INTRODUCTION
MONOTONOUS MARRIAGE OR A GRANDE AMORE?
I’m a radio show host on a call-in show called NewLife Live, on which people call in to tell me and my cohosts (and the world) their private and most painful problems. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of these calls revolve around how difficult it is to be passionate about the people they love or used to love or are supposed to love (not to mention all the destructive things they’ve done once their love began to fade). I also get plenty of calls from singles searching for that one perfect person who will solve all their problems, cure all their ills, and heal all their wounds (or so they wish).
Then there are hundreds who found and married the Love of Their Life and had a romantic time in which they flirted wildly or made passionate love on a whim. They may recall running along some beach, laughing, kissing, caught up in the beauty of sea and sand and each other. But then work, kids, the pressures of life, and plain old neglect took over, and what once was all a-sizzle is now starting to fizzle. Sadly, this is often the way love goes if we simply let our relationships run the natural course. However, wise couples can create conditions that keep their passion percolating. Which is why Misty and I wrote this book. We have a heart to see marriages overcome the depressing stats that say romance starts fading soon after two starry-eyed lovers say “I do.”
It is true, however, that the neurotransmitters of “falling in love” last an average of a whopping six whole months. Research has shown that once the brain’s supply of natural love potion runs out, the honeymoon ends. Most couples go back to focusing primarily on work, adapt to mundane routines in their newly mortgaged home, and soon morph into parents who lose sleep and somehow eventually lose touch with each other (in every meaning of that word). Then one day they wake up feeling lonelier in their marriage than they ever felt as a single person. They’re adrift, wondering who they are, who they married, and how something so passionately promising could have turned out so painfully bland. Lifeless. Loveless. Sexless.
Without knowing how to handle the inevitable disappointments and challenges, they find that the Three C’s of misery—criticism, complaining, and comparison—tend to come marching in. The changes are so extreme that the couple feel stunned. Hopelessness replaces happiness, and horrible is the only word to describe the disaster. When I see couples like this, I can’t help but think of accident victims. One or both appear to be in a state of shock and in need of rescue. I call these severe cases radical flips. The husband and wife feel almost unrecognizable to each other as the marriage morphs into an emotional war zone.
But even these extreme cases are not hopeless, as long as the couple call for the right kind of help as early as possible.
Other couples don’t experience a radical flip as much as they do an effortless flop. These partners settle into comfortable routines and have plain vanilla marriages that are not particularly painful but are more like business partnerships with a goal to “get ’er done” (whatever the “er” is on their to-do list). They are no longer a passionate couple with shared dreams of a long, happy future.
Instead they’ve become detached from each other’s hearts, living with sad regrets and dreams that have come undone.
• “We love each other after all these years. We’re good friends. But the spark? Romance? Flirting? A honeymoon memory that faded a long time ago.”
• “After being up all night with a new baby, we both still get very excited about going to bed with each other—to do nothing but sleep.”
In a scene from Under the Tuscan Sun, two young lovers ask for their parents’ blessing to marry. The girl’s mother, disappointed in her own marriage, urges her daughter not to saddle up for life with her poor Polish suitor. She tells her daughter that love is the stuff of fairy tales, that true love is a fantasy, implying she should look for a husband with wealth and stability instead.
But just then the old grandmother intervenes, declaring with emotion, “I had a grande amore—a great love! Your father. And I will never forget!”
Sigh.
Is a grande amore possible in today’s fast-paced Western culture? Don’t most couples eventually stay together out of obligation rather than great passion? Is a lifelong love affair the stuff of days gone by or fairy tales and romance novels?
Well, it all depends.
It depends on whether you are willing to do something besides simply calling it a life and waiting out the clock. If both of you are not proactive about passion, I can guarantee that one day you’ll be pulling up your Depends and wondering, “Where did we go wrong? When did the romance die?” If, that is, you are even still together.
Does anyone really have a marriage that grows more romantic as the years go by, a powerful and stunning union that lasts forever? If you are willing to change the way you think, risk trying some of the suggestions we make (even if they’re a bit outside of your comfort zone), then I believe the answer is a passionate yes! The million-dollar question is, “How, exactly, do we make the fairy tale come true? How do we keep the spark not just going but growing and glowing for decades?”
So glad you asked.
There are hundreds of books on communication in marriage and hundreds more about spicing up your sex life. But realistically, who wants to communicate with someone who has become bored and boring or who has become closed off to their own desires? Who wants to have sex with someone who is doing their marital duty, checking you off their list? The truth is, no book can fix a marriage if one or both people in the marriage have lost their zest for life and their commitment to make romance a top priority.
After decades of studying marriage, I realized there is a dearth of books about how to live sensually and passionately, in all of life, with your mate. Romance is much more than a date night or a week away. To have a passionate love life, you need two people who are sensually in love with life and each other. Imagine taking out the dream you had of a lifelong romance and dusting it off like a painting you’ve stored away on a shelf. Now imagine taking this painting with you on a trip to the Mediterranean, where you meet passionate artistic masters like Da Vinci and Picasso and Michelangelo. They are delighted with your painting, but they also point out where it needs a splash of light, where the colors need to be more intense, and show you how to add beautiful details—pointers that make your painting almost come to life. With the help of the masters, your painting is now so vivid that you can almost hear the music from the sidewalk cafe and smell the flowers from its window boxes. Now imagine stepping into this painting, together, where you continue creating rapturous moments and romantic memories that will never fade.
In the pages to come, I hope to help you and your spouse create a vision for a passionate life and marriage, somewhat like that painting. This may mean dusting off an old vision for a romantic marriage that you once held dear or creating a fresh vision for what a fun, intimate marriage can look like. And we’ll go to the Art of Romance School with the masters of passion, taking love lessons from the Mediterranean, where the experts at living more sensuously will help us add light and color and beauty to our relationships. All with the reachable goal of helping your marriage come alive!
We will share fascinating research on the science-based secrets of creating passion, drawn from five of the most famously romantic countries along the Mediterranean Sea: Greece, France, Italy, Spain, and Israel.
Granted, the Mediterranean countries may not do everything well (like getting anything done on time or launching adult males from their mama’s kitchens), but they know about passion.
The countries that produced Michelangelo, Socrates, Les Misérables, opera, Tuscan sunlight, fabulous wine, creamy fettuccini, steamy shots of rich espresso, the Song of Solomon, and more have a long history of passionate romantics. About this subject, they are the world’s experts. From the Spaniards, men might learn how to “really, really love a woman” so that your wife blesses the day she was born female. And a wise wife can inspire her husband to declare, “I. Am. Spartacus!” with a few lessons from some of the wise, secure, passionate women of the Mediterranean.
American couples (Misty and I among them!) pay good money to go on Mediterranean cruises and trips to Italy or Paris, usually with one major goal in mind: to fall more deeply in love with life and each other. To remember romance. To stop and smell the roses and olive gardens and garlicky pizza and a fine Bordeaux. Instinctively we know where to go to restart our sensual engines. And it isn’t Montreal or Hong Kong or London. It’s Italy, France, Greece, and Spain. And when we hunger for more passion in our spiritual lives, we book trips to the Holy Land, to walk where biblical stories come to life. There is something magical, mystical, and marvelous about the countries along that sparkling azure sea.
Misty and I have a houseful of kids—ranging from kindergarten to college age—so we’ve had our share of pizza delivered to the front door, then devoured in front of the television with the whole fam watching a football game or a Disney movie.
And every time I open up a box of pizza and smell the aroma of fresh bread, garlic, and tomatoes, I’m transported to a moment in time with my lovely wife.
Several years ago, after a long time of saving up for a Mediterranean vacation, we found ourselves sitting on a beach in Naples, Italy. The sun was high, but the heat was relieved by a cool breeze off the Mediterranean Sea, that gorgeous blue water I had seen, until then, only in photos and videos. But at that moment, there it was, as stunning as I had dreamed it would be. The water was like blue liquid velvet rolling onto the warm sand where we sat, cross-legged, eating what could not be described merely as pizza. This “food of the gods” drooped in our hands so that we had to fold the fresh bread to take a bite; rich olive oil mingled with fresh tomato sauce dripped and drooled from the corners of our mouths. Every sense was alive in that moment, and in that space we saw each other free of any flaws and defects. We didn’t choose to kiss each other, we were compelled into a kiss, into one of those kisses where you can’t get enough of each other, a kiss that lingers, that scintillates, melts you into one.
I’ve seen hundreds of romantic films, and all I can say is, in that moment, along the Mediterranean, Misty and I were the movie. All the elements that evoke passion were present: the amazing aroma from the pizza, the gentle breeze on our faces, the warm sand under our feet. When we finished eating, we walked into the cool and splendorous water of the Mediterranean, laughing as it splashed up and around our legs.
Time seemed to stop on this warm afternoon, and we felt filled to overflowing with love for our lives and for each other. Even as I write this, the memory and feelings of love and connection to Misty are bubbling up all over again.
This is what passionate memories do to us, don’t they? They carry us down rabbit trails to sweet moments in our shared history. And by reliving them in our mind, we are blessed anew with sensual feelings for each other in the present.
In the last decade or more, a slew of books have sung the praises of Mediterranean diets. But what the diet books don’t say is that health, happiness, and longevity is not just about eating more vegetables doused with olive oil and downed with merlot. It is also about living in a culture that prioritizes and emphasizes passion, romance, beauty, and sensuality as a normal way of being. Studies show that beyond food and exercise, there is another common thread among people who live long: they love well and are loved back in return.1
If we want more joie de vivre, more of la dolce vita in our marriages, why not study the masters of passion? Not only to spice up our relationships but also to relight the flame of passion for life itself. In this book, I have pulled together the best research, interviews, and ideas from the world’s most romantic countries; I will also share how Misty and I live out the principles of passion in our everyday lives, keeping our love fresh and alive, even with a houseful of kids and a to-do list that never ends.
In the next chapter, I will unveil how the seven mysteries of ultimate intimacy from ancient cultures along the Mediterranean Sea can help couples create conditions for vibrant passion and rich connection. These secrets will help your love intensify with time rather than die a slow death. If you and your partner apply them, I promise you will be well on your way to experiencing a truly grande amore.
A quick note about the voice in this book. Misty and I reminisced, discussed, and wrote together; however, we found it unwieldy to switch voices back and forth. So to keep things simple, we chose to write in my voice. Just know that my insightful wife contributed her thoughts, memories, and ideas to what you are about to read.
Unthinkably good things can happen even late in the game. It’s such a surprise.