Staying in Love: Secret Recipes for Making Love Last

By Peter J. Favaro Ph.D.

Falling in love is easy. Staying in love requires dedication, work, and each partner fortifying the relationship with newness. Peter Favaro (Dr. Peter)--a psychologist, author, and educator--has spent the last thirty-eight years of his career watching relationships fall apart and helping people find new beginnings. Staying in Love is about reconnection, rebuilding, and creating recipes for success. Dr. Peter draws on his love of love as well as his love of food to create metaphors for creating the banquet of a lifetime. Dr. Peter's folksy and humorous writing style makes understanding the complexities of love and relationships a quick and wholesome experience. Join him at his table and learn about what makes love last a lifetime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885054461

Book preview

Title Page

Copyright © 2022 Peter J. Favaro, Ph.D.

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2022

ISBN 979-8-88505-445-4 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88505-446-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction: Your Personal Chef: Dr. Peter

The Work

Chapter 1: Meal Preparation

Chapter 2: First Course: Appetizers

Chapter 3: The Main Courses

Chapter 4: I Made Something for Everyone: Your Second Main

Chapter 5: A Side Salad of Wisdom

Chapter 6: Another Side: How Many Cooks in the Kitchen Control: Who is Driving the Bus?

Chapter 7: Tu Puoi Mangiare il Dolce Ora

Chapter 8: What Can You Do That’s New? Recipes for Newness

Chapter 9: Sometimes a Dish Goes Bad

Finire

Introduction

Your Personal Chef: Dr. Peter

Iam a clinical psychologist who operates a very unique center in the heart of midtown New York City. It’s called The Center for Improved Human Relationships, and one of the many things I do there is teaching people how to stay in love. I do relationship counseling for people who don’t want to lose a relationship that might not be in the best place or in sadder situations when it is time to say goodbye to a marriage. But what I really want to do is teach people how to have a better relationship when both want to become better partners.

You see, falling in love is the easy part. No one really needs to learn how to do that. Staying in love is a whole different story. If 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce, it makes sense to wonder about the 50 percent of people who remain married. Many of them are miserable and have fallen out of love. They stay together out of habit or apathy, but is that really living? As someone who appreciates a good bowl of pasta, it would be like tomato sauce without any seasonings.

In this book, which accompanies the courses you can take at The Center for Improved Human Relationships (www.centerihr.com) and at our online learning facility, I will share my thoughts about what it takes to build a lasting love relationship and partnership. This book takes you on a journey toward understanding how to enhance and keep your love relationships growing, developing, and continually transforming you, your partner, and the quality of your relationship. I talk a lot about food and recipes in this book. I don’t know—maybe I was hungry when I first started writing it—but the more I thought about it, the more comparisons to nourishing one’s love relationships became an easy way to explore some of my beliefs.

You will see a lot of dialogue in this book. I break it out in italics. Some of the dialogue is between imaginary people, and some is my emphasis on what I think is important. I think you would figure it out even if I didn’t tell you, but to let you know, as an introduction to who will be taking you on this journey and cooking up concoctions about life and love, here is a bit about me.

I have spent the last thirty-seven years of my professional life thinking about people—not just thinking, mind you, really thinking. My obsessive interest in why people behave the way they do is my greatest strength and at the same time, my greatest weakness.

I am the guy who you meet and ask, What do you do for a living? And when I tell them I am a psychologist, they typically ask, When you meet people, do you analyze them?

I say, Yup. Can’t turn it off. I am doing it right now.

You would think that might cause people to run away from me like their clothes were on fire, but that almost never happens for two reasons: First, I say it in a way that causes people to think I am kidding around with them. What kind of kook would admit to that? My kind of kook (and cook). So if you meet me and you ask me that question, know that you are getting an honest answer wrapped in a playfully deceptive disclosure. Add to this that I am sort of a nice guy who is easy to talk to. I mean, after thirty-seven years of being a shrink, I have picked up a thing or two about talking and listening.

The second reason is once I dangle that candy bar of admitting that I am analyzing you and if I do it in a devilishly nonthreatening way, you are going to want to know what my analysis is—as if anyone could analyze someone in a two-minute introduction. So, I say, Come on. I just met you. I need at least another ten minutes. Ask me then.

And then in most cases, people forget to keep asking, which is perfect because any self-consciousness they might have about me analyzing (and potentially judging, which I do not do) gets tabled, I just keep doing what I cannot help doing, and we get on to the business of trying to have a relationship. Sometimes it’s a business relationship, sometimes it’s a social or personal relationship, and sometimes it’s a helping relationship or a teaching relationship.

Here’s the part where I brag: If we engage, it’s always going to be, in some fashion, a meaningful relationship. That’s because I want it to be. I think about how my relationship with you can make both of our lives better. I think about things I can do for you. I do the work of having a relationship with you. Sounds good, right? But there’s a catch: There are responsibilities on your end too.

Having a relationship with me is work for you too! We have to work together if we are going to have a relationship that is more than saying hello in the cafeteria. That’s the deal. I work for you, you work for me, and our relationship becomes transformative because the mutuality of that commitment to work elevates our relationship to a higher place than just the work or just the help. Our partnership will transcend the task of just getting to know one another.

You don’t have to understand this very deeply now, but hopefully, it will mean something important by the end.

The Work

We are very early into this book or program (depending on whether you are just reading or taking the seminar), and I am already trying to teach you a core concept, which I do by emphasizing what I think is important in italics. These are the things you can highlight in yellow:

Relationships, at least those that are worth anything, involve work. For some, work is a dirty word. For others, it is a vocation—a purposeful act of engagement in the service of a successful outcome. It is a masterfully crafted banquet that nurtures the chef and the guest. To mention a book by another author who is far more successful than me but also interested in food and life, it is chicken soup for the soul.

Why should relationships, partnerships, loving another person, and friendships require work? Shouldn’t compatible people just click and enjoy one another’s company?

No. Clicking makes the work easier, but it does not make the work unnecessary.

Enjoying another person’s company is great, but it gets old without both people working to sustain and re-nourish it. Sure, in the beginning of a relationship, just enjoying someone’s company is a welcome respite to the stresses and strains we encounter in the day-to-day life of dealing with people we have no choice but to deal with. But even very compatible people become passive in the part of the relationship that demands the kind of effort that goes into making someone feel valued and loved over time. And without that work, people feel unappreciated and the relationship you think you value will suffer and go stale. Simple as that.

Everything in relationships worth anything requires work.

Weeds grow in gardens with little effort. They often look like flowers, but they barely take root and can be easily removed. Enlightenment, deeper meaning, and personal transformation require cultivation. Relationships require that you think about how to step outside our own needs and when important, place the needs of others above our own. Everyone can do that. Not everyone wants to. Some people strongly resist placing anyone’s needs above their own. A bit of strong advice is warranted here: Stay away from them.

When we are babies, we don’t have to think about what we need or how to ask. And we instinctively know our needs will be met. That’s the reason babies are so cute. They have to be in order for us to tolerate how selfish they are! Feed me! Cuddle me! Wipe me! At six months, with a cute, little face and big eyes, we can take care of that all day. Later on in life, we need more and it is a good idea to start convincing yourself that as long as you are willing to give, you should get something in return. Do you like to get your back scratched or tickled? I do. But if I don’t tickle my partner’s back, ultimately, my partner will resent me and think it is boring and a waste of time to tickle mine.

If you are familiar with the 1980 movie Caddyshack, there is a scene where Chevy Chase’s character, Ty Webb, sings a song to a love interest (Lacey Underall) he is trying to seduce. The lyrics contain certain sophomoric wisdom that makes my point about love and work. He sings these lyrics unashamedly: I was born to love you / I was born to lick your face / I was born to rub you / but you were born to rub me first.

Human beings are selfish by design. We behave in ways that serve our instincts to survive. If being in love requires setting aside that interest in order to prioritize someone else’s interests to survive, that might seem like something unnatural. However, if you consider that when people promise to strengthen one another, it is very favorable to both participants’ basic needs. When we partner, we each enhance, fortify, and nourish the other’s capacity to survive. So if I go on about why it is so important to work to make your partner feel loved, it’s because if both of you are doing that, you are helping yourselves as well.

Suspending The Expectation Of Reciprocity

Your ultimate goal and the purpose of this book is to help you create a transformational partnership. To do this, you must temporarily suspend the expectation of reciprocity. This is a fancy way of saying that your commitment to doing the work of loving your partner has to take your mind off expecting something in return. If you both make the commitment, receiving in return happens naturally, automatically. That doesn’t mean you should be dumb enough to enter into a love relationship where you do all the work. It means that your mutual commitment to one another should relieve you of the worry that you will have to do all the work. If it doesn’t, it might not be much of a relationship at all.

There are times when love makes it easy for us to do things without the expectation of getting anything in return. And there are times when it is really hard. Loving without the expectation of getting loved back is one of the things that transforms people in love, but there is more to it than just that. Both partners must commit to loving the other unselfishly, and the presence of that commitment creates partnership and longevity. If I am showing you that I am willing to give myself to you without the expectation of reciprocity and if you do that, too, that is powerful and transformational energy forming the basis