It’s been a big year for Neil Rosenthal.
The Front Range’s go-to relationship guru whose syndicated column runs in The Denver Post, published his first book, inspired by thousands of stories shared by readers over the years.
He also got married again, at age 66.
Rosenthal met his future wife, Roni Atlas, when she wrote him a letter — not for relationship advice but to find out if he was single. It’s a real-life meet-cute story that the couple joyfully shared in this summer.
More recently, the licensed marriage and family therapist took a break from his busy Westminster practice to talk about his book, the secrets of successful relationships and what convinced him to take the plunge again in his own life.
Q: What does it mean to keep the flame alive?
A: You have to know how to put effort into keeping a relationship vital, staying connected, being a sweetheart, being receptive, keeping your relationship skills sharpened. A relationship requires continuous effort and many people get in trouble because they fall in love, they get married, have a lot of sex — or they fall in love, have a lot of sex, get married, however they choose to do it — and then gradually, they quit thinking that there’s something being asked of them other than what they already know. … The best you can ever be is an excellent “student wife.”
Q: A student wife?
A: A student has the mindset of a beginner. The attitude of a beginner is, ‘I don’t know, teach me.’ If you have the mindset of a beginner, you will take feedback, you’ll listen to suggestions, you’ll hear when requests are made, as they inevitably will be, and you’ll be responsive because you’re trying to get the job right. If you act like a wife, you may not do that. The same is true of a husband.
Q: So why do people stop listening?
A: We all get complacent — “I’ve been married eight months, I know this gig, I know what to do, I know what he wants, I know what pleases my wife, I’ve had enough experience with her.” And maybe largely that’s actually true — it’s just that that’s not enough.
A woman says to a man, “I want us to be more social with more people. We’re too isolated and too alone.” The man, being more introverted and just being busy and not having a lot of interest in the whole thing, just doesn’t hear it or doesn’t respond. So, she says it again in a different way. She says, ‘I would like us to make more social engagements with people.’ He argues with it or doesn’t argue with it but doesn’t act on it. She acts on it and then they go somewhere but he doesn’t enjoy it and he comes back complaining.
The message is given that he’s not interested, but the message is also given that she is interested. Sooner or later, she grows fed up and starts her own connections with her own people, one of whom may be a male colleague at work. When he finds out about that, he freaks, saying ‘How could you? This is like an emotional affair.’ But if he had been paying closer attention, he also would have noticed he’s been given the feedback that this is something she has really been asking for a long period of time.
Q: So, initially, the woman wanted it to be something they did together, he rebuffed her and she ended up doing it by herself.
A: There may have been a lot of things in between, but the end result is she went in an entirely different direction to get those needs met and then he freaks and becomes jealous and threatened, for the very simple reason that he wasn’t really paying close attention and he wasn’t being a student husband. He wasn’t listening for what was really being asked.
So many people have terrible intimacy skills. Almost everyone is good at courtship, because in courtship you are endlessly fascinated with the person sitting across from you. There’s the beginning chemistry of a relationship, which is awfully seductive. But that’s not how it is years and years into a relationship for most people.
Q: What skills are people are lacking?
A: The most common complaint marriage therapists tend to hear when they see a couple for the first time is “We can’t communicate well.” Skill No. 1 is good communication.
Skill No. 2 would be to have extremely good conflict resolution, problem solving, compromising and negotiation skills.
A third: Absence of malice and assumption of goodwill.
A fourth: How important am I to you? Don’t tell me, show me. And then tell me.
Skill No. 5: Make important to you that which is important to me.
Skill No. 6: Walking into the puddle with your intimate partner …
No. 7: Endearments.
And then: Affection. Affection is the aphrodisiac that many people lose. There are a fair number of couples who come into an office like mine, and they’re married forever but there’s little or no sex. When you dive beneath the surface of why that might be, what you hear is they’ve lost being affectionate with each other a long time ago. Affection is the aphrodisiac, it is the heart of what keeps the chemistry working — just affectionate touch, not sexual touch.
And one more: Romance. Grownups — I’m talking about people who have been around in adulthood for many decades — tend to lose romantic gestures, sweetheart things, things you just do to be a sweetheart. … If you leave romance out, and especially if you leave romance and affection out, you so typically fall apart sexually as well.
Q: What can you do if you feel that flame flickering?
A: First, you could go back to those nine different skill sets. What have you been doing with communication? What have you been doing with affection? How about romance? How about endearments?
Another step: Often people don’t come to marriage therapists until there’s a crisis, until someone talks about moving out or maybe we should separate or somebody’s discovered having a texting or sexting relationship with someone else. That blows the cover and people are instantly in crisis and then people come in.
But that’s not the best time to come in for marriage counseling. The best time to come in is when you feel like you’ve lost the vitality in the relationship and you’re just existing. You’ve lost that sense that you’re well connected.
Q: You recently remarried, at age 66. What made you decide to take the plunge?
A: I have multiple answers for that question, but I’ll give you one. I wanted to put in practice and make for the most amazing, sweet, loving, connected, romantic, intimate relationship I could create and be a participant in. I wanted that for me. I don’t just want to guide everyone else to do it — I want it myself. I don’t just want to be the expert for everyone else. I want the experience for myself. I had come out of several relationships that had not made it, and I wanted to die happy.
Q: What’s the secret to your marriage?
A: I will never graduate. I will always be a student husband and never the master in my own home.
Q: Which is not what you’d expect if you heard “Oh, she’s married to a couples counselor.”
A: Right. I am the relationship expert and I will always and forevermore be a student husband. I will never be the master. Hopefully that will keep me healthy and wise.
Q: So, how has married life been treating you?
A: I would say perfect. Married life fits me beautifully. And for the record, I felt married before I married her. I felt married and I acted married before we officially got married. I believe I’ve acted like a married man for the entire bulk of our relationship even though we only recently got married.
Q: How long have you two been together?
A: Just under five years. and we were thrown together very quickly in our first year. I’m not sure we would have done it quite like this had the fire not occurred. But the fire threw us together. I had no home. We were of a different order of relationship pretty early on.
Q: What’s your advice for fellow newlyweds?
A: Stay connected. Make sure you’re using the intimacy skills that I spoke about. That’s what’s going to keep you connected over time.
Emilie Rusch: 303-954-2457, erusch@denverpost.com or twitter.com/emilierusch
