Why don’t they act the way they did the first six months? What happened?

Why don’t they do the things they used to do during the first six months, like write me love letters? Why don’t they light candles like they used to do? Why aren’t they attacking me sexually in the same way?

Are they just bored with me? Do they no longer want these things?

Why is it that we are so amazing in those first six months of a relationship? Are we trying to impress somebody? Are we trying to win somebody over? Are we being somebody we’re not? Are the first six months just that “amazing” time before all the arguments start and before we get defensive?

In the first six months, we allow ourselves to be emotionally open. We give so much emotionally to our partner.

When you start fighting with each other, however, we take something back. With each fight or misunderstanding after that, we take another piece back. The vulnerability, openness and beauty of those first six months at that point are gone.

During the first six months you would invite your partner to your house, they’d say “Oh Babe, I love coming to your house,” and you would light candles. You do this over and over again during the first six months.

After the first six months, the candle-lighting goes away. Your partner comes over and says, “You don’t light candles anymore.”

Instead of just acknowledging that what they’re saying is true, you get defensive. You could have said, “You’re right, I don’t. I need to start doing that again. I know how much you loved it.” But you don’t. You defend yourself.

Those first six months of a relationship should always be the way I’m describing. It should always be amazing. What happens in those first six months are the reasons why you fell in love with that other person in the first place — the things you used to do for them, the way you came onto them sexually, the way you listened and the way you were patient with them.

It’s amazing, though, how we take things away once the fights and disappointments begin. We don’t even necessarily do it consciously. We do it very passively.

Say that you and your partner touch each other nonstop during the first six months, then your partner stops touching you as much. What do you do?

You start taking some of your touching away. You get angry. You hope that they will notice and think, “Oh my God, he’s not touching me as much. I must need to touch him more.”

The first six months of a relationship are beautiful. For those of you in that post-six months frustration period, however, what you need to do is to go back and think about all the things you did for your lover in the first six months. Then start doing them again, without your partner having to ask you to do them.

I guarantee that if you do this, you’ll not have the whole “taking things away” situation happening anymore. There will be no reason to fight about who is (or is not) doing things for the other.

I challenge all of you who are in a relationship right now, over the next thirty days to do all the things you did for your partner in the first six months you were together. All of them. Every single one. And do them every day.

I guarantee that if you do this for the next thirty days — acting sexually, emotionally, in your communication and in your intimacy the way you did the first six months — and you don’t expect anything in return, you will see your relationship come alive again.

Then watch what your partner will start doing for you. Like magic, they will start doing things you have been wanting them to do for months.

It’s amazing how easy it is to rekindle a relationship, but we all stand on principle so much that we don’t allow ourselves to do the things to make it happen. We’re so about “tit for tat” that we never grow.

So think about what you did for your lover during the first six months, and do them all over the next thirty days. Then watch how the dynamics of your relationship will totally change. It’s a beautiful thing.