Keeping romance alive in a long relationship

Romance doesn't usually fade because of a fight. It fades when the calendar fills up and nothing marks the relationship as different from the rest of the week. The practical question is what you can put on that calendar, and whether any of it has evidence behind it. A little does. Most of it is advice, and couples differ a lot in what feels romantic to them.

What the research says about novelty

The best-known idea here is "self-expansion": early in a relationship, getting to know a partner feels like growth, and over time that becomes routine. The model's originators, Aron and Tomlinson, reviewed the evidence in 2026 (Behavioral Sciences), and several findings they describe are about doing new, somewhat challenging things together:

• Couples who did exciting activities together reported more satisfaction than couples doing pleasant but unexciting ones, in a 10-week experiment from 1993.
• A lab study from 2000 had couples do a physical task tied together, and they reported higher satisfaction afterward than couples doing a mundane task.
• A 4-week randomized trial found larger improvements in relationship quality for couples who did a weekly exciting activity than for a waitlist group.
• In 21-day diary studies (Muise and colleagues, 2018), self-expansion, meaning a sense of growing and learning, predicted satisfaction that day and later, but not the reverse. These measured self-expansion generally, not only shared activities.
• Moderately challenging tasks that a couple had the skills to complete were linked to the highest satisfaction. The authors suggest mental and physical activities could be equally beneficial, which they present as a hedged possibility.

The limits: the review doesn't present itself as a systematic count of studies, and its authors are the originators of the model. Most studies measure self-reported satisfaction, not whether a couple stays together, and several of the experiments were short. Findings about whether the effect differs by how long a couple has been together are contested.

None of this proves that a weekly climbing class will save a relationship. It suggests that "something new we both have to figure out" is a better bet than "dinner at the usual place," for many couples, as an average.

Respond to good news

A different line of research looks at what happens when your partner tells you something good. Gable, Reis, Impett and Asher (2004) ran four studies, including a diary study of 154 undergraduates, a survey of 59 dating couples, and a study of 89 married couples. They found that couples in which one partner typically responds enthusiastically to the other's good news reported higher relationship well-being, including intimacy and daily marital satisfaction. The distinction was between active, constructive responses (interest, questions, visible delight) and passive or dismissive ones ("that's nice").

This is correlational. It can't show that learning to respond better makes a relationship happier, since people who are already happy may respond better. But it costs nothing to try.

The Gottman Institute makes a related point with what it calls bids: small attempts to get attention or connection, from a smile to a request for help. It says newlyweds who were still married six years later turned toward bids 86% of the time, and those who divorced averaged 33%. The page doesn't give the sample size or study details, so treat those numbers as the Institute's claim.

Routines that couples use

These are advice and common practice, not findings:

• A standing date. The same two hours each week, protected like an appointment. The point isn't the venue. It's that it's planned. Romantic dates at home has ideas that don't need a babysitter or a reservation, and first date ideas is a source of formats you may not have tried together.
• One new thing a month. A class, a day trip, a restaurant neither of you has been to. Pick something with a small learning curve.
• Small gestures. A text mid-day that mentions something specific. A coffee made the way they like it. Specific beats grand.
• Time apart. Separate friends, hobbies, a night alone. Some couples find this keeps things interesting, and others feel more connected when they do almost everything together. Esther Perel's work is one therapist's view on how closeness and distance interact, though her ideas come from clinical practice, not controlled studies.
• Ask a better question. "What was the best part of your day?" gets more than "How was your day?"
• Phones away. In Pew's 2019 survey, 51% of partnered U.S. adults said their partner is at least sometimes distracted by a cellphone when they try to talk. Setting a 30-minute phone-free window is a simple trial.

How couples differ

There's no single schedule. Parents of young kids may have a 20-minute window after bedtime. Long-distance couples often rely on calls and rituals. Some people feel loved through words, some through help with chores, some through plans. Two partners can differ here, which is where "I'm doing romantic things" and "I don't feel it" come from. The only reliable way to find out is to ask each other: "What's something I did recently that made you feel close to me?"

Being a good partner goes into the everyday side, and fighting fair covers what happens when the spark is dulled by unresolved arguments rather than routine.

What to do next

1. Choose one night a week, two hours, and put it in both calendars for the next four weeks. Phones in another room.
2. Ask your partner: "What's something we haven't done together that you'd want to try?" Each of you gets to pick one this month.
3. Choose something with a mild challenge, such as a cooking class or a new hiking trail, over a repeat of something you know.
4. For one week, answer good news with two questions before any comment of your own.
5. Send one specific message a day for five days, about something you noticed that day.
6. Ask the "what made you feel close" question once, and write down the answer.
7. After a month, look at which of these you kept, and drop the rest.

Sources

• Aron and Tomlinson (2026), "Self-Expansion Activities with a Partner as One Path to Well-Being," Behavioral Sciences (PMC): a review by the model's originators; findings described above with the limits it states.
• Gable, Reis, Impett and Asher (2004), "What Do You Do When Things Go Right?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: four studies, including 59 dating couples and 89 married couples; correlational.
• The Gottman Institute, "Turn Toward Instead of Away": bids, with the Institute's 86% and 33% figures and no sample size given.
• Pew Research Center (2020), "Dating and Relationships in the Digital Age": survey of 4,860 U.S. adults; 51% say a partner is at least sometimes phone-distracted.