This Is What Causes Us To Feel (And Lose!) The Spark In A New Relationship

You spot him across the room. He’s cute, tall, and just your type. Your heart does a little flip, and you smooth your hair, wanting to put your best foot forward. Then, he catches your eye, and it does an even bigger flip. He smiles a handsome smile, and you can’t help but smile back as you feel the butterflies dance across your stomach. You do a quick check in the mirror to make sure you don’t have anything stuck in your teeth. Later, he comes over to talk to you, and you’re hoping he doesn’t notice that your palms are sweating like crazy. As soon as you exchange numbers, you count down the minutes until you hear from him.

You felt that spark – that dramatic, exhilarating, enchanting spark that you feel in the beginning of a new relationship. Every time you see him, you get flustered all over again. Hearing his name makes your stomach do a backflip. Even thinking about him feels risky. What if he knows you've been thinking about him?

We all want to feel this kind of spark with someone. Feeling it is our way of knowing the relationship has potential, as far as attraction is concerned. It tells us to go discover more about him to decipher if moving to the next level is wise. But we always rely on that initial spark to inform whether or not we see someone in a romantic light.

But what exactly is that spark? And why does it make us feel so excited, yet on edge at the same time?

The Spark Is More Than Just Excitement

We all assume that the spark we feel is just a mix of fun, thrilling emotions. We’re captivated by this person, excited to know more about him, gripped by the thought of falling in love with him. But what if there’s more to the spark than just excitement? What if stress is involved?

Author, podcaster, and life coach Jay Shetty says that the spark we feel isn’t all due to excitement: “The research shows that when you first meet someone, you're not only experiencing excitement, but you’re experiencing stress, chemically. So you see someone and you think, ‘They’re so attractive. Do they think I’m attractive?’ … What we’re saying is ‘the spark’ is excitement and stress at the same time. There’s this tension that feels really unnerving, but in a fun way.”

Why Does the Spark Begin To Fade?

That spark, which is so intense in the beginning, inevitably begins to fade away over time. We might assume that we’ve lost attraction, interest, or excitement once that feeling dissipates. We wonder if we really liked him in the first place, or if we were ever all that attracted to him. Because doesn’t the absence of the spark mean we’re not into him anymore?

Not necessarily. Shetty says the spark actually fades because our stress levels are going down: “As you start to spend more time with someone – one month goes by, two months go by – their company reduces your stress. So when we say ‘The spark went away,’ all that actually went away was the stress.”

Why We Shouldn’t Always Break Up after the Spark Is Gone 

Sometimes the spark really does fade away, and we come to realize that the person we were head over heels for a few months ago really isn’t a good match. Maybe it took us a while to notice the little red flags, to step out of our love haze and see how not perfect for us he is. But does this mean we should always break things off once we feel the spark fade?

Shetty doesn’t think so. He says that because our stress levels go down, we’ll feel less of what we’ve come to know as “the spark,” but this is actually not always a bad thing: “You now actually feel comforted by their company because they no longer stress you out. Because they make you feel safe, they make you feel comfortable, you feel at ease with each other. And so we keep chasing stress, just like we do it in work. We know people that are addicted to the stress of work. We do that with love. We just want to be with someone new all the time because we enjoy that stress. But that’s not a healthy addiction.”

Closing Thoughts

There are certainly times when, after the spark fades, we’re able to see all that’s not right with the relationship. But we shouldn’t see the spark fading as evidence that we won’t be happy in a relationship. Losing that “stress spark” can actually point to a healthier relationship that has the potential to last.

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