Does Familiarity Breed Contempt & Romantic Passion Fades?

How to maintain the romantic passion in your relationship & avoid familiarity breeding contempt.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who has read 3% Man, 25 times since 2019. He’s been with his girlfriend for 3 years and they moved in together last summer. Everything is going well. However, he’s noticed that her flirty and sexual side has dropped from where it was when they didn’t live together. He asks my opinion on how to get her back to where she was. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Hi, I’m Coach Corey Wayne and this is my Video Coaching Newsletter. And the topic of today’s Newsletter is going to be, “Does Familiarity Breed Contempt & Romantic Passion Fades?”

Well obviously we’re going to talk about long term relationships. This particular email, everything is going well in his relationship. He’s read 3% Man 25 times since 2019. And for those of you that may be new and you haven’t read it before, all you have to do is go to UnderstandingRelationships.com just subscribe to the free email newsletter and a digital version of my book will open up right in your web browser and you can read it totally for free. So this particular guy, he’s been a good student. And he’s read The Book 25 times since 2019. So that’s about six years, I guess or so, he’s been a student.

And so his girlfriend, they’ve been together three years and they moved in moved in together last summer, in July. It’s now obviously January 2025. Everything’s going well, but the only thing that he’s noticed is her passion is not where it was. In other words, like her fun, flirty, sexual side, it’s still there, but it’s not as heightened as it was when they weren’t living together. And so as the old I don’t know who said it originally, it’s an old saying, but “Familiarity breeds contempt.” And so the other things we got to keep in mind that I often talk about is like two quotes. Well, one is a quote.

One is just a scientific fact that women are more attracted to men whose feelings are unclear. And so when you’re living apart, what’s different is that your girl, especially if you’re applying what’s in The Book, is always working to get your attention, your validation. Because women naturally and instinctively do this already. It’s innate. And if you behave in ways that are consistent with The Book, she’ll always be pursuing you. Because typically, as I say, the guy always has to start the courtship off. In other words, he starts the pursuit.

But once a woman’s emotions and feelings become engaged, usually by the second or third date after you’ve slept together, she starts reaching out. And then you get yourself into a situation, especially when a woman is head over heels in love with you, she’s going to be stuck to you like a suckerfish all the time. She’s always going to want your time and your attention as long as you’re doing things right, as long as you’re being the leader, as long as you’re being totally in your masculine. I was talking to a guy last night. He’s been with his girl. Well, his wife now for a couple of years.

And one of the things that he just tends to do, his problem was in the past where he was a people pleaser and he tended to use apologies as like a fix all. If he screws up, he just apologizes. And just subtle things as I was talking to him that’s going on in his relationship dynamic is that sometimes instead of inviting his girl to do things, like there was a group activity that he and her were supposed to do, instead of saying, “Hey, we should get this done, we made a commitment to this.”

He says, “Well, when do you want to do this? When do you think we should do this?” And it doesn’t really sound like that big a deal. It’s just a question, right? But if you’re the leader, if you’re the guy that makes things happen, then you should be suggesting. It’s just like when you invite a girl on a date. There’s a difference between, “Hey, would you like to go out on a date with me?” Or “When would you like to date me? When would you like to go out?” It’s a question. It says it’s basically putting the leadership role back in the woman’s hands, instead of a more masculine way of, “Hey, we should get together for a drink sometime.”

Or, “Hey, we should get together and have dinner.” Or, “Hey, we should get together and go out sometime.” It presupposes when you say, “We should get together”, that of course she’s going to say yes, that’s more confident, it’s more expressive, it’s more dominant. Because the first scenario, you’re asking the woman to make the decision. The second scenario, you’ve already made the decision and you’re inviting her to join you. It’s a huge difference. And if you’re going to be the leader, if you want your girl to submit to you and to feel totally safe, she wants to follow your lead across the board.

Anytime you abdicate authority and put her in charge and make her your mommy and the decision maker. At some level, she’s going to resent it because she’s feminine. You’re supposed to be the masculine one. And so those little things like that build up over time, and then it gets to the point where the guy is always going to his girl to ask her to do this or to do that, or “Can we do this? Can we do that? Can I do this?” That kind of thing. And then he stops leading. And a lot of guys, the longer they’re in a relationship, what happens is they basically put the woman in charge and get to the point where, “Happy wife, happy life.”

And they would just make her the leader and go along with whatever she wants, because you don’t want her to get upset with you, and then you end up in a loveless, sexless marriage or relationship where you’re just kind of roommates and there’s no passion. So when you’re living apart. The other quote that I mentioned in the beginning is a Thích Nhất Hạnh quote I often repeat, which is, “You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” And so the other thing you got to keep in mind is women are like cats.

They tend to come and go. And when you go from being apart and not living together, then she’s always seeking your attention and validation. But when you come home to the same place every night and you see her, it’s over many months and years, you tend to kind of go back to sleep. And since women are always testing your strength, they’re always probing to see what you’re made of. It’s like you give a little bit here, you give a little bit there. And six months later, now you’re in a situation where your wife or your girlfriend makes all the decisions, she makes all the plans, and you’re always going to her basically asking her to be your mommy.

And women are going to resent it. They’re going to become bitchy. They’re not going to feel safe. The legs are going to close when those things happen. And so this guy that wrote the email has noticed a slight, subtle change. And because he’s been a good student, he knows The Book backwards and forwards he noticed that the passion is not where it once was. And so this is, you know, one of my favorite quotes that I’ve heard from Jocko Willink, which I think is great “Discipline equals freedom.”

And so in your relationship, your long term relationship, the longer you’re together, the more you’re going to, because what’s going to happen, I mean, this happens a lot of long term relationships. You’re fucking like rabbits when you first start dating. And then over time, as it’s less and less, what happens is you just kind of get lulled to sleep. You stop doing the little things. And people live together. And then you’ve been together for a few years. What oftentimes happens is, then sex goes from being 2 to 3 times a week, which is where it needs to be to be really healthy and passionate to once or twice a month.

And then oftentimes what guys do is they get busy, they get caught up in their career. They don’t want to spend money on dates because they’re trying to save money, that kind of thing. And they don’t date and court their wife or their girlfriend anymore. She starts to resent it because he doesn’t make time for her. She asks him, “hey, we haven’t been out in a while.” And instead of just making a date and saying, “you know what? You’re right, honey, thanks for calling my attention to that. I’m sorry I haven’t been as present for you lately, but we’re going to go out Friday night. I want you to wear that red dress or whatever.”

But what most guys do is they start rationalizing and making excuses. “Hey, we’re trying to save money. We got this going on, we got that going on.” And all the woman hears is, nothing’s going to change. So Ocean jumped down. You know, we talk about women are like cats, right? Come here. Women are like cats. What happens is, you know, I’ve mentioned this a bunch of times when I’m filming and is that she’ll hop out of my lap and then go roam and argh.

And nobody’s there yet. And so she’s like a little attention whore. Just like a girl. Right? And so I’m sitting here filming and not really paying attention to her and notice how she gets “argh.” Come here. Come here, baby. Okay, well stay over there. So now she wants to play. Well, it’s time to work. Come on. Jump! Come on, come on, jump up. Come on, come on, come on. You can do it. Jump up. See how that works?

So you just gotta let them do their thing. You got to let them roam. And they’ll come back when they want to come back. That’s a metaphor. I love having these puppies here, because Rocky doesn’t leave my side, ever. He just wants to stay with me. Her, every few minutes. She wants to get up. She wants to roam around. She wants to check out the apartment. When the girls are here, she wants to go out and say hi every few minutes, and then she comes back. And if I’m working and I don’t pay attention to her or I don’t notice her, what happens? She starts to kind of bark and get a little fussy and a little irritated. That’s how women tend to be.

And if you understand that, you go, “oh, I know what she needs. She wants me to stop, and be present and make sure she gets back up in the chair.” And now she’s, like, purring like a kitty cat, even though she’s not really a kitty cat. And she doesn’t purr, obviously. And so she’s happy. But in a few minutes she may jump out of my lap again. And what happens when she leaves, I don’t even notice it. I don’t pay attention to it. That’s where the “indifference makes the difference” comes in. And you can learn a lot from watching animals, especially cats.

And, you know, in our case, we’ve got a male dog and a female dog and we think Ocean is actually got knocked up already because they had sex once and they haven’t had sex after that. And usually that means the deed was done, the mission was accomplished. And so in a microcosm as a man, I’m here filming this video. I’m focused on my purpose, and I got a female dog that can be distracting and can be kind of annoying because girls can be annoying, and quite frankly, when you’re treating her right, they need a lot of work. Women are a lot of fucking work.

And where guys go wrong in long term relationships is they get focused on the mission and the purpose. And when the girl comes and hisses or barks or, “hey, you’re not paying attention to me or, hey, we haven’t been on a date in a while. Oh, I got this, I got that we’re trying to save money.” And then nothing changes. Whereas I had to kind of stop a little bit and pay attention to her and play with her a little bit. And then she hopped back up, and now she’s licking my leg right now because she’s happy. It’s just kind of a microcosm that’s just the way they are. That’s feminine energy, really.

And so once you understand how feminine energy is kind of chaotic and masculine energy is very stoic, it’s very calm, It’s very relaxed. The way Rocky is. He doesn’t fuss. He doesn’t cause any problems. He may bark if he hears a noise or whatever, but other than that, he’s pretty chill, dude. So be like Rocky if you’re a guy, and instead of getting angry at your girl, like when Ocean is barking at you, when you’re trying to make a video, you got to be present and you’re going to invite her back into your world. Be amazed, be bewildered, be enchanted by the feminine energy.

But at the end of the day, as a man, you’re still (focused) you got the hammer down. You’re still moving forward despite what your girl does. When she disappears, you really don’t even notice very much. You’re indifferent to it because you got shit to do. But then when she comes back and is basically, “hey, pay attention to me, it’s like, hey, babe, how you been? I missed you, it’s so good to see you. I’m glad you’re here.” And be present with her, Because if you’re not present, they get bitchier and they complain more like just like you saw with Ocean. She kept barking at me more and being more difficult. And you have to be patient.

Love is patient. Love is allowing. You’re allowing her to be kind of emotional, kind of a nuisance, kind of a pain. But you don’t ever get irritated. You can’t get mad at her because then she thinks you don’t care. And so the key, like when you’ve been living together like this guy has, is to get too caught up in being indifferent where you stop dating and courting her, or what oftentimes happens because, again, people are coming to me. They don’t typically come to me because things are going great in their life. They come to me because shit has gone sideways. And usually the guys do all the same things. They stop dating and courting the girl and they don’t make her feel heard and understood.

They’re not present with her. And so it happens very slowly over time. And another thing the guys often do is when the girl starts to bitch. “Oh, you’re always hanging out with your friends. Oh, you’re always at the office late. Oh, we never. You never make time for me.” Women tend to speak in hyperbole. And they will nag you, or they’ll bring these things up. And we interpret it as nagging. And all they are really saying is, “hey, pay attention to me.” So stop. Be present for a little bit. Give her attention, just like I did with Ocean, even though at first she was kind of fussy and didn’t want to jump back up in the chair, I still was present with her and kind of paused for a little bit, and then she hopped up and now she’s happy to be up here.

Whereas what guys do in relationship is they just kind of, “oh, I’m busy. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to do that. Oh, I just got my nails done. It’s like I’m busy.” I’m making a video. Right. And then she’s like, oh, he doesn’t love me, doesn’t care about me anymore. And like her, if I were to continue to ignore her, she would have really become mouthy and really started whining a bunch and really started being obnoxious because it’s like, pay attention to me. Pay attention to me, daddy, daddy, pay attention to me. You’re her daddy. It’s like the little girl that goes and plays, comes back. “Daddy, do you love me?” I was like, of course, baby, I’m so glad you’re here. So just remember that.

But like I said, another thing that guys often do is when the woman nags or complains that you don’t spend time with her, they go, “okay, well, I’ll stop going to see my mom.” Or, “I’m going to give up my Star Wars collection.” Or “I’m going to stop playing video games. All right? I’m going to stop the guy’s poker night.” You know, that kind of thing. So you can’t give up the things that make you a well-rounded person, because then what happens is then you’re always at home because you gave up your hobbies, your interests. You stop visiting your family. You let your friendships go. You give up your stamp collection. Your Star Wars collection. You stop playing video games. You gave up your poker night with the boys.

You even stopped going to the gym because you always complained that you liked working out more than spending time with her. And little by little, the things she nags about. You give up these things thinking that’s going to make her happy. And then reality is that down the road you don’t even recognize yourself anymore. You lose yourself in the relationship. And so I know that was a long diatribe and a long example, but it’s important because this is something that’s going to happen to every single dude that’s watching this. You’re going to get lazy. You’re going to get complacent. You’re going to kind of fall back asleep. You’re not going to do the little things that you once did. And the key is to remain aware and to be present and to recognize when you need to give your girl attention and when you need to be indifferent and keep moving forward and keep the hammer down.

Viewer Email:

Good morning Coach,

I hope this email finds you well. I’ve been following your work since 2019, read the book about 25 times, and truly admire what you do. My girlfriend and I have been together for three years, and our relationship has been amazing, she’s a great communicator, easygoing, and a dream partner. We moved in together this July, and while organizing the household and balancing our time was initially tricky, we’ve adapted well. We’re communicating effectively, and I make sure she feels heard and understood, everything is textbook so far. We still go out on dates once or twice a week, and everything seems fine on the surface.

So he’s still dating and courting her. He’s doing the little things, which is important. But now they’re living together. And absence really does make the heart grow fonder. So this is why it’s super important to make sure you still make time for your friends. You still make time for your hobbies, your interests, your family, the things that are important to you. Because if she comes home and you’re not there because you’re taking care of something, it gives her a chance to miss you. Whereas if you’re always at home and she’s there, she becomes very familiar.

She doesn’t have time and space away from you to wonder about you, to miss you, to think about you. For her feelings to grow. So you’ve got to understand now that you’re living together, that’s still important. What creates attraction is what creates attraction. And so that’s being focused, being disciplined, continuing to be the leader, not doing what my client was doing, which was instead of inviting her to do things, or holding the two of them accountable to the things they committed to each other, to then asking her, “hey, when do you want to do this? Hey, when should we get together and do this?”

And putting her in the leadership role. Because those little things happen little by little, and then you get kids in the mix, and next thing you know, the woman is running things. She’s butched her hair, she’s gained weight. She doesn’t wear makeup anymore. She doesn’t do the little things that she used to do when she felt safe, when she felt relaxed, when she was in her feminine energy.

We don’t have any issues in our relationship, we’re happy, and she’s constantly telling me how much she loves me and that I’m her man. My only concern is a subtle shift in our bedroom dynamic. We’re currently at 1 to 2 times per week.

Well, it should be 2 to 3 times a week, ideally.

And while the passion during those moments is still there, it feels like the lead-up has changed. She has two “moods” in our relationship: one is affectionate, cuddly, and loving (her dominant mode), and the other is flirty, sexy, and playful. To be fair, she’s always leaned more toward the cuddly side, she’s a natural cuddle bug, maybe partly because she’s younger. She’s 22.

Well, again, if you’re doing things right, she’s stuck to you like a suckerfish. And it’s always your job. Because remember what happens. What does The Book say? When a woman starts touching you and rubbing up against you, you escalate from there. And so there’s going to be times because you’re not used to this, because she hasn’t been with you all the time. You didn’t live together. But there’s going to be times when she comes up and she rubs up against you that you’re not going to feel horny.

Maybe you just had great sex the other night and you’re kind of worn out and you’re tired. It’s just, this is what happens when you first start dating and you live apart. You know, you might fuck 4 or 5 times a day, and then now it’s like 1 to 2 times a week because you’ve had her over and over and over over several years. And so the thing is, is long term relationships. “Discipline equals freedom”, borrowing the Jocko Willink quote. Is that there’s going to be times when your girls affectionate in the back of your mind, you should be going, you know what? We only had sex once this week, so.

And your job is to keep her sexually satisfied. So when she comes over and she starts cuddling with you and caressing you. And you’ve only had sex one time that week, and now it’s Friday night and you don’t necessarily feel horny or like you want to bust a nut, but you notice she’s being very affectionate. It’s just like you notice with Ocean. It’s like I kept focusing on the video I invited her to hop back up in the chair, but she barked at me. I didn’t just ignore her. All right, you can just jump up. And then I just pay attention to the video because then she’d bark more. And so the key is to recognize they want your attention all the time.

And if you’re in a long term relationship, and even though you don’t really feel like having sex, you think to yourself, I only made her cum once this week. I’m really tired. My back’s kind of sore, whatever. But I need to make her come some more. So you just start slowly seducing her. I mean, if she comes over and starts touching you, you slowly reciprocate and seduce her. And you got to keep in the back of your mind. Like this guy, we’re only having sex 1 or 2 times a week. But she’s always wanting to cuddle and touch you. And you gently caress or bump her nipple. Or as you’re sitting there watching a movie together, Netflix and chilling, gently rub your hand accidentally across her nipple or in between her legs, or you start tickling her clitoris through her pants with your fingers.

And if she closes her eyes and she starts to, “hm”, she starts to enjoy it, even though you don’t really feel like busting a nut or having sex. It’s about her love. You go to a relationship to give, and so your goal is to give her some more orgasms because you realize we only had sex once this week. Ideally, three times is great. Two should be the minimum. Even though you don’t feel like having sex, you should make her cum a bunch. Maybe you just pull her pants off and you eat her out, and you make her cum over and over, and then you have to finish inside her or whatever. But you got to do those things because the longer you’re together, like I said, as a guy, you know, just if you’ve been with somebody for several years, you’re going to usually be okay with once a week, maybe once every week and a half or two weeks.

And if you do that, she’s going to think, “he doesn’t care about me as much. He’s not as passionate about me as he used to be.” And so women are going to misbehave a little bit. They’re going to become a little bit here. They’re going to become a little more distant. And so as a man, you got to think about that, being disciplined. I mean, this guy is doing everything great in his relationship. But if his girlfriend is coming over and being a cuddle bug and he’s not seducing her when she does that, well, if you’re always turning her on and you’re always making her cum. Well, every time she gets near you, she’s going to think about cuming.

But if it’s something that only happens every once in a while, or maybe once a week or every other week, then it’s not that big a deal. You make her cum more, she’s going to want to cum more. So you got to even when you don’t feel like it. So there’s going to be lots of times when you’re in a long term relationship. The younger guys are not used to this yet just because they haven’t been in been in a relationship for years, many years, long enough to experience this. But you’re going to be okay with going without sex. You’re not going to feel like going out on dates. You’re not going to feel like planning dates especially when you throw kids in the mix.

But you have to do these things. And so you have to recognize that when she comes near you and starts touching you in the back of your mind, you should be thinking, ideally, sex should be happening 2 to 3 times a week. And so if it’s not happening, that’s on you to be the leader, to make it happen. And if you’re having sex with her 2 to 3 times a week where you’ve kind of initiated it, what you’ll notice is she’ll start initiating it more and you might even have sex more often than that. So that’s just one little subtle thing that you got to make sure that you do. It’s not on her to seduce you.

It’s to make sure that she’s satisfied emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically. It is your job to make your woman cum like a waterfall. It’s just part of the deal. And the longer you’re together, you’re just not going to need it as much. You’re not going to want it as much. But. And she’ll notice that and she’ll feel that. And so if you want to keep her happy, you want to keep her in love. You got to keep your girl fucked properly. That’s the bottom line. A big problem in our society is there’s a lot of women and they’re not happy about it.

However, I’ve noticed her seductive, playful side showing up even less than before, and the balance has shifted from about 50/50 to 75/25. She’s still deeply attracted to me and very loving, but I find myself missing more of that playful, flirty energy.

Everything else is going great between us, it’s just this one area that feels like it’s going a bit “meh.” I’d love to hear your thoughts on where this shift might be coming from and if there’s anything I can do to reignite that dynamic.

Thanks for all that you do.

Best regards,

Bob

Well, again, you’re the leader. It starts with you. So I would say more than likely you’ve backed off a little bit because you got used to living together. The other thing to keep in mind is are you giving up your hobbies or are you giving up your up your interests? Are you still seeing your family? Are you still seeing your friends? Are you making time to go to the gym and do the little things, even when you don’t feel like it. Because what you know if you saw the end of the podcast I did with Kwong, who owns a CrossFit gym, it’s like people come in and they work out and they get fit and in shape and when they’re single.

And then when they get into a relationship, usually within 90 days, neither one of the two of them come in anymore and they just let themselves go in a year and a half. Two years later, both of them rejoined the gym because they’ve broken up. The guy gets fit and in shape again. The girl gets fit and in shape again, and 90 to 120 days later, they meet somebody else, typically, often in the gym. They start a relationship and they slowly fade away again. It’s like that’s where the discipline equals freedom. There’s going to be times where you don’t want to fuck your girl. You’re not interested in sex.

Your balls are already dry. She comes over and she’s rubbing up against you. You got to keep in the back of your mind. Ideally, you want to be having sex 2 to 3 times a week and making your cum multiple times. It’s super important because if you don’t, the intimacy will start to die. Because when you were first started dating, you really wanted her bad because you weren’t used to having her. But the longer you’re together, the less you tend to fuck.

That’s just the course of things. So at some point in your relationship, it’s going to get to the point where, you’re going to, it’s like going to the gym. How often do you really want to go to the gym or run a couple miles, or to eat a healthy meal and just say, “I’m going to have a few beers and a pizza? Fuck it.” It’s discipline equals freedom. Everything you want is on the other side of discipline, and that includes making sure that you give your girl a proper seeing to.

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