How do you grow into something new and greater with your partner? How do you foster feelings of love, passion and connection - no matter how long you’ve been together? How do you evolve beyond what you even know to be possible for yourself in relationship? This week we welcome Dr. Jeffrey Zeig to the Relationship Alive podcast. He has authored and/or co-authored more than twenty books on psychotherapy, and he is the architect of the Evolution of Psychotherapy conference, one of the most important conferences for therapeutic professionals. His work is on the cutting edge of helping us evolve what we know about what’s possible in the science of helping people change, as he is in a unique position to survey the entire landscape of what people are doing in the field of couples therapy.   Stages of Love: Love is a biological phenomenon that has three different stages, each with their own neurobiology. The first is the Stage of Attraction; this is when we discover someone who we feel drawn to. The next is the Stage of Attachment; this is a stage of luminance, which is marked with high sexual activity, an intense desire to find similarities, and a sense that you cannot get enough of each other. This stage then evolves into the Bonding stage in which we choose our partner as our mate. At this stage the neurochemicals secreted naturally drive down sexual desire. This decrease in dopamine rich sexual activity can become a crisis for couples who do not understand that there is a biological context influencing this change and instead create stories of lost connection or attraction.   Shakespeare was right- love is blind. In the luminance stage we are nearly incapable of seeing our partner for who they truly are. In fact, we see them through a distorted hormonally influenced haze-biologically donned rose colored glasses. It is not until we enter into the bonding phase that we begin to see our partners in a more realistic way. This inevitable change in perception can be jarring, and especially threatening if not understood through biology.   Discovering difference: As we settle into deeper relationship commitment the differences that provided such attractive polarity in the beginning can become sources of strain and strife. Too often relationships become like religious enclaves in which each person tries to convert their partner to do and be like them- more articulate, more organized, more emotive, and on and on… This can become a time of crisis with higher rates of alcoholism, workaholism, divorce, and affairs.   Allergic to each other’s strengths? If we are not careful, we can become allergic to our partner’s strengths. What were once your partner’s idiosyncratic characteristics that so attracted you to them can become irritating if you do not continually refresh your appreciation. When we focus our energy on trying to control or conform our partners to match our desires we misread difference as disaster, disappointment, and failure (on their part and ours). In healthy relationship differences are not dangerous, rather they are celebrated.   JFK reminds us to ask a different question:  How can you find your way back to appreciation of your own and your partner’s different strengths? Ask not what your partner can do for you, but what you can do for your relationship. In what ways can you step up? In what ways can you improve? Don’t target the other person and expect change from them. Instead of reaching over the fence and weeding their garden, weed your own garden and instead gaze over to their side to look for the flowers.  A loving stable relationship grows and thrives in an atmosphere of appreciation, rather than one of comparison and judgment.   TOPIAH:  Wait, what IS love? It is not just a concept based on internal characteristics (like passion, security, appreciating the other person, trying to make the other person feel comfortable...). Instead, love is an interaction pattern. It is not something that happens solely inside a person-