One of the main factors contributing to the demise of long-term relationships is being taken for granted. All those things that made you wonderful, interesting

against you. This is completely normal and\r\nexpected. Theres nothing sinister about it. In fact, its a demonstration of habituation, one of the main features of the mammalian nervous system and a cornerstone of adaptability. In other words, its not a bug, its a feature, and its not going away. So learn how to work with it, not against it. Be like water, as the Taoists say. Dont try to topple the obstacle; just figure out a way to go around it. To optimize survival, the nervous system has evolved to notice change and filter out the background. It happens in all of your five senses: eyes notice moving objects and not static ones; you stop noticing the refrigerators hum after a few days; you stop smelling something after five minutes. This is called habituation, and there are mechanisms operating at the cellular level to make this work. In other words, youre better off understanding it and working with it rather than fighting it. And the proper way to circumvent habituation is to deliberately introduce salient, unpredictable stimulus, better known as change. There are infinite ways of being unpredictable, but here I want to give you two techniques derived from behavioral psychology and animal training. The first is deliberate unpredictability, especially when it comes to doing nice things for your partner. Behavioral psychologists and animal trainers call this implementing an