Experiment 008: Can Desire Survive Too Much Familiarity? Closeness, Otherness, & Why Your Partner Is Not a Finished Product
Long-term relationships ask us to pull off a strange feat. We’re supposed to know another person deeply, build a life with them, pay bills with them, manage a household with them, maybe raise children with them, and somehow still experience them as an erotic being. So is familiarity the thing that eventually kills desire? Or have we been blaming the wrong thing?
In this episode, Caroline and Andrea explore what actually happens to eroticism as relationships become increasingly familiar. Andrea introduces the idea that we often take a mental “snapshot” of our partner at some point in the relationship and stop updating it. We decide we know who they are, what they like, how they think, and what they’ll do next. The problem is that people keep changing, even when our internal picture of them doesn’t.
Research offers an interesting counterpoint to the idea that intimacy inevitably extinguishes desire. Closeness itself does not appear to be the enemy. Instead, desire may thrive when closeness exists alongside otherness, the recognition that your partner remains a separate, evolving person whom you cannot ever completely know. Self-expanding experiences can help us see our partners in a new light, and that sense of discovery can be associated with greater sexual desire.
So keeping eroticism alive isn’t about buying lingerie, trying a new position, booking a hotel, or adding novelty for novelty’s sake. Those things can be fun, but they can become the relationship equivalent of a workplace pizza party: forced fun layered over a dynamic that hasn’t actually changed. The deeper work may be continuing to reveal ourselves, allowing our partners to change, updating our understanding of who they are, and staying curious about who we ourselves are becoming.
Along the way: bathroom boundaries, version 2.0 software updates, European backpacking transformations, tinkering in the garage, rose-colored memories of honeymoon sex, secure bases, red thongs, shitty workplace icebreakers, and why your erotic life probably doesn’t need another fucking pizza party.
Questions to Take Home:
When you think about your partner, are you responding to who they are now, or to a version of them you formed years ago?
Where is there still “otherness” between you, enough separateness and curiosity to keep discovering something new about each other?
What has changed in you that your partner might not fully know yet, and what would it feel like to let them see it?
Research & Resources
Closeness, Otherness & Sexual Desire
Muise, A., & Goss, S. C. (2024). “Does Too Much Closeness Dampen Desire? On the Balance of Closeness and Otherness for the Maintenance of Sexual Desire in Romantic Relationships.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 33(1), 68–74.
Muise and Goss do not conclude that closeness dampens sexual desire. Their review finds that greater closeness is generally associated with greater desire. They propose that closeness may be especially conducive to desire when it exists alongside otherness, a sense of distinctiveness between partners that allows us to see the other person in a new light and recognize that they remain separate from us.
Seeing Your Partner in a New Light
Goss, S. C., Raposo, S., Balzarini, R. N., Rosen, N. O., Benyamin, V., & Muise, A. (2022). “Feeling Close and Seeing a Partner in a New Light: How Self-Expansion Is Associated With Sexual Desire.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39(8).
Across three studies, researchers examined whether self-expansion, experiences that create growth, novelty, or new perspectives, was associated with sexual desire through both closeness and “otherness.” Self-expansion was associated with greater closeness and greater otherness, which were in turn associated with higher sexual desire.
Self-Expansion in Long-Term Relationships
Muise, A., Harasymchuk, C., Day, L. C., Bacev-Giles, C., Gere, J., & Impett, E. A. (2019). “Broadening Your Horizons: Self-Expanding Activities Promote Desire and Satisfaction in Established Romantic Relationships.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(2), 237–258.
Across three studies using daily experience, longitudinal, dyadic, and experimental methods, couples who engaged in more self-expanding activities reported greater sexual desire. That higher desire was also associated with greater relationship satisfaction and, when couples had sex, greater sexual satisfaction.
Self-Expansion When Desire Is Already Low
Raposo, S., Rosen, N. O., & Muise, A. (2020). “Self-Expansion Is Associated With Greater Relationship and Sexual Well-Being for Couples Coping With Low Sexual Desire.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 37(2), 602–623.
In 97 couples in which the woman was experiencing clinically low sexual desire, greater self-expansion was associated with better sexual and relationship outcomes, including greater desire and satisfaction and, in some cases, lower sexual distress and relationship conflict.
