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Comment by anon4242 | Hacker News Reader

Nope, this is silly. Mutual attraction is what leads you to become couples in the first place. The physical part of attraction is what leads you to notice the other person and then building an emotional bond with each other will increase the attraction. So attraction is a symptom not a cause. Like any emotion attraction comes and goes. IMHO believing this folly is what leads to so many people breaking up when they could be very happy together and why so many people are lonely these days.

My own experience after 15 years of marriage is that attraction comes and goes for both me and my wife. But by not doing anything rash when that happens we have both discovered that it also comes back. Sure the first few times it happened it was quite scary, but then we've found a rhythm with the ebbs and floods.

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This is my experience too. Sexual attraction brings you together. This may lead to love, if the circumstances are favorable. And then you can choose to make the effort to nurture that relationship, or not.

To be fair there are a lot of very unhappy coupled folks out there as well stuck with essentially the opposite problem: the attraction has left the building and hasn't been there for a very long time and waiting for it to come back is likely an exercise in futility. See r/deadbedrooms etc.

Well, rereading what I wrote I was maybe not so clear on that.

If you are just waiting for the attraction to come back, chances are that it doesn't, even though it certainly could. It all depends on the reason that attraction disappears. Sometimes it's related to the things you do and sometimes it isn't. The key, I believe, is to always try to be a better spouse than you were a year ago, or even a month ago. But that of course presupposes that there exist mutual trust and respect between you. It won't work if only one part is trying to be a better self for the other.

Nope, you guys are still attracted to each other.

I think you may need to define what you mean by attraction, then. He said again comes and goes for both him and his wife. I see no reason to disbelieve him, especially since that is what I experience with my wife as well. It's fine if you have a different definition of attraction, one where the members of both couples here (his and mine) can be considered to still be attracted to each other. But simply stating that he's wrong does not advance the conversation or reveal what your point of view actually is.

My physical attraction to my wife comes and goes. When that first started happening, it was traumatic. At this point, it really doesn't feel like a big deal. There are always more important things to be working on when it happens. (Probably not coincidentally!)

A bit later in our relationship, the same thing started happening for more general attraction. The decision to stay together would get very practical for a time. Again, this was initially very traumatic, but over time it became more and more clear that it was an effect, not a cause. Our focus shifted to the true causes, to the extent we could figure them out, and that was vastly more effective than trying to somehow address lack of attraction directly.

In short, my experience directly contradicts your position, anecdotal though it may be.

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