,  we may have forgotten to admit to our  

own sensitivities even as we developed a  steady burden of resentment on their account.

What follows from such buried anger is  something that can be mistaken for disinterest.  

We’re not so keen on celebrating their  birthday, we withhold sexual attention,  

we don’t look up when they walk in a room.  This could seem like the normal impact of  

time and familiarity. But it is no such  thing. It is evidence of cold fury. We  

do our anger an honour, and can start  to dismantle its deleterious impacts,  

when we recognise the distinctive stranglehold  that frustration can acquire on our emotions. We  

never simply go off people; we only ever get  angry with them. And then forget we are so.

To refind our instinctive enthusiasm for  our partner, we need to accurately locate  

our suppressed distress. We have to allow  ourselves to be legitimately upset about  

certain things that have saddened us and  properly raise them - for as long as we need  

to - in a way that lets us feel acknowledged  and valued. A good couple should allow for  

regular occasions when each person can -  without encountering opposition - ask the  

other to listen to stories of incidents, large  or small, in which they felt let down of late.  

It goes without saying that we might not  immediately see why a given thing should  

matter so much to our partner; but that isn’t  the point. The objective of the exercise is just  

to let the partner know that we care about  whatever they happen to be concerned about.

To ensure that our desire never suffers, this  kind of hygienic ritual might unfold as often  

as once or twice a week. If couples too often  ignore the requirement, it is because they  

operate under an unfair burden of bravery:  they assume that it cannot be sane to want  

to make a complaint about things that given off  an impression of being minor and so stay silent  

about their upsets until it is simply no longer  possible for them to love. Wiser couples know  

that nothing should ever be too small to cover  at length - for what is at ultimately at stake  

in a marathon conversation about a single word or  event can be the fate of the entire relationship.  

It might, in a similar spirit, not be silly at  all to devote an entire evening to understanding  

why a partner got silently immensely upset by  the way we said the word ‘ready’ to them at  

breakfast the day before or was a little slow  at laughing at a mildly unfunny anecdote about  

a train and a suitcase. The gratitude that  will flow from such an effort to understand  

them will be amply repaid the next time  we feel abandoned because they forgot to  

put the lid back on the olives or omitted  to add a second x at the end of an email.

To complain in love is a noble and honourable  skill very far from the whininess with which  

it is sometimes confused. The irony  of well-targeted and quickly raised  

complaints is that their function is  so very far from negative. Honesty  

is a love-preserving mechanism that keeps alive  all that is impressive and delightful about our  

partner in our eyes. By regularly voicing  our small sorrows and minor irritations,  

we are scraping the barnacles off the keel of  our relationship and so ensuring that we will  

sail on with greater joy and admiration  into an authentic and unresentful future.