The secret to lasting love depends on how willing couples are to keep discovering new sides of each other. Here’s how novelty ensures this, according to research.
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There’s an unmistakable momentum to new relationships. Couples stay up too late talking. They try new restaurants. They create rituals without even realizing it. They fall in love. They build something from nothing, and the process itself feels exciting. Eventually, though, if things go well, relationships stabilize.
Partners move in together. They build routines. They get married, adopt pets, have children, merge responsibilities, establish careers. Life becomes more predictable. The thrills that once fueled their infatuation fade out, and a sense of security fades in. Although security is one of the greatest achievements a relationship can reach, it can also create an uncomfortable realization for many couples: things feel a little… boring. Not bad or unhealthy in any way. Just familiar.
The problem is that people often mistake this feeling for falling out of love, when in reality, they may simply be experiencing the natural consequence of too much predictability. Stability itself is not the enemy of passion. In fact, the healthiest long-term relationships are built on stability. The issue is what happens when couples stop exploring new things and experiencing life in new ways together.
That’s why, once the honeymoon phase fades and steadiness takes its place, there’s one thing that becomes especially important for keeping love alive: novelty.
Novelty refers to experiences that feel new, fresh, unfamiliar or psychologically stimulating. In a foundational 1986 study published in The Journal of Genetic Psychology, researchers identified the three dimensions that shape how humans experience novelty: recency, frequency, and probability.
In simple terms, this framework posits that something will feel novel depending on how recently we experienced it, how often we experience it, and how expected it is. But contrary to intuition, this doesn’t necessarily mean couples need to be constantly impulsive; for many, this isn’t financially or logistically feasible. It just means couples need to interrupt predictability often enough.
Here’s how those three dimensions tend to manifest in romantic relationships:
Human beings are deeply adaptive. We acclimate to routines quickly, even positive ones. This is why something that once felt exciting can become familiar over time, and that familiarity is what turns something good into something ordinary. But novelty pulls us back into awareness of how much there’s still left to enjoy in life. It forces partners to pay attention again to both the experience itself and to each other.
The power of novelty is a well-established sphere of research on relationship satisfaction. A 2020 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, for instance, found that couples who engaged in novel activities together experienced greater relationship satisfaction.
Interestingly, the study discovered that this wasn’t only because novelty created excitement or fun. The strongest effect came from increased feelings of security, trust and reliance within the relationship. This is a finding that surprises many because novelty and security are often framed as antithetical: one sounds adventurous and unpredictable, while the other sounds stable and safe.
In reality, however, healthy relationships need both novelty and security; one doesn’t necessarily cancel out the other. This works because novel experiences require a degree of coordination, communication and problem-solving — factors that influence how reliable partners will seem in future unfamiliar situations. So, in pursuing novelty, partners are reminded that they can safely, securely and predictably explore the world together.
Imagine, for instance, a couple that’s decided to take a dance class, despite neither of them knowing what they’re doing. At first, there’s awkwardness. They laugh at themselves. They miss steps. One partner gets a little embarrassed, but the other lightens the mood and keeps encouraging them.
To outsiders, this just looks like two partners who occasionally step on one another’s toes. But for the partners themselves, something profound is happening at the psychological level: they’re learning firsthand how the other person behaves under uncertainty. They’re discovering whether or not their partner can be patient, encouraging, playful, adaptable or reassuring in uncharted territories. They’re creating a shared memory that, despite how vulnerable it feels at first, is rooted in exploration rather than routine.
That experience of exploration is what ultimately enhances feelings of emotional safety. Novelty essentially creates opportunities for couples to rediscover one another outside of the rigid roles their daily life imposes on them. Instead of simply being co-parents, roommates, financial partners or people coordinating schedules, they become adventurers together once again — just as they likely were in the beginning.
The good news is that novelty doesn’t require expensive vacations or dramatic reinventions. In a 2017 study from the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, researchers found that when couples experience relational boredom, engaging in novel and growth-oriented activities together helps to restore relationship quality and reduce feelings of stagnation.
The researchers interpret this through the lens of self-expansion theory: the idea that human beings are fundamentally motivated to grow throughout life, and close relationships become one of the primary ways we experience that growth. When couples stop learning, exploring or expanding together, the relationship starts to feel boring, regardless of whether or not they still love each other.
As such, the primary goal of introducing novelty into a relationship is simply to reintroduce aliveness. Some simple ways couples can do this include:
Simply sitting beside each other while scrolling on separate phones isn’t enough to reap the benefits of self-expansion. Every once in a while, you need to have experiences that demand a different level of engagement, curiosity and interaction than what everyday life does.
This is precisely why people call variety the spice of life. Long-term love was never meant to survive on chemistry alone. Stable relationships are beautiful precisely because they provide consistency, trust and emotional safety. But if couples stop introducing freshness into that stability, comfort will feel monotonous.
The goal of novelty shouldn’t be to recreate the honeymoon phase forever; that phase is unsustainable by design. Instead, you just need to find new, creative ways to keep getting to know each other over time. New conversations. New experiences. New perspectives. New sides of the person you thought you already knew completely.
Think your love is thriving, or is it merely running on routine? Take my science-backed Relationship Flourishing Scale to see how healthy and fulfilling your bond feels compared to others’.
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