The Most Neglected Emotion Needed for a Successful Relationship
Cuteness is not only for babies, save some for your partner!
Cuteness is not only for babies, save some for your partner!
Most advice on relationships out there will tell you to look for signs: If your partner is behaving this and that way, that means X, Y, or Z. Endless blabbering on how to keep the spark, passion, and sex alive. But what if I told you that in between all that sexual and (hopefully) intellectual chemistry, you absolutely need to feel cuteness toward your partner to have a long-lasting relationship?
In Western cultures, we don’t talk much about the feelings of cuteness outside of the baby-related domains…or maybe baby Yoda domains. Sure, we all think babies are adorable and we all have similar reactions, like wanting to squeeze them or make funny sounds, but we rarely use the same language when we talk about our romantic partners.
I am not ashamed to admit that the emotional glue of my 11-year relationship is the feeling of cuteness, the same one you feel when you see a super cute baby, whether it’s a human or an alien, like baby Yoda. You might get a feel for some of this cuteness through my LEGO comics below.
Now follows the disclaimer for this story. Since not too many adults share with me how they speak with their partners when they are alone at home, I am not sure if my arguments here can apply to everyone or if I’m just a weirdo. I do have some hints from other people that my relationship is not an isolated case in relying on cuteness. Let me know in the comments!
3 types of connection
The cornerstone of every relationship is connection. And it seems that many long-term relationships find it difficult to keep this connection alive. Why is that?
Let’s first define connection. Based on my personal experience in these 11 years of my relationship, I found that these 3 types of connection are fundamental for any relationship to survive long term:
1. intellectual connection
2. sexual connection
3. cuteness connection.
Intellectual connection is not necessarily related to smarts and intelligence. This is basically the connection of the minds, what you agree on, the interests you share, and so on. When you find someone who shares your vision of the world and you like how they look, you become attracted to them, and you might enter into a relationship. If everything goes well, after some time you might move in together and maybe get married eventually, if that’s something you want to do.
The moment in which the relationship takes a more serious turn to a committed possibly long-term relationship is the crucial moment for developing these feelings of cuteness. Once you start living with someone, there will be a lot of mundane everyday moments, like washing the clothes or taking out the garbage, which are truly mood killers for any passionate relationship.
If these moments become more frequent than the passionate sexy ones, which is very likely, you are running the danger of getting in a rut and forgetting all about the intellectual and sexual connection that brought you together in the first place. This is why so many long-term relationships struggle.
Feel the Cuteness!
I want to argue that the feeling of cuteness toward your partner is the only chance you have to salvage those mundane life moments and still feel connected to your partner, even when the moment is not sexy.
Imagine this. You come back home and your partner is folding laundry and he/(or insert desired pronoun*) is wearing some baggy pajamas, dirty from tomato sauce he prepared for dinner. Maybe he looks a bit ridiculous, probably not sexy, but he does look cute.
*My partner is male, so I use the pronoun “he” in several parts of the text, because that way it feels more personal to me, but feel free to imagine other pronouns.
Suddenly, the cuteness opens up the doors to every single moment of your shared life that you cannot characterize as sexy or intellectually stimulating. This is the emotional glue for when life is not sexy or interesting.
So much relationship advice says that you need to go on a trip or do something exciting to fall in love with your partner again. But I couldn’t disagree more. You have to find your partner interesting, even at home! Because guess what, you spend so much time at home!
Do you want to be stimulated and like your partner only when you travel? Of course not, you should want to enjoy every aspect of your relationship even when you are living through the mundane aspects of life. And for me, cuteness is the emotion that gets awoken whenever my partner is doing anything at all, from working on the computer, brushing his teeth, or just giving me that typical confused look of his.
You know how sexual attraction creates this visceral uncontrollable urge to be with someone in that moment? Cuteness can have a similarly strong physical reaction, just without the sexual component, that makes you want to squeeze your partner, hug him, tickle him, and just be with him all the time. This kind of desire for closeness and physical contact can then also spark up sexual attraction and improve your sex life.
Gigil
It is entirely possible that this cuteness “hack” doesn’t work for everyone. As I said, cuteness is not widely discussed and I feel like a lot of people try to suppress it in public. In many Asian cultures, the adoration for cute things is normally embedded in their artistic expression and pop culture, like kawai in Japan. As shown in my comic below, in Tagalog spoken in the Philippines, there is even a word for something cute you want to squeeze. As a linguist, I love finding new words like these, especially for a concept I would like to express more often in English.
To sum up, yes, long-term relationships are still on the table (monogamous in my case) and yes, you can maintain a continuous desire for your partner for many years. The answer to finding this desire is not necessarily in scheduling sexy trips and dinners, it’s about finding your partner cute, even when life isn’t sexy.
If you liked this story, sign up for my newsletter here!