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"  I feel strange admitting this, but seeing my husband yell at someone who&amp;#039;d stolen our cab turned me on. Before you suggest that I try psychotherapy while he attends anger-management classes, let me explain that he is not the yell-at-a-cab-stealer type. He&amp;#039;s not even your ordinary make-a-fuss type. A documentary filmmaker who gets his fill of tense situations all over the world, he&amp;#039;s always telling me, the hothead, &amp;quot;Let it go.&amp;quot; But on this night four years ago, I was nine months pregnant and feeling sick. I had been waiting for a man with a small dog to exit the cab when a woman hopped in from the other side. Everyone--first me, then my husband, then the man with the small dog--explained that I&amp;#039;d been waiting. She shrugged. We pointed out my pregnancy, in case she was blind in both eyes or just thought I was overweight in a way that looked exactly like being pregnant. She said she didn&amp;#039;t care. That&amp;#039;s what set him off. It was as if a pressurized chamber in his brain--one that had remained sealed through a decade of New York City&amp;#039;s bad subway commutes and mouthy masses-- finally blew. He cursed. He told her she was selfish and pathetic. There was even something that sounded like growling. The woman refused to leave, and we took the subway home. But I didn&amp;#039;t feel as sick anymore. In fact, I was giddy. My husband, from whom I&amp;#039;d never seen even a flash of fury, had gotten angry in public. I had no idea he could do that! What else could he do? Rescue puppies from burning buildings? Stop criminals with his laser eyes? The laundry? For weeks afterward, I was filled with weird, choked-up longing whenever I saw him. I rubbed my belly and thought, Kid, you have no idea who your father is, as if I&amp;#039;d somehow spawned with a superhero. Here&amp;#039;s the thing about settling into long-term love: It&amp;#039;s a little sad that you&amp;#039;ve passed the &amp;quot;can&amp;#039;t wait to see you tonight&amp;quot; stage, but you&amp;#039;ve also made it through the &amp;quot;struggling with the newness of this thing&amp;quot; stage. Your 22-year-old self would be shocked by how much you&amp;#039;ve come to prize simple reliability in your relationship. But sometimes the butterflies still show up at the weirdest moments, cutting your breath short and reminding you why you chose your partner in the first place--or, even more exciting, giving you a new reason to love him. For Anna Block, it happened most recently when she and her husband of five years were cleaning up after dinner: &amp;quot;We were talking about something banal when he turned to me and said, &amp;#039;You really are my best friend.&amp;#039; And then I just felt this rush.&amp;quot; Says PR executive Jennifer Foley Shields, &amp;quot;When my daughter was moving from the infant room to the toddler room at day care, I caught my husband giving her a pep talk at breakfast. He explained that some of her friends who had moved earlier might not seem as friendly at first. &amp;#039;But you&amp;#039;ll learn the ropes,&amp;#039; he told her. It was so sweet--and so unexpectedly attractive.&amp;quot; While conventional wisdom tells us that these pulse-racing moments are trivial little extras in the grand scheme of things, it turns out they&amp;#039;re actually critical to a happy relationship. &amp;quot;Most research on long-term relationships has focused on conflict,&amp;quot; says Terri Orbuch, Ph.D., the author of 5 Simple Steps to Take Your Marriage From Good to Great. &amp;quot;But studies suggest that boredom may have just as big an impact on happiness over time.&amp;quot; Orbuch and a team of researchers did a 16-year study on 123 couples who were married in the same year. Couples who reported being bored at year seven were more likely to be unsatisfied by the end of the study than the couples who&amp;#039;d had similar levels of conflict but low boredom. So what can you do if you think the crush is completely gone? Experts and regular ol&amp;#039; partnered-and-happy people have lots of advice on how to bring on a hot spell. First, simply try seeing your husband through other people&amp;#039;s eyes, says publishing exec Jennie Tung. She&amp;#039;s been married for eight years, and says discovering that her husband&amp;#039;s coworkers think he&amp;#039;s a rock star triggered a Belieber-caliber infatuation. &amp;quot;After a year at a new job, he told me he was happy with the annual review his coworkers had given him, so I asked to read it,&amp;quot; Jennie says. &amp;quot;As I pored over the seven-page document describing him as a brilliant businessman, a person with &amp;#039;intelligence, integrity, and grace,&amp;#039; I was blown away. While we&amp;#039;d been muddling through the day-to-day minutiae, he&amp;#039;d been quietly kicking ass at work. Seeing him in this new light put me a bit in awe of him, and it&amp;#039;s lasted.&amp;quot; Sadly, most of us don&amp;#039;t get a written report of our husband&amp;#039;s virtues, but the next time your friend says, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re so lucky to have a guy like him,&amp;quot; really take in her reasons, and celebrate them.  Another way to zap yourself into the infatuation zone? Fake it till you make it with some intentional touchiness. It worked for Shana MacDonald Davis, a yoga instructor from Seattle who&amp;#039;s been married for 13 years and says that in the beginning, whenever her husband said something shockingly brilliant, she&amp;#039;d flip into crush mode. &amp;quot;I assumed that energy would always be present, but after a few years it started to wane,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It took going through a couple of periods without much affection for us to realize that sometimes you have to make time to cuddle or have sex even if you&amp;#039;re not in the mood. It can spark the alchemy, and believe me, you&amp;#039;re always happy afterward!&amp;quot; The single biggest recommendation from experts and couples: Learn something new together. A recent study shows that the more a person feels like they&amp;#039;re learning and growing with their partner (a process called &amp;quot;self-expansion&amp;quot;), the more satisfied they are with that relationship. According to one of the authors, Dr. Gary Lewandowski, the need to broaden our horizons is inherent, and having a partner who can help you do that is incredibly gratifying. Now, this doesn&amp;#039;t mean you should take a cue from The Bachelor and start couples&amp;#039; skydiving. Aleeta Lee, who&amp;#039;s been with her husband for 19 years, says that when the juice started to drain from their high-energy love life, she and her husband made a point to begin doing more fun things, big and small, together. &amp;quot;Sometimes we meet up for an unexpected drink after work, or we walk around the city without a plan, like we did before we had our kid. Recently, we took a wine- and cheese-tasting class, and I got a charge out of seeing him get into it. And we got to drink a lot of wine, which never hurts.&amp;quot; Another crazy-simple tactic: Change your outlook on the things that annoy you about your other half. Monica Beilanko, whose popular blog &amp;quot;The Girl Who&amp;quot; documents how she and her musician husband met and married within weeks, tells me, &amp;quot;I had eagles in my stomach. Pterodactyls! I remember watching his forearms moving as he played guitar onstage with his band and I was just a goner. The first time he talked to me, I nearly fainted.&amp;quot; Now, eight years and two kids later, she says sometimes it takes an act of will to bring those feelings on. &amp;quot;When he&amp;#039;s said something numskulled and I&amp;#039;m spiraling down the angry tunnel of all the things that bother me, I try to change my inner dialogue. I think about the great things he&amp;#039;s done, like building me a cool barn-wood headboard for Christmas. And it&amp;#039;s hard to hate the guy who feeds your babies pancakes while impersonating Michael Bolton. I&amp;#039;m not saying it brings full-on butterflies--but moths.&amp;quot; Monica&amp;#039;s definitely on to something. A study by anthropologist Helen Fisher, Ph.D., that compared the brains of people who remained in love with their partners to those who hadn&amp;#039;t, showed a lack of activity in the prefrontal cortex--the area of the brain associated with critical thinking--in the former group. Meaning, the people who stayed happy did so by maintaining &amp;quot;positive illusions,&amp;quot; i.e., not being overly critical. Say you&amp;#039;re aggravated at your husband&amp;#039;s habit of talking to strangers, or how long it takes him to do simple things, or that he can&amp;#039;t wash clothing without destroying it. Try to remember that those traits might also be responsible for his openness, thoroughness, or willingness to try things he&amp;#039;s not good at--qualities you admire and rely on. Ironically, sometimes it&amp;#039;s that very reliability that sets off the sparks. Sara Voorhees, a movie critic whose 43-year marriage continues to blossom, recalls how seeing March of the Penguins led to a eureka moment: &amp;quot;There is a part of the movie where the mother has to transfer the egg to the father. It&amp;#039;s a crazy process--slippery and dangerous and so many of the eggs just don&amp;#039;t make the transfer. But once that father has the egg, he really has it. He huddles over it through a month of freezing winds and storms and everything else Mother Nature can throw his way. And I remember watching this onscreen and thinking, That Emperor penguin is my husband. That is exactly what he did, what he does, what he will always do for us. That is the hallmark of everything that has kept me loving him for all these years.&amp;quot; So maybe you&amp;#039;ll get a thrill from seeing your partner in a brand-new way, or maybe you&amp;#039;ll feel a jolt when he&amp;#039;s his truest self. Whatever the cause, be sure to recognize that rush of lust and longing when it happens. And when you get home, do something about it. &amp;quot;We were talking about something banal when he turned to me and said, &amp;#039;You really are my best friend.&amp;#039; I felt this rush.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s hard to hate the guy who feeds your babies pancakes while impersonating Michael Bolton.&amp;quot; And all he did was remember to get milk...A late-onset crush may inspire you to revisit high school tricks--backseat, anyone? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/relationships/advice/a14285/fall-in-love-with-your-husband-again/>