Maybe you’d describe your relationship as more like roommates than partners these days. Maybe the affection slipped away somewhere along the way, and you couldn’t say exactly when. Maybe you feel alone, even when they’re sitting right there.
It isn’t always a big blowup. Sometimes it’s just a quiet kind of loneliness.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot since Tom and I came home from Italy.
What we actually missed
Before we left, we figured we’d come home missing the castle, the wine, the food, and those ridiculously beautiful sunsets.
That’s not what we miss.
We miss the people. Walking into the kitchen and finding somebody there. Sitting around the table long after the food was gone because nobody was in a hurry to leave. Hearing laughter from another room.
Twelve people arrived at a thousand-year-old castle for our retreat, some knowing each other, some barely knowing anyone. Six days later, they weren’t just trading phone numbers. Real friendships had formed. There were rituals, and inside jokes we laughed at over and over. And almost everyone went home asking the same thing: how do I keep living like this?
Here’s what I came home believing. La dolce vita, the sweet life, isn’t something you find in Tuscany. It’s something we’ve forgotten how to make at home.
Connection needs proximity and repetition
We tend to expect connection to come from one great conversation, or one amazing night together, and then carry us for months. It doesn’t work that way.
At the castle, connection grew out of ordinary things done together, again and again. Breakfast. A walk. Making cheese. Someone telling you something while you’re sitting beside them, and laughing about it again at dinner. We’d wander off on our own for a while, and then we’d always come back together. That rhythm is what connected us.
So here’s a question worth sitting with: where’s the proximity in your life? Is there any room for it? Or is connection a line item on your to-do list, 6:30 to 7:30? Because if it is, I can tell you it’s not going to happen that way.
Where are all the people?
When we got home, Tom and I sat at our table and it was so quiet. No market below the window. No kids at the playground. Nobody in the next room. And in that quiet, we felt lonely.
In Italy, the whole town comes out to the piazza in the evening. Grandparents in camp chairs. Little ones in strollers at 10:30 at night. Kids kicking a soccer ball between the tables. Nobody checking the time.
Here, we’ve gotten incredibly good at not needing each other. We order groceries so we don’t have to talk to anyone. We stream our entertainment. We work from home. We text instead of visiting. We ask AI instead of asking a friend. None of that is bad on its own. But there’s a relational price for all that convenience, and I’d never seen it so clearly until I had something to compare it to.
Our daughter Brooke put a name to it on the show: third places. Not home, not work, but somewhere you can go and see who’s there. They’re disappearing. Brooke’s is the dog park. Connection needs a little room for the unplanned, and most of our days don’t have any.
You can’t watch your way into connection
What made the retreat so special wasn’t the castle. It was that everyone jumped in. People made cheese, rolled out their own pizza dough, swam in the pool, and stayed up late playing Pictionary and cards. Nobody sat on the sidelines and watched.
And participating always costs something. I risk the ask. I risk showing you who I am. I risk getting irritated, cleaning it up, and laughing again. When I sit it out, I take all the risk off the table, and I take the connection with it.
Learn to linger
There’s a word we barely use here: linger.
In Italy, there’s aperitivo, a little drink and a little snack around 5:30, just to unwind and talk about the day. Then dinner around 8, which lasts until 11. Then a stroll through the piazza and some gelato on the way home. Nobody schedules any of it. It’s just how the evening goes.
The Italians even have a phrase for it: il dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. And here’s the beautiful part. When we stopped chasing life so hard, it found its way to us, in moments we never could have planned.
When the familiar becomes invisible
When we spend our days with the same person and the same routine, we stop seeing it. The person becomes familiar. Dinner becomes routine. The kiss becomes automatic. The cozy house is taken for granted. And then we start thinking we need something new.
Sometimes we do. But often, what we need is to pay attention to what’s already here. Imagine for a second not having that familiar face at your table anymore. Notice what comes up in you. That’s the preciousness you’ve stopped seeing.
That’s what romance really is: giving our full attention to the person in front of us. Lingering over the kiss a few seconds longer. Actually tasting dinner. Actually looking at each other.
“I don’t have time for that.”
I can hear you. And I’m going to gently say: you don’t have time not to. If you’re hurting for connection, if you feel lonely even in your own house, if you miss the person who used to be your best friend, start with one small thing this week:
- Invite someone to dinner and don’t set an end time
- Cook something together instead of ordering in
- Have an aperitivo at 5:30, outside if you can
- Take a walk with no destination
- Leave your phone in another room at dinner
- Ask your partner a question you think you already know the answer to, and see if it’s changed
Then notice what happens.
There will always be another email, another load of laundry, another reason now isn’t the right time. But there are also people worth knowing, meals worth lingering over, and hands worth holding, even on an ordinary Tuesday.
The sweet life isn’t waiting for you somewhere else. It’s made in the way we gather, share, and show up for each other.
Not sure where your relationship stands? The Better Love Quiz tells you whether you’re in a rough patch or something more, and which skills to start with. It’s free and takes about 5 minutes: BetterLoveQuiz.com
Want to join us in Tuscany next year? Email love@stacibartley.com and let us know.
