Lasting love an elusive ideal

What's the best way to recalibrate a marriage as the years pass? I wish I had the answer, because clearly millions of us would like to know.

As the editor of the Modern Love column in The New York Times for nearly a decade, I have sifted through roughly 50000 stories that have crossed my desk. I have noticed people wrestling with two questions above all others. From the young: "How do I find love?" And from those wallowing through marital malaise: "How do I get it back?"

It is not really love they want back as much as attention, excitement and passion.

Among my 50000 strangers, I've also heard from just a handful of couples who claimed to have maintained sexually charged marriages for decades.

So what to do about it? Sneak around, trying to get our needs met elsewhere? Resign ourselves to the limitations of marriage? Confront the issue head-on and work together to try to reanimate our relationship? And ultimately, what does each approach entail?

Those who sneak

Sneakers neither sulk nor celebrate; they redirect their attention to distractions that entertain and titillate. As a matter of convenience, much of their sneaking will be conducted online.

Sneakers are never without their electronic devices. When sitting, they will almost always be staring into a laptop or tablet. While walking or doing chores, they'll be staring at a phone.

For these gadget-obsessed types, the hardest work of marriage is listening.

Those who squash

There are many who choose to quash their unfulfilled desires, to accept their marriage for what it is and figure out how to feel okay.

Oh, well, they tell themselves, I still have a lot to be thankful for. I love my spouse and my family. So we aren't having wild sex every day or every week or even once a month (or ever). You can't have everything, they argue. Be grateful for what you do have.

There's a temptation to dismiss quashers as being in total denial, but they aren't. They just don't see the point of wallowing in self-pity when they have accomplished what they hoped to in marriage, family and career.

The Restorer

When a restorer couple's marriage starts to feel sub-par, they sit down and have a sensible discussion about where their marriage is and where they would like it to be. Then they set goals and seek the means to achieve those goals. Typically affluent, educated and highly motivated, restorer couples almost single-handedly support the vast, profitable marriage-improvement industry.

It won't take long for them to find out that, surprisingly, the most recommended strategy for reigniting passion in marriage - passion that has waned in part because of the deadening weight of its routines - involves loading up the relationship with even more routines: date nights, couple counselling, dance classes, scheduled sex, fresh-flower Fridays, lunch-time exchanges of erotic texts, and possibly some creative midday play at the local Holiday Inn involving silk scarves.

These attempts at relighting the flame may work for some, but for others they seem to be less about feeling sexy or "rediscovering" than about demonstrating a nose-to-the-grindstone determination to try anything to stay together and remain vital, which can have a bonding appeal.