The Summer Cure

Every year, as the summer holiday season approaches, there is usually at least one couple I work with who will suggest that all they need is time away to fix their relationship. There is a belief that if they are to go on holiday and suspend their troubles for a week or two in favour of more sunny climes, then their relationship will be restored and they can get on with managing life together again come September.

I’m not denying that a beach can be a great tonic for short-term relief. And for some, their relationship can feel like such a pressure cooker that any relief is better than no relief. But a beach isn’t going to fix things. It may possibly put things on hold, but probably not offer the resolution that is hoped for from time spent in an alternative setting.

This is because, underneath the holiday dream there’s typically something a lot more complicated going on. Often when people in relationships start therapy, they can hope for a magic wand that will wave away the difficulties they’ve been experiencing without having to face them. A holiday is often imbued with that same hope: “If we can just pretend the problems don’t exist, maybe they won’t.” If only that were true. Most often, the difficulties are so entrenched that the holiday spell is broken before most couples even get to the airport.

What a Beautiful Place to Bring the Same Problems

It isn’t as though a break from the old routine isn’t helpful. A new environment can facilitate a new experience of each other. Not having to worry about the washing, the bills, that work deadline etc. can help reduce some of the stress that can build up in everyday life. Research also shows that when couples have new and exciting shared experiences on holiday, it can lead to more romance, satisfaction and even physical intimacy after the trip (Coffey et al., 2024). Similarly Aron et al. (2000) discovered that couples who do stimulating things together tend to be more satisfied with their relationship. So there is important merit in a holiday. Just that it’s not, in itself, a panacea.

Rest is one thing, but repair is something different. It may well be possible to overlook your partner’s irritating habits for a week or two, but beyond that, surrounded by the pressures of daily life, it may be a different story. Much of the time, the things that are annoying at home also tend to be a problem away from home, even if the new location does include a beach and a that book you’re only just finding the time to read. The wish to “just enjoy it” on holiday can mean that disagreements are put down without truly being worked through. This can leave them mounting and adding to resentment that is already entrenched, or in you feeling unheard and unloved.

Resentment Travels Well

Resentment can be rather insidious if left unchecked. On holiday, it can show up in the most innocuous of moments. If someone who wants to plan an excursion while the other wants to relax by the pool, it can awaken a familiar feeling of needs not being acknowledged. If someone feels left to make the dinner plans that the other person simply turns up to, it can create a sense that, once again, the mental load is left to one person. Or if someone thinks time away is a chance to rekindle a sexual relationship, but the other person is looking forward to catching up on sleep, feelings of rejection or abandonment may rear up again. A new setting can’t resolve these familiar fights once the trenches have been dug.

At home, the busyness of life can become a convenient disguise for difficulties. In the normal runnings of life, it can feel as though there simply isn’t time to tend to the hurt with anything of substance. On holiday, the distractions are diminished and the familiar problems have less places to hide. It can make for a sobering return home, now carrying the uncomfortable realisation that the setting wasn’t the main obstacle after all.

When the Holiday Becomes a Verdict on Relational Health

The wish for a holiday to run smoothly may also be loaded with an unspoken test to determine the relational health between a couple. If things go well, it provides evidence that the relationship can survive. But if the same old difficulties come up, then the relationship can feel doomed, confirming that not even a beautiful setting can improve the quality of the relationship.

The pressure for the holiday to perform can mean that every moment holds more meaning that it can carry. When every interaction is a sign of something going well or not, the simple pleasures can start to feel as though they are being stripped away. A lay in can be interpreted as inconsideration for your partner’s time. A sunset stroll by yourself may come to represent wanting time away from your partner. Talking to other people may leave the other person feeling as though they’re not enough. All simple things, but not always with simple meanings.

It can feel like a pressure to have these differences worked out before check-out. Which can mean needing to face the same difficulties in a new setting, or swallow them and feel the holiday hasn’t done what it was meant to do. The problem is, the holiday was never really going to be able to right the wrongs of domestic life. That’s a lot to ask of a beach!

A More Realistic Outlook

A better holiday may begin with a smaller demand. Before a holiday, it may be more useful for a couple to wonder what they are hoping it will rescue them from. A little honesty before departure can protect the trip from being asked to do too much.

Sex, rest, closeness may mean different things to each person. Naming this may be less romantic than waiting for the sunset to fix everything, but it gives the holiday a more realistic chance.

At its best, a holiday gives a couple enough distance from ordinary life to become curious about who they have become. That curiosity is often the beginning of repair, when two people stop asking the setting to change the relationship and begin to wonder what the relationship has been asking of the setting.

Two weeks in the sun can give a couple rest, privacy and perspective. It may also remind them that the life they manage together is not the only version of what or who they are. But it can’t make the avoided conversations disappear, or make good on what has long since felt bad just because the sea is nearby.

A holiday still has worth. It’s most helpful when it’s not seen as a fix, but rather as time for a couple to look at their issues with more honesty and kindness, and understand what they keep packing in their baggage.

References

Aron, A., Norman, C. C., Aron, E. N., McKenna, C., & Heyman, R. E. (2000). Couples’ shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 273–284.

Coffey, J. K., Shahvali, M., Kerstetter, D., & Aron, A. (2024). Couples vacations and romantic passion and intimacy. Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights, 5(1), 100121.

There are moments in therapy sessions when the person sitting opposite me is truly devastated, yet I find myself feeling hopeful.

At a glance, this seems almost indecent, especially when they are beginning to wonder whether their relationship has been a mistake. Yet the thought that often accompanies this crisis aimed at their partner - “you’re not who I thought you were” - may, in fact, signal that something important has finally become possible.

The partner who had previously been understood through a familiar role may have actually started to appear as a more complicated person.

The force of the disappointment can be difficult to explain from the event alone. It may emerge when someone who had always seemed certain begins to doubt themselves, or when a partner who is known for accommodating others reaches the point where they can no longer do so. What feels so disturbing is the discovery that a quality once treated as part of the person’s character may have been less stable than the relationship required it to be.

The Role Hidden Inside Attraction

We rarely tell a new partner what emotional job we hope they will perform, partly because we may have no idea that we’re assigning them one at all. Attraction can often begin with the relief of encountering a quality that feels scarce in ourselves.

For example, for someone who has spent years managing uncertainty, a self-assured partner can make life seem easier. Their decisiveness may initially feel like one appealing part of who they are, though over time it may become woven into the way the relationship manages anxiety. Once this happens, the partner’s confidence begins to carry more weight than either person had consciously agreed to. Their apparent certainty allows difficult decisions to feel less burdensome, while the person who relies on them gains some distance from their own doubts and anxieties. The confident partner may also value the arrangement because being needed in this way offers a sense of competence and importance. The relationship can then gradually organise itself around the difference between them, until what began as attraction becomes a burdensome division of emotional labour.

These types of arrangement can stay hidden for a long time, especially when both people have a reason to keep it going. But it often becomes painful when, say, the person who has always seemed certain begins to feel unsure, or when the one who has always been accommodating realises their generosity has started to cost them too much. At that point, their partner may feel misled. In reality, it may simply be that one person can no longer keep carrying a role the relationship had quietly asked them to play.

“You’ve changed” can sometimes carry the more hidden accusation that the other person has stopped holding something we had become accustomed to leaving with them.

When a Partner Falls Out of Character

Disappointment has an uncanny way of altering the past.

Once a partner behaves in a way that conflicts or goes against our understanding of them, earlier memories can begin to look different. Tenderness may be reconsidered in the light of a recent coldness, while generosity becomes recast as something given reluctantly or with concealed resentment. The mind searches for a continuous explanation because the idea that we failed to recognise the person beside us can feel more disturbing than the injury itself.

A simple verdict offers relief from this confusion. If the partner was always selfish, false or emotionally unavailable, then the relationship can be reorganised around a truth that was previously hidden.

The difficulty is recognising that people can fail us without every good experience becoming fraudulent or tainted. Someone may have loved sincerely and still reached the limits of what they are now able to give. Their care can have been meaningful even when it proves insufficient at the very moment we most depend upon it.

This is one of the harder demands of intimate life: the person who has disappointed us remains the same person who once gave us pleasure, security or hope. Anger often presses us to choose between these versions because a divided picture is easier to manage. The fuller picture may leave us with the anxiety of a partner whose good qualities coexist with failings that matter enormously.

Some discoveries clarify that a relationship has become unsafe or unliveable. Persistent cruelty, coercion and deception require a judgement that takes harm seriously. However, many disappointments offer us less certainty. They reveal an ordinary person whose needs may conflict with ours, whose capacity may be inconsistent and whose limitations may never be transformed by hope alone.

The question then becomes whether the relationship can bear a more complete view of them.

The Hope Preserved by Grievance

Disappointment can become a grievance when it feels too painful to accept what has been lost. James Frosch describes grievance as a state that keeps mourning at a distance, which is particularly useful in thinking about relationships. The repeated complaint may seem to be about the need for an apology, an explanation or a change in behaviour, while beneath it lies a wish for the partner to return to the version of them we once expected.

As long as the grievance continues, the disappointing partner remains under pressure to make up for what has been lost. They can still be summoned to understand the injury properly and to recover the qualities that once made the relationship feel secure. This gives grievance a certain vitality. It preserves the hope that reality might yet be persuaded to reverse itself.

The same argument can therefore continue for years because its true purpose stretches beyond the disagreement at hand. The disappointed person is trying to retrieve a former relationship in which the partner still knew their role. Letting go of the complaint would mean accepting that this version of the relationship has already ended, even if the two people remain together.

Grief begins when the hoped-for restoration loses charge. The person must then reckon with the loss of the partner they expected, along with the future attached to that expectation. There may also be a loss of self, since we often become used to feeling a particular way beside someone who occupies a familiar role. The strong partner allowed us to feel protected, while the endlessly interested partner helped us feel valued. When they stop doing that, the version of ourselves supported by them can feel less secure.

Meeting the Person Who Remains

My hope as a therapist lies in the possibility that both partners can be freed from an arrangement that had become too rigid.

The person once relied upon for certainty may begin to speak about fear, allowing the partner who depended on that certainty to recover some capacity to live with doubt. Such changes can initially make the relationship feel less secure because the old organisation, however limiting, had made both people predictable to one another.

A relationship becomes more honest when each person can move beyond the character they were unknowingly invited to play at the beginning. This asks the disappointed partner to become curious about what the other can genuinely offer, where their limits lie and how much of the relationship had depended upon qualities that could never be permanently guaranteed.

Closeness inevitably reveals aspects of another person that resist our account of them. Their wishes will not always support our own, and their private experience may remain difficult to understand even after many years together. Love must therefore make room for a degree of uncertainty, since the alternative is to require the other person to remain familiar at the expense of becoming fully alive.

Some relationships become more substantial after this revision because each person gains greater freedom to be known outside the old arrangement. Others discover that the assigned roles had been holding together people whose actual needs and temperaments are too far apart. Separation may then become the clearest response to what has been learned.

“You’re not who I thought you were” can mark the end of a relationship organised around expectation. Whether it also marks the end of the relationship itself depends on what is possible once the expectation is removed.

The disappointment lies in meeting a person who no longer functions solely to meet our needs. The possibility lies in discovering whether two people who have fallen out of character can still choose one another.

After the Honeymoon explores what becomes visible when familiar ideas about love begin to fail.

Subscribe to receive future essays about intimacy, disappointment and the unconscious expectations we bring into relationships.

References

Frosch, J. (2014). “From Grievance to Grief: Narcissism and the Inability to Mourn.” Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 22(2), 259–275.

Birthdays have a distinctive talent for making otherwise completely competent adults feel like they’re twelve years old again.

We may insist, quite sincerely, that we don’t need much. We may say we’re not bothered about presents, that a quiet evening is fine, that the whole thing has become a bit childish anyway. Then the day arrives, something small goes wrong, and the adult position collapses. Nothing catastrophic has happened. No one has betrayed anyone. Yet something has changed.

This is the kind of ordinary disappointment After The Honeymoon is interested in. The domestic moments that look minor from the outside and feel quietly devastating from within.

The trouble with birthdays is that they expose a wish many of us would rather keep hidden: the wish to be known without having to explain ourselves. A birthday is rarely just a birthday. It is one of the occasions on which adult love is asked to present the perfect package.

The wish to be held in mind

The central difficulty is that many people don’t want a birthday so much as they want evidence. They want to feel that their partner has been paying attention in the particular way they deem love is supposed to pay attention. A birthday becomes a test of whether familiarity has made them blurrier or more vivid in the mind of the person they love.

From a psychodynamic perspective, this makes sense. Birthdays can be tied to old experiences of being seen or missed. For some people, birthdays carry a memory of childhood magic, of being gathered around, anticipated, delighted in. Their adult disappointment may come from the painful discovery that romantic love doesn’t automatically reproduce that atmosphere.

For others, birthdays carry a history of absence. The day may have been ignored, misjudged or treated as an inconvenience. In adult love, the birthday then becomes secretly reparative. This time, someone will know what to do, and the day will make good on what was missing back then. This is why partners so often fail around birthdays. They are being asked to respond to a history they may never have been told.

The private script of the birthday wish

The disappointment often begins with the collapse of a hope that has been privately rehearsed. We imagine our partner knowing what kind of gesture would reach us. We imagine them understanding the emotional weight of the day without needing to be briefed. The fantasy is that love should have made it possible for our partner to preempt our wishes.

Romantic relationships depend, to some extent, on idealisation. Murray and colleagues’ work on idealisation in marriage suggests that seeing a partner generously can help sustain satisfaction, especially when the idealisation supports emotional investment rather than denial (Murray et al., 2011). Birthdays can reveal the strain inside this arrangement. The imagined partner knows exactly what is needed, though the actual partner may love sincerely and still be clumsy with execution.

This is where the let down can become an injury. The disappointed person may say, “You didn’t make an effort.” Underneath that complaint may be the more vulnerable statement: “I don’t feel important to you.” A disappointing birthday can feel like a failure to picture the other person’s inner world with enough care.

Fonagy and Target describe reflective function as the capacity to understand behaviour in relation to underlying mental states (Fonagy & Target, 1997). In intimate life, we want our partners to behave in ways that show they have thought about who we are from the inside. This is why a perfectly adequate birthday can still feel wrong. The expense may be there. The date may have been remembered. The gesture may be perfectly defensible. Yet something in it feels emotionally inaccurate. The partner has marked the occasion without quite capturing its meaning.

When disappointment becomes a trial

Of course, the disappointed partner is not always simply wounded. Sometimes the birthday becomes a stage on which old hurts are silently restaged. A partner is examined against an invisible standard. The day acquires the atmosphere of a trial, while neither person has quite admitted that a trial is taking place.

Adult attachment research shows that insecurity can inform how people interpret and respond to stress in romantic relationships, especially when a partner’s availability feels uncertain (Simpson & Rholes, 2017). A birthday can become precisely this kind of stress. It asks, with unusual concentration: are you there for me?

This can create a painful bind. The person who longs to be known may refuse to say what they want because saying it would spoil the proof. The partner, sensing danger but not understanding the rules, may retreat into defensiveness or practicality. Both people then become lonely in different directions. One feels unloved, the other feels set up.

Why the ritual matters

Part of the power of birthdays is that they are rituals which can give ordinary gestures symbolic weight.

Garcia-Rada and colleagues suggest that relationship rituals can strengthen positive emotion, satisfaction and commitment because they organise meaning between partners (Garcia-Rada et al., 2019). A birthday is one of the annual rituals through which a couple shows how well they know the emotional world of one another.

A successful birthday does not need to be impressive. It needs to be accurate.

Some disappointment may be inevitable wherever love is asked to carry memory, fantasy and proof. The question is whether the wish can be admitted before it hardens into resentment. There can be a particular embarrassment in saying, “Birthdays matter to me more than I like to admit.” But there can also be liberation in it, since a wish that can be spoken has less need to become a hidden trap.

There is also work here for the partner who finds birthdays sentimental or excessive. Dismissing the whole thing as childish may be a way of avoiding the vulnerability inside it. The adult wish to be celebrated is not necessarily vanity. It may be one of the remaining ways a person asks to be cherished without having to say it out loud.

After the honeymoon phase

After the honeymoon phase, love is rarely proven by grand, generic instinct.

It is more often shown through careful attention that has had time to become detailed and specific. Birthdays reveal how difficult this can be. They ask one person to risk wanting, and another to risk getting it wrong. Perhaps the real birthday wish is rarely for the gift itself. It is for the relief of feeling that, for one day at least, someone has taken the trouble to imagine us.

If After The Honeymoon is about anything, it is about these deceptively small moments in love: the birthday, the argument after dinner, the silence in the car, the disappointment that seems too minor to mention and too painful to ignore.

Subscribe if you want more essays on what relationships reveal after the romance has become real life.

References

Fonagy, P., & Target, M. (1997). Attachment and reflective function: Their role in self-organization. Development and Psychopathology, 9(4), 679–700.

Garcia-Rada, X., Sezer, O., & Norton, M. I. (2019). Rituals and nuptials: The emotional and relational consequences of relationship rituals. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4(2), 185–197.

Murray, S. L., Griffin, D. W., Derrick, J. L., Harris, B., Aloni, M., & Leder, S. (2011). Tempting fate or inviting happiness? Unrealistic idealization prevents the decline of marital satisfaction. Psychological Science, 22(5), 619–626.

Simpson, J. A., & Rholes, W. S. (2017). Adult attachment, stress, and romantic relationships. Current Opinion in Psychology, 13, 19–24.

“Communication problems” have become one of the most convenient explanations for relationship distress.

The phrase sounds sensible, neutral and faintly hopeful.

It suggests that the difficulty lies somewhere in the exchange of words: one person is not saying things clearly enough, another isn’t really listening carefully and the relationship might improve if both people could learn to speak with more patience, accuracy and maybe a little restraint.

There is some comfort in this idea. Communication feels practical.

It turns the mess of love into something that can be worked on. It gives emotional pain a respectable name. People in relationships can say, “We have communication problems,” when what they may mean is harder to admit:

I don’t feel important to you…
I don’t trust what happens between us when I’m vulnerable.
I’m frightened that I need you more than you need me.

The problem

Many people who describe communication difficulties are (ironically) already communicating constantly. They return to the same conversation again and again, refining their points, explaining their intentions, apologising for tone, disputing memory and trying to reach an ending that never quite arrives.

If communication itself were the central problem, repetition would (in theory) solve it. Yet in many relationships, the more people talk, the more entrenched the difficulty becomes.

This suggests that communication problems may not really exist in the way we imagine them.

The conversation is real.

The words matter.

Tone can injure and silence can punish.

Yet the deeper difficulty often lies beneath the exchange itself. Most ‘so-called’ communication problems are meaning problems. The pain is carried by what an event appears to reveal about the relationship.

A forgotten agreement may be annoying in itself, but its deeper sting may come from the suspicion that one person’s needs matter less than another’s. A partner’s silence may frustrate because it interrupts conversation, but it may hurt because it feels like emotional absence. A disagreement about sex, money, parenting or openness may begin with a practical concern and quickly become a question about value, priority or belonging. The argument gathers meaning as it moves through the relationship.

What’s really happening

Relationship research supports this distinction between the subject of conflict and the emotional process surrounding it. Gottman and Levenson’s work suggested that the emotional pattern of conflict can matter greatly for later relationship outcomes, beyond the specific topic being discussed (Gottman & Levenson, 1992). This helps explain why people can resolve the practical detail and still feel injured.

The issue may have been clarified, while the meaning of the issue remains untouched.

This is one of the quieter tragedies of intimate life.

People are often arguing about the thing they can name because the thing they can’t name feels too exposing. A person may complain about a partner coming home late, while struggling to say that waiting alone made them feel foolishly dependent. Someone may criticise a lack of sexual initiation, while finding it unbearable to say that they no longer feel desired. The visible complaint becomes a kind of emotional decoy. It speaks, but indirectly.

Close relationships have unusual psychological force because they touch older questions about dependence, safety and worth. Research on attachment, emotion regulation and well-being in couples suggests that emotional and attachment dynamics shape how distress is managed within intimate relationships (Brandão et al., 2020). This does not mean that every reaction belongs to childhood or that partners are merely symbols of earlier figures. It means that love makes us receptive to meanings we might dismiss elsewhere.

A criticism from a colleague may be irritating. The same criticism from a partner can feel strangely conclusive, as though it has exposed something fundamental about one’s place in the relationship. A delayed reply from a friend may pass with little consequence. A delayed reply from someone whose affection matters deeply can become proof of distance. Intimacy magnifies interpretation because the person matters enough for their behaviour to become evidence.

This is especially clear after an affair. The injured person may seek details, timelines and explanations, and these facts can matter. Yet factual knowledge rarely settles the deeper disturbance. The injury often concerns reality itself. The person is trying to understand what kind of relationship they were in, whether their judgement can be trusted, and whether the bond they believed in still exists. The conversation may sound like an inquiry into events, while the emotional centre concerns the collapse of certainty.

Sex and intimacy reveal the same problem in another form.

People are often encouraged to communicate more openly about desire, frequency and preference, and sometimes that helps. Yet many sexual difficulties carry meanings that are difficult to discuss without shame. Desire can become entangled with attractiveness. Avoidance can feel like rejection. Pressure can turn pleasure into obligation. The words available to describe the practical problem often feel inadequate because the practical problem has become attached to questions of worth.

Consensually non-monogamous and polyamorous relationships make the limits of the communication ideal particularly visible. These relationship structures often involve explicit agreements, careful negotiation and a high value placed on honesty. Even so, clear communication does not remove the ordinary vulnerabilities of attachment. Jealousy, comparison, uncertainty about priority and fear of replacement can emerge precisely because honesty has brought difficult meanings into view. The issue is not always that something has been left unsaid. Sometimes what has been said now has to be emotionally survived.

One of the painful moments in any relationship is when people stop encountering one another freshly. The other person becomes the familiar figure from previous conflicts.

The one who withdraws. The one who pursues. The one who disappoints.

Research on the demand-withdraw pattern shows how easily one person’s pursuit and another’s retreat can reinforce one another, leaving both people feeling justified and alone (Christensen & Heavey, 1990). Each person experiences their own behaviour as protection and the other’s behaviour as threat.

At this point, communication can become oddly anti-communicative. The conversation continues, but curiosity has left it. Each person listens for confirmation of what they already believe. Fonagy and Allison’s work on mentalising is useful here because it describes “the capacity to imagine another person’s inner world through the behaviour we observe (Fonagy & Allison, 2014). Under strain, this capacity narrows and certainty can replace inquiry. At this point, the other person becomes easier to accuse than to understand.

To sum it up…

Perhaps the phrase “communication problems” persists because it is safer than the alternatives. It allows people to speak about relational pain without naming the more exposing material underneath. It is easier to say that someone doesn’t listen than to say that one feels unchosen, or to argue over facts than to admit that a particular moment produced shame. The language of communication protects people from the vulnerability that communication is supposed to reveal.

There is no need to discard the language entirely. People do need to speak, listen, clarify and repair. But the phrase becomes misleading when it persuades us that the difficulty lives mainly in technique.

A great deal of relational conflict is an attempt to get something recognised: a hurt that has been minimised, a fear that has become overwhelming, a need that feels too exposing, or a disappointment that has hardened into criticism.

The argument keeps returning because something in it remains untranslated.

So perhaps communication problems do not really exist as standalone problems.

They are the visible form taken by deeper struggles with meaning, safety, shame, longing and recognition. When people in relationships say they’re struggling to communicate, they may be closer to the truth than they realise.

The words are often available.

What remains difficult is bearing what the words are trying to say.

References

• Brandão, T., Matias, M., Ferreira, T., Vieira, J., Schulz, M. S., & Matos, P. M. (2020). Attachment, emotion regulation, and well-being in couples: Intrapersonal and interpersonal associations. Journal of Personality, 88(4), 748–761. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12523

• Christensen, A., & Heavey, C. L. (1990). Gender and social structure in the demand-withdraw pattern of marital conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(1), 73–81. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.59.1.73

• Fonagy, P., & Allison, E. (2014). The role of mentalizing and epistemic trust in the therapeutic relationship. Psychotherapy, 51(3), 372–380. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036505

• Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: Behavior, physiology, and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(2), 221–233. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.63.2.221

The moment when romantic love becomes real

At the beginning of romantic relationships, something remarkable often happens. Potential lovers encounter each other and feel unusually understood. Conversation flows easily. Similarities appear obvious. Differences seem small or even charming. Many people remember this early stage of love with a sense of nostalgia. It is commonly described as the honeymoon phase.

During this period, partners often experience each other in unusually positive ways. Research in relationship psychology has shown that people in satisfying relationships frequently perceive their partners as closer to their ideals than they objectively are (Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1996). Psychologists sometimes refer to these perceptions as positive illusions.

These illusions are not necessarily problematic. In fact, they can help relationships form by encouraging emotional investment and optimism. Yet no relationship remains permanently inside this stage. Over time, something changes.

When the illusion fades

As relationships develop, partners gradually encounter each other more fully. Everyday life introduces practical concerns, emotional vulnerabilities and personal differences that were less visible during the early stages of attraction. The partner who once seemed perfectly aligned with us begins to reveal their own rhythms, habits, and sensitivities.

At some point, many people experience a subtle but unmistakable shift. The relationship no longer feels effortless. The emotional atmosphere of the relationship has changed.

Psychologically, this shift can be understood as disillusionment.

What disillusionment really means

The word disillusionment can sound dramatic, even negative. It often carries the suggestion that something has gone wrong. But the meaning is much simpler.

Disillusionment literally means the loss of an illusion.

In relationships, the illusion that fades is usually the belief that the partner we love is perfectly suited to our needs, expectations or emotional style of expression.

This illusion is rarely deliberate. It emerges naturally during the early stages of attraction. When it fades, the partner appears more human. They become recognisable as a person with their own preferences, frustrations and limitations. For many people in relationships, this moment feels disappointing. Yet disappointment is not necessarily the opposite of love. Often, it is the beginning of a more realistic form of it.

Domestic disillusionment

The type of disillusionment that occurs within relationships can often be quiet and gradual.

It rarely arrives through dramatic events. Instead, it emerges through ordinary moments that accumulate over time. A habit that once seemed charming becomes irritating. A difference in emotional style becomes more noticeable. A small disappointment carries more weight than it once did.

I call this domestic disillusionment.

Domestic disillusionment is not an unusual or pathological experience. It is simply the moment when romantic fantasy encounters the everyday reality of living with another person. In many ways, it is unavoidable. To love someone realistically, we must eventually see them clearly.

Why disillusionment feels so unsettling

The difficulty of disillusionment lies partly in the contrast it creates. The honeymoon phase is often characterised by enthusiasm and emotional harmony. Partners feel aligned with each other in ways that seem almost effortless.

When that harmony begins to fade, the relationship can feel unexpectedly fragile. People in relationships sometimes assume that the presence of conflict means the relationship has deteriorated. Yet conflict is often the natural consequence of recognising difference.

People who once experienced each other through idealisation are now encountering each other as distinct individuals. The relationship has become more accurate. And accuracy can feel uncomfortable.

The possibility inside disillusionment

Disillusionment is often experienced as a loss. The relationship no longer feels as magical as it once did. The sense of effortless understanding has been replaced by something more complicated. Yet disillusionment also creates a new possibility.

Once the illusion fades, partners have the opportunity to encounter each other more honestly. Instead of relating to the imagined partner they hoped for, they begin relating to the real person in front of them. Psychodynamic thinkers have long suggested that mature intimacy requires precisely this capacity: the ability to hold both affection and frustration toward the same person (Kernberg, 1976). In other words, love deepens not when disappointment disappears, but when it becomes tolerable.

Why disillusionment matters

Understanding disillusionment changes how people interpret their relationships. Instead of seeing disappointment as evidence that something has failed, it can be understood as part of the natural development of intimacy.

The honeymoon phase allowed the relationship to begin. Disillusionment allows it to become real.

This blog will explore that stage of relational life in detail — how disappointment emerges, why communication becomes more complicated, and how people in relationships can sometimes become stuck in patterns they do not fully understand.

Domestic disillusionment is not the end of love. Often, it is the beginning of a more honest form of it.

References

• Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1952). Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality.

• Kernberg, O. F. (1976). Object Relations Theory and Clinical Psychoanalysis.

• Murray, S. L., Holmes, J. G., & Griffin, D. W. (1996). The benefits of positive illusions in romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Why I started this blog

Throughout my therapy practice, a striking pattern has emerged in my work with relationships that I believe could do with being addressed. So many people in relationships who seek help begin with the same explanation. They believe the problem is communication.

They say they keep having the same arguments. Conversations escalate quickly. Attempts to explain themselves seem to make things worse rather than better. To them, the conclusion appears obvious: if they could simply communicate more effectively, the relationship might improve.

Yet when people begin to describe their experiences in more detail, something else becomes apparent. Communication problems rarely appear suddenly. They tend to emerge gradually, often after a relationship has passed through a particular stage.

It is the stage most people recognise as the honeymoon phase.

At the beginning of romantic relationships, partners tend to experience each other in an unusually positive way. Differences appear small or easily resolved. Conversation flows naturally. Emotional understanding feels intuitive. Psychologists sometimes describe this period as one of romantic idealisation, a process through which partners see each other through a hopeful lens (Murray et al., 1996).

For a time, this idealisation helps sustain intimacy. It encourages emotional investment and allows a relationship to begin. But the honeymoon phase does not last forever.

Over time, differences become more visible. Expectations collide with reality. Habits that once seemed charming become irritating. Conversations that once felt effortless begin to feel more complicated. Many people assume that when this shift occurs, something must have gone wrong. In truth, something far more ordinary is happening. They have moved beyond the honeymoon. And this is precisely where the real work of relationships begins. After the honeymoon.

What happens after the honeymoon

The stage after the honeymoon is often misunderstood. In popular culture, long-term relationships are frequently portrayed in simple terms. Either the relationship continues to feel exciting and harmonious, or it has somehow failed. The reality is rarely so clear-cut.

Most enduring relationships move through a period when idealisation fades and a more realistic understanding of the partner emerges. What once seemed effortless begins to require negotiation.

Psychodynamic thinkers have long suggested that intimate relationships involve a gradual process of recognising the other person as separate from the fantasies we initially project onto them (Kernberg, 1976). This process can feel unsettling. The person who once seemed perfectly compatible begins to appear more complicated. Differences that once felt intriguing may begin to generate frustration.

In many relationships, this stage produces disappointment, resentment and confusion. Yet it also creates the possibility of something deeper. A relationship that survives beyond idealisation must eventually learn how to accommodate difference.

This blog exists to explore what happens during that stage.

The themes this blog will explore

The essays here (mostly!) revolve around three recurring themes that shape many relationships once the honeymoon phase fades.

Together, they form the intellectual backbone of After the Honeymoon.

Domestic Disillusionment

One of the most common experiences in long-term relationships is the moment when romantic fantasy begins to erode. The partner who once seemed extraordinary becomes recognisably human. Their habits, moods and limitations become more visible. Small disappointments accumulate.

Psychologically, this transition can be understood as disillusionment, and it’s what I call: domestic disillusionment.

It refers to the ordinary but profound moment when romantic idealisation gives way to the lived experience of sharing life with another person. It does not necessarily signal the failure of a relationship. It simply means the relationship has begun to encounter reality.

Understanding this transition is central to understanding long-term intimacy.

The “Communication Problem” Myth

Many people in relationships believe communication is the central issue when their relationship struggles. Relationship advice can frequently focus on techniques to solve this: how to listen better, how to speak more carefully, how to avoid escalation during conflict. While these suggestions can sometimes be useful, they often overlook something more fundamental.

Communication problems are frequently symptoms rather than causes.

Partners may hear each other’s words perfectly well while misunderstanding the emotional meaning behind them. A remark intended as practical advice may feel like criticism. Silence may be experienced as rejection. These reactions are shaped not simply by the conversation itself but by the expectations, vulnerabilities and relational histories that each partner brings into the relationship.

Exploring these deeper dynamics requires looking beyond communication alone.

Stuck, Together

When relationships struggle, partners often search for someone to blame. One person may feel the other is emotionally distant. The other may feel criticised or controlled. Each explanation may contain elements of truth, yet both risk missing something important. Relationship difficulties rarely belong to one person alone.

More often, they emerge through patterns that develop between partners. One partner withdraws, the other pursues. One criticises, the other becomes defensive. Over time, these interactions become familiar cycles that both partners experience as frustrating yet difficult to change.

Understanding relationships as shared patterns rather than individual faults opens a different kind of conversation. Instead of asking who is the problem, couples begin to ask a more useful question: What is happening between us?

Who this blog is for

This blog is written for people who want to understand their relationships more deeply.

Some readers may currently be experiencing conflict or dissatisfaction in their relationship. Others may simply recognise that relationships are more psychologically complex than are often portrayed.

The ideas explored here apply to many different kinds of relationships: marriages, long-term partnerships, newer relationships beginning to encounter difficulty and multi-partner structures.

What these relationships share is the experience of moving beyond the early stage of romantic idealisation. Beyond the honeymoon phase.

Who this blog is NOT for

If you’re looking for quick fixes, ‘5 steps to save your relationship,’ or prescriptive formulas, you won’t find them here. This blog is not for people who want to be told exactly what to do without thinking deeply about what’s happening.

There are many places online offering quick tips about improving relationships. Those approaches can sometimes be helpful, but they often overlook the deeper emotional dynamics shaping relational life.

What you can expect to find here

This blog aims to explore the psychology of intimate relationships with curiosity and care. Each essay will examine a particular relational experience - disappointment, resentment, misunderstanding, expectations, recurring conflict - and consider what these experiences might reveal about the deeper dynamics between partners.

Understanding these patterns does not instantly solve relational difficulties, but it can change how people in relationships see each other. And sometimes that shift in understanding is where meaningful change begins.

If this resonates

Every relationship eventually moves beyond the honeymoon phase. When that happens, love often becomes more complicated. Differences become more visible. Disappointment appears alongside affection. Yet these experiences do not necessarily mean the relationship has failed. Often, they simply mean that intimacy has become real.

If these questions interest you - why relationships change, why conflict appears, why love sometimes feels harder over time - you may find something here worth reading.

New essays will appear regularly. If you would like to receive them when they are published, you can subscribe below.

Understanding relationships rarely happens all at once. It unfolds gradually, through reflection, curiosity and the willingness to look beneath the surface of familiar problems.

That is what After the Honeymoon is for.