When it comes to building an authentic relationship, it takes time, and it's healthy for it to take time. Every new positive connection goes through New Relationship Energy, or simply, NRE. New Relationship Energy is commonly used as a term in polyamorous circles and associations. However, NRE can extend to relationships of all types including monogamous and platonic.
According to Wikipedia, New Relationship Energy is defined as a state of mind experienced at the beginning of sexual and romantic relationships, typically involving heightened emotional and sexual feelings and excitement.
Although Wikipedia’s definition is romantically and intimately fueled, the concept of experiencing heightened emotional feelings of pleasure can be experienced platonically. The simple feeling of happiness, giddiness, glee, and excitement when being around someone you just met is in fact the energy of a new relationship. In monogamous circles and in general pop culture, you may have heard of a similar concept referred to as the "Honeymoon Period", which trickles down to refer to married couples and their first period of newlywed bliss. When it comes to other relationship types, the giddiness and perceived perfection of the connection is heightened to a level which may look similar to limerence in some cases.
You meet someone and you have a positive experience with them exchanging friendly energy through conversation and active engagement. Perhaps in these conversations you find yourself and your new someone have plenty of interests in common. You share laughs, commonalities, and a mutual discovery through which you both get to establish your relationship and the entire interaction is pleasurable. You want to continue that pleasurable feeling and you know that those feelings were conjured by engaging with that someone.
You connect more with this someone, and you quickly begin to admire them. Soon you and this someone may be very active in each other's lives; filling your idle time with their company. You have a new friend, and they are fantastic. However, you're at the beginning of the relationship, the tip of the iceberg, and you haven't experienced any adversity in your connection. At the apex of NRE, it almost seems unfathomable that your relationship may even encounter such hardship.
It's the "floating on cloud 9" weightless feeling of untainted happiness that you experience in the beginning of a relationship that you need to be extremely careful about. NRE can be the rose-colored glasses that may alter your perception of the status of your relationship. This is one of the key situations where knowing and being confident with who you are, and having your self-worth, and self-love come into play. You want to prevent attachment in a way that makes you feel dependent to your someone and the pleasure that you feel engaging with them. You enjoy the sugar rush of a highly positive experience; you are drunk off of your compatibility.
Be careful about deeply connecting during this period. I have learned, and it is common in most, if not all relationships, that eventually things cool down. The intensity of how much you communicate and spend time with your new someone will ease. Wait until the new glow wears down, it may take days, weeks, or even months. Regardless, the first days, weeks, and months of your relationship with your someone set the standard and consist of the foundation of how you will interact for the life of the relationship. Unless that is, you run into conflict with that person that alters the livelihood of it.
NRE can set unrealistic expectations of what you deserve and what you give in a relationship. If there is a dependency and an attachment that develops during this period, it can lead to a rabbit hole of jealousy, entitlement, disappointment, and in more extreme cases, perceived betrayal and phoniness. If you or the someone you are experiencing NRE with have trust issues, confidence issues, or trauma from their childhood or past relationships, the cool-down period of NRE may be a troublesome and heart-wrenching period.
NRE is not openly spoke of, and again, the “Honeymoon period” is mainly referenced to newlyweds, but every person and every relationship experiences it in some form. Perhaps if people were well-versed in this expectation of human nature that NRE does in fact happen, they would have their spirit and emotions better prepared for the cool-down period. For some, the cool-down period may be unnoticeable, but for others, the cool-down period of NRE can be the determination that makes or breaks the longevity of a connection.
What is really happening during this cool-down period is that the relationship is beginning to transition from discovery to fondness. What New Relationship Energy really is, is homeostasis of the perfect meeting point of discovery, and nostalgia. When you’re getting to know your someone, you are discovering their personality, interests, their history, and their outlook of the future. Through that discovery, once you land upon a commonality, you are flooded with feelings of nostalgia, or all the positive feelings and memories that flash through your brain that help you determine if you truly enjoy those experiences. It is what helps you confirm what your hobbies are, and what really drives you.
This is also why it is so difficult to let go or move on. Sometimes the transition from discovery to fondness doesn’t quite go as well as expected. Unfortunately, the state of fondness is not achieved as some relationships may transition from discovery to boredom, or lethargy. What’s most unfortunate is that you have no personal control on whether your someone determines your connection has transitioned to fondness, or lethargy.
Perhaps you are a person of consistency. If your relationship with your someone started positive and has all the qualities of NRE, you may have the capacity to keep up that energy. You have the capacity to keep up the same love, excitement, and positive energy that the relationship had in the beginning. Your someone on the other hand, may have a number of reasons why they are inconsistent. This is the area where you perceive the person as changing, acting “sus” (suspicious), or disconnecting with you energetically.
You find that this is how relationships fade, and go sour. If your someone could not embrace the fondness of your connection, there will be tons of misfires on how you engage and communicate with each other. This is how relationships go from 50/50 (you both sharing and giving love and energy equally) to an imbalance 40/60, 30/70, 20/80 relationship where one person is putting in all the love and effort, while the other does not match.
Then with ego added, perhaps with a dash of overthinking, and a drop of anxiety; your mind may begin to wander and wonder what happened and why it happened. Why couldn’t your someone keep up with the energy that was so easily achievable in the beginning? Is there someone coming in between your connection? Is there something they discovered about you that they don’t like? What happened? The question can eat at you. This is why so many are left without closure, and left with so many questions and trauma.
New Relationship Energy is alive and very valid in every budding relationship where compatible people connect. Open communication will help validate where the state of your relationship with your someone is and may lead. But the variable of your someone and their free-will leaves you with vulnerability. Alas there is no influx of energy, or love that can really control your someone’s freedom of choice. But when your someone chooses to burnout in your relationship, that part of your ego burns your heart terribly.
Even reading and learning about NRE if you never heard the term doesn’t really shield your heart of pain from a faded relationship. But it does present the solace and preparation that it’s a likelihood that your someone may not be your someone one day, despite how wonderfully your NRE was in the beginning. If this does happen, try not to dwell on what once was, do not continue to water a dead flower that was once alive due to memories. NRE will haunt you every single day if you hold on to what was, if “what was” is no longer.
Always focus on self-love. Although it may seem cliché, it’s a solid plan.
Always learn to love someone energetically. You can always remember the NRE, the discovery, and the nostalgia or your connection even if the connection is no longer what it was in the beginning.
Finally, it’s okay to mourn the reduction, burnout, and loss of a relationship that you would have never guessed would end up in that state due to your NRE. It doesn’t make you a fool, nor naïve; it makes you someone who embraces the emotions that flow through you.