When the Chemistry Fades: How to Reconnect in Your Marriage

Start by Rebuilding the Friendship Underneath

The Gottman Institute uses a model called the Sound Relationship House to describe some of the building blocks of a healthy relationship. There are seven levels, with each level building on the ones beneath it.

 

The bottom three make up what Gottman calls the friendship system:

Build Love Maps → Share Fondness and Admiration → Turn Towards Instead of Away

 

When couples tell me the chemistry has faded, these are often the first three levels I want to explore.

 

One level at a time, couples can begin rebuilding the friendship underneath their relationship.

 

1. Build Love Maps — Get Curious Again

One of the weird things about being with someone for 10, 20, or 30 years is that familiarity can trick us into believing we already know them.

 

But the person you married 10, 20, or 30 years ago has continued having experiences, changing opinions, developing interests, facing fears, and imagining a future. There is still something to discover about the person sitting across from you.

 

Do you remember the younger years of being a teen and spending hours talking on the phone or texting back and forth about absolutely nothing, and somehow coming away feeling deeply connected and bonded to each other?

 

Those seemingly senseless and unstructured conversations gave people opportunities to safely disclose their thoughts, experiences, hopes, fears, and ideas. Curiosity created disclosure, and disclosure created opportunities for connection.

 

Open questions can help create those conversations again.

 

An open question needs more than a one-word answer. Instead of asking, “Did you have a good day?” you might ask, “What was the best part of your day?” Instead of “Are you worried about work?” you might ask, “What’s been taking up the most space in your head at work lately?”

 

This fits closely with Gottman’s approach to Love Maps. In Small Things Often, couples are encouraged to use open-ended questions during regular date time as a way of continuing to update their knowledge of each other. 

 

As I work with couples to rekindle their friendship system, I find that it can initially feel awkward to treat each other as though they’re newly meeting each other. Using open questions can feel a little rusty at first.

 

After a few weeks of practice and experimenting, though, I often see couples get back into a groove. They may spend 60 to 90 minutes spread throughout the week having open, free-flowing conversations over coffee or lunch, or take 20 minutes when they come back together at the end of their workday.

 

During sessions with me, couples may also learn to use Gottman’s Stress-Reducing Conversation. This is a structured conversation about stresses outside the relationship in which partners take turns speaking and listening. The listener’s job is to show interest, ask questions, offer empathy and understanding, and resist jumping immediately into problem-solving. Small Things Often recommends making room for this kind of conversation regularly during reunions at the end of the day.

 

Those conversations can also build on skills like [Gentle Startups] and [Gentle Listening].

 

The goal is to become curious again.

 

There is still more to know about the person you married.

 

2. Share Fondness and Admiration — Notice What You Still Love

Couples develop patterns for how they live together.

 

They develop patterns around how they say goodbye in the morning, how they greet each other at the end of the day, how often they express affection, where they spend their evenings, when they go to separate areas of the house, and whether appreciation is spoken or simply assumed.

 

Eventually, those patterns become part of the culture of the relationship.

 

That culture shapes what each partner expects when they reach for the other. They may anticipate a warm interaction, a difficult interaction, or simply no meaningful interaction at all.

 

A couple’s culture of behaviour can have a significant impact on their experience of chemistry and passion.

 

Being intentional about the experience you give to your partner is important.

 

You can give your partner an experience of you that feels warm, interested, affectionate, and inviting. When those experiences become scarce, the relationship can begin to feel increasingly administrative: coordinating schedules, managing children, paying bills, making meals, and getting through another week.

 

There may still be love underneath all of that. It just isn’t being expressed very often.

 

This is one of the things I appreciate about Gottman’s Small Things Often. The suggestions aren’t particularly dramatic. Couples are encouraged to express appreciation out loud, notice something their partner has done well, send a message during the day, and intentionally use affection and touch.

 

The same principle appears around the ordinary transitions of the day. Before parting, Gottman encourages couples to learn something about what is coming up in their partner’s day and to say goodbye affectionately. At reunion, the emphasis returns to greeting each other and intentionally reconnecting.

 

During sessions with me, I may use these ideas to help couples become intentional about the culture they are creating together: how they part before going to work, how they reconnect when returning home, when affection happens, how appreciation is expressed, and how they create opportunities to enjoy each other.

 

Sometimes the small things really are the important things.

 

A compliment.

A kiss goodbye.

A text in the middle of the day.

Sitting beside each other instead of across the room.

Saying what you appreciate instead of assuming your partner already knows.

 

These are small ways of communicating:

“I still notice you. I still value you. I still like having you here.”

 

3. Turn Towards Instead of Away — Start Responding Again

The third floor of Gottman’s Sound Relationship House is Turning Towards Instead of Away.

 

Throughout the day, one partner may try to get the other’s attention. It may be something small:

 

“Hey, did you see this funny picture?”

Or:

“I heard a funny story today.”

 

These little moments are bids for connection.

When the other partner responds, there is often a physical turning towards: their eyes look up, their head turns, or their body shifts toward their partner.

 

That physical response communicates attention:

I see you. I’m listening. You matter to me.

 

When a partner repeatedly fails to turn towards those bids, those missed moments can register as rejection. As those experiences accumulate, partners can begin to feel increasingly disconnected from each other.

 

And these moments are easy to miss because they often don’t look particularly important.

 

Your partner may not say, “I am currently making a bid for emotional connection and would appreciate your immediate attention.”

 

They show you a picture.

They tell you something that happened at work.

They point out something outside the car window.

They ask if you want a coffee.

They sit down beside you.

 

Small bids can carry a surprising amount of relational weight.

 

What I like about Small Things Often is that turning towards isn’t isolated from the other parts of friendship. Gottman describes weekly date time as an opportunity both to update Love Maps and to turn toward each other. Curiosity, attention, affection, and responsiveness begin to overlap.

 

During sessions with me, couples tend to learn both how to reach for each other and how to become more responsive when their partner reaches for them. As they become more intentional about turning towards, they often report a growing sense of being noticed and valued by each other.

 

Rebuilding Chemistry Starts With Friendship

When couples come to me describing fading chemistry, I often suggest that we look at the friendship system underneath their relationship.

 

We start getting curious again.

 

We practise noticing and expressing appreciation.

 

We pay attention to the small moments when one partner reaches for the other.

 

And we look at the ordinary rhythms of the relationship—the goodbye in the morning, the reunion at the end of the day, the conversation over coffee, the affectionate touch, the question that communicates genuine curiosity.

 

That’s one of the themes running through Gottman’s Small Things Often: meaningful relationship change can happen through small, thoughtful behaviours practised regularly.

 

Sometimes the first sign that something important is changing isn’t a dramatic return of passion. It’s simpler than that.

 

“We’ve lost the spark” begins to turn into “we look forward to spending time together.”

 

And that’s a meaningful place from which closeness, affection, and intimacy can grow.

 

I’m trained in the Gottman Method, and I help couples rebuild the friendship underneath a relationship that has drifted into feeling more like roommates than partners.

 

If “we’ve lost the spark” sounds like where you’re at, I’d be glad to help you and your partner find your way back to each other.

 

Ready to Connect?

If you’re looking for online couples therapy anywhere in Ontario, I’d be honoured to help. You can book a free consultation through my client portal, or you can text or email me to learn more about my approach and whether we’re a good fit to work together.