This psychology-based insight reframes romance beyond grand gestures and popular narratives.
3 Quiet Forms Of Romance You May Be Overlooking In Your Relationship
Not all romance looks cinematic. Some of the most stabilizing expressions of love are subtle, practical, and deeply meaningful.
By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | Last Updated:
Romance and pragmatism are often framed as two extremes of a spectrum. Romance, on one end, is framed as being impulsive and intoxicating, and pragmatism, on the other end, is seen as its sensible, practical and antithetical counterpart. If we were to trust the pop culture narrative at face value, romance would be love sans logic, and pragmatism is what if left once the feelings wear off.
Thinking in this binary shrinks the experience of love altogether. In reality, the most enduring bonds are rarely sustained by chemistry alone, nor by practicality stripped of emotion. To sustain a relationship long-term, there needs to be a good balance between the two.
Romance activates novelty and desire, while pragmatism stabilizes attachment. When one eclipses the other, relationships tend to either burn out or gradually wither. The task, then, is not choosing one over the other, but learning how to let them coexist without canceling each other out.
Here are three ways to balance pragmatism with romance, without turning love into a spreadsheet or dismissing responsibility as unromantic.
1. Psychological Flexibility Is Romance
The "shoulds" and "musts" of love are often the shallowest trap that people fall into. This often shows up as an internal argument that sounds something like, "If I'm being practical, I must be less romantic," or "If I want an intoxicating romance, I must be unrealistic."
These assumptions are less of conscious beliefs, and more of patterns that reflect dichotomous thinking, which also often lead to role polarization. In such relationships, one partner assumes the role of the "romantic," the other the "realist." The romantic might risk feeling emotionally unseen; the pragmatist is often overburdened, and their "mundane" but essential labor might go unappreciated.
Psychological flexibility offers a balancing antidote here. Rather than forcing a choice between stability and passion, it allows couples to hold seemingly contradictory needs at the same time. And this is because flexibility frames these needs not competing desires, but parallel ones. In other words, it's okay to want long-term security along with emotional fireworks. In fact, it's probably normal to care deeply about retirement plans and still long for handwritten notes simultaneously.
A 2025 study that observed couples with one partner suffering from a potentially fatal illness, examining how external stressors affect relationships. The study showed that as the psychological flexibility decreased in the relationship due to stress, so did the partners' self-esteem and relationship satisfaction.
This happened mainly because partners slowly lost their ability to tolerate emotional complexity. When flexibility was preserved, however, couples were better able to remain emotionally connected even while navigating practical demands. The ability to hold what is "hard" alongside the reassurance that "we are still us" appears to be a key protective factor.
In everyday life, this may take the form of how couples frame ordinary decisions. Planning for the future, making grocery lists or dividing household chores does not have to feel like compromising on desire. When practical conversations are narrated as acts of mutual care, pragmatism becomes an expression of romance rather than its enemy.
To achieve this, however, emotional tone is critical. Interpreting mundane actions as symbolic of commitment and responsiveness naturally leads to greater closeness over time than those who focus only on the behavior's utility. Romance, then, is not what replaces responsibility; it is what infuses it, often in places we are taught not to look.
2. Scheduled Novelty Is Romance
There is a general sense of hesitation around scheduling romance because people think it kills spontaneity. We tend to associate desire with the unplanned and the unexpected, and anything that appears on a calendar can feel suspiciously like an obligation. But this notion can cause misunderstandings about how romantic desire actually functions over time.
Novelty, understandably, is one of the strongest drivers of romantic and sexual desire. Early-stage relationships are saturated with novelty by default, but that novelty tends to taper long-term relationships over time. And when novelty declines, desire often follows.
In such a situation, pragmatic couples might respond by doubling down on efficiency, with their lives becoming increasingly well-managed but emotionally predictable. Romantic couples, meanwhile, may resist structure altogether, hoping desire will spontaneously return if they wait long enough. What might help these couples, instead of these flawed strategies, is intentional novelty.
According to a 2019 study, couples who engage in self-expanding activities like shared experiences that are new and challenging on account of being unfamiliar, report higher sexual desire and greater relationship satisfaction. Even simply introducing a novel angle to your regular activities can reignite desire by recreating the psychological conditions of early-stage attraction.
Setting aside time for shared new experiences without scripting how those moments must feel allows desire to re-emerge organically. A planned date that unfolds awkwardly or imperfectly can still be emotionally alive. What matters is that both parties involved understand the motivation behind it.
3. Emotional Safety Is Romance
Security in relationships also does not mean a relationship free of tension. Romance, in fact, flourishes in environments where vulnerability is possible. The very essence of emotional safety is that there is enough trust in the relationship that you can weather the storms together.
A study published in Behavioural Sciences shows that adults with attachment insecurity often struggle because they rely too rigidly on a narrow set of emotion-regulation strategies. Individuals higher in attachment avoidance tend to manage distress privately, suppressing or compartmentalizing rather than sharing.
Those higher in attachment anxiety, on the other hand, may rely excessively on interpersonal regulation by using it inflexibly, struggling to adjust how and when they seek connection based on context. Across both patterns, the core issue is inflexibility. As a result, emotional safety might be assumed to be more about excessive predictability rather than responsiveness.
Romance, in reality, requires a degree of emotional risk. Saying what you want, admitting what you miss and naming dissatisfaction without immediately catastrophizing it should all be standard practice in a loving relationship. When done skillfully, these moments activate attachment systems in ways that actually reinforce closeness.
When couples learn to have emotionally honest conversations, without treating every feeling as a problem to be fixed, they preserve both stability and desire. Maturity in relationships is the ability to sustain it without relying on illusion. And to do that, a relationship needs your presence more than anything else.
Curious to know your unique romantic style? Take my Romantic Personality Quiz which fits you into one of 16 romantic "types."
Do you think your relationship has all the essential elements to balance romance with pragmatism? Take the Relationship Satisfaction Scale to find out.