Unreasonable Hospitality in Love: What Restaurant Excellence Teaches Us About Relationships

Most of us enter long-term relationships with the hope - often the quiet expectation-that they will last a lifetime. We organise our lives around them. We make decisions about where to live, how to work, whether to have children, and how to shape our futures with this assumption in mind. And yet, despite the central role our intimate relationships play in our overall wellbeing, they are often the place where we invest the least intentional care.

We bring discipline, creativity, and excellence to our careers. We refine our skills, seek feedback, and strive to improve. In our relationships, however, we tend to rely on goodwill and history, assuming love alone will be enough to sustain us over decades.

I recently finished reading Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara, in which he reflects on the philosophy behind transforming Eleven Madison Park into one of the world’s most celebrated restaurants.

Guidara, co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, recounts being at the awards ceremony for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Eleven Madison Park placed at number 50. Rather than feeling pleased, he and his then business partner, Daniel Humm, were devastated. That moment became the catalyst for a radical shift in thinking: they set out not merely to improve, but to become the best restaurant in the world.

What followed was not better food alone, but a fundamentally different approach to service - one focused on creating experiences so thoughtful, so surprising, and so personal that guests would never forget them.

Eleven Madison Park was not simply creating exceptional meals; it pioneered a philosophy of unreasonable hospitality. A form of care that went far beyond what customers expected or even knew to ask for. The book makes a compelling case that true hospitality is not about transactions, but about attention, presence, and exceeding expectations in deeply human ways.

Which, of course, got me thinking about our personal philosophies of love.

What if we adopted a similar approach in our relationships? What if we were unreasonable in how we treated our partners? And perhaps more importantly-why aren’t we?

Unreasonable hospitality in love is ultimately about intention. It is about cultivating a way of being that prioritises noticing, presence, and responsibility. It is about developing our relational skills not because we have to, but because we understand how profoundly they shape the quality of life at home.

When we approach our partners with this level of intentionality, something shifts. Connection deepens. Intimacy grows. Ordinary moments begin to carry weight and meaning.

I feel Guidara’s philosophy, while rooted in hospitality, offers surprisingly rich insights for couples wanting to move their relationships from merely functional to genuinely extraordinary.

For the Love of It

One of the things that struck me while reading was the genuine enthusiasm the staff at Eleven Madison Park had for creating unreasonable experiences for their guests. Excellence was not a burden; it became a meaningful pursuit.

The staff understood something simple yet profound: you never know what kind of day someone has had. A guest might have come from a funeral, a wedding, a brutal day at work, or a quiet personal loss. And their mission was to create an experience that made each person feel like the most important individual in the room.

As Maya Angelou famously said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.

The same is true in love.

The Problem with “Good Enough”

Guidara understood the difference between good and extraordinary, and it was not found in meeting expectations. It lived in exceeding them in ways that felt personal and thoughtful.

In the restaurant, this might mean remembering a guest casually mentioned they had never tried a New York hot dog, then arranging for a street-cart vendor to bring one to their table mid tasting menu. This actually happened.

In relationships, the principle is the same. Paying attention to the small details your partner shares. Remembering them. Acting on them - not out of obligation, but because you care about their experience of life.

Presence as the Foundation

Before any grand gesture, Guidara emphasises something far more fundamental: presence.

His staff did not simply serve food; they saw people. They noticed body language, listened carefully to offhand remarks, and picked up on unspoken needs.

How many couples can honestly say they still see each other this way?

So often we exist in parallel rather than together - scrolling our phones while our partner talks about their day, mentally running tomorrow’s to-do list while they are sharing something meaningful, or simply co-existing out of habit rather than connection.

Unreasonable hospitality in relationships begins with radical presence. Not as a rule, but as a stance. Being there. Noticing. Letting your partner feel felt.

The Art of Anticipation

One of Guidara’s core insights is that the best service anticipates needs before they are articulated. A skilled server notices a water glass is low before it is empty. They see someone squinting at the menu and quietly offer reading glasses.

In relationships, anticipation communicates deep knowing. It says, I pay attention to you. I care about your experience.

This is not about keeping score or creating obligation. It is not transactional. It is about approaching love with the same attentiveness a world-class restaurant brings to hospitality-because making your partner’s life better genuinely brings you joy.

Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

Guidara believed every guest deserved moments of unexpected delight. Likewise, relationship magic is not reserved for anniversaries or holidays. The couples who thrive are the ones who infuse everyday life with intention.

A note tucked into a book. A familiar song played at just the right moment. Recreating a first date on an ordinary Tuesday.

One couple I worked with created a ritual they called “Thursday Surprises”. Nothing extravagant-just small, thoughtful gestures that showed attention. A snack mentioned weeks earlier. Tickets to a band casually referenced in passing. A loungeroom picnic all laid out.

What emerged was a palpable shift. As these moments accumulated, both partners became more attuned to opportunities for joy and connection.

The Power of Personalisation

Guidara understood that true hospitality is deeply personal.

Personalisation requires effort. Remembering stories. Tracking preferences. Noticing what makes your partner light up. It is an intellectual and emotional investment.

The same applies during difficult moments. Generic reassurance-“Everything will be fine”-rarely lands. Support that reflects a partner’s specific fears, values, and needs is what creates safety and trust.

Creating Signature Moments

Guidara speaks about “signature moments” - experiences so thoughtfully designed they become unforgettable. At Eleven Madison Park, one such moment involved discovering guests had never gone sledging before, then surprising them with sledges and a trip to Central Park.

Every relationship benefits from its own signature moments. Experiences that become part of your shared mythology. Traditions. Rituals. Meaningful ways of repairing after conflict. Thoughtful ways of celebrating success.

They do not need to be dramatic. They simply need to be intentional.

The Generous Assumption

Perhaps the most transformative aspect of Guidara’s philosophy is what he calls the generous assumption - choosing to interpret ambiguous situations in the most charitable way possible.

If a guest appeared upset, staff assumed they were having a difficult day, not that they were difficult people. The response was more kindness, not less.

In relationships, this principle is quietly revolutionary.

They are late - and we assume they don’t care. They are quiet - and we assume they are angry. They forget - and we assume we are unimportant.

What if we started from generosity instead?

They are late because work derailed them. They are quiet because they are overwhelmed. They forgot because they are human.

This does not mean tolerating genuinely harmful behaviour. It means beginning from compassion rather than suspicion. When couples adopt this stance, defensiveness softens. Conflict de-escalates. Connection becomes possible again.

The Discipline of Excellence

What often gets overlooked in Guidara’s work is that unreasonable hospitality is not sporadic. It is disciplined and practised. The extraordinary moments rest on a foundation of consistent care.

The same is true in love.

Grand gestures cannot compensate for daily disengagement. Relationships thrive when attention, curiosity, and effort are practised consistently - not only when things are breaking down.

It means treating your relationship as worthy of your best energy, not what is left over after everything else. Not saving patience and generosity for the outside world while offering your partner exhaustion.

Bringing It Home

Most of us enter our relationships hoping they will last a lifetime. We stake our futures on them in quiet but profound ways - emotionally, practically, and existentially. Given that level of investment, it is worth asking why we so often approach our most intimate partnership with less intention than we bring to our work, our health, or our ambitions.

Unreasonable hospitality in love is not about perfectionism or exhausting yourself in service of another. It is about recognising that “good enough” is a surprisingly low bar for something we expect to sustain us for decades. When extraordinary is possible, settling for functional feels like a missed opportunity.

It is about being present enough to notice what would genuinely delight your partner. Generous enough to assume the best about their intentions. Creative enough to keep the relationship alive and personal. And disciplined enough to offer your best energy where it matters most-at home.

The restaurant industry understands something fundamental: people remember how you made them feel. Your partner may forget many of the specifics of your shared years, but they will remember the emotional climate you created together. Whether they felt seen or overlooked. Cherished or merely accommodated. Safe or chronically misunderstood.

If we hope our relationships will carry us through a lifetime, perhaps they deserve the same care, attention, and intentional excellence that the world’s best institutions bring to what they value most.

Not a relationship that is simply good enough-but one that is unreasonably good.