It is a weekday night, you and your partner have been together for 4 years or more, there is no question that you love him/her, but you are missing something - passion. Do you remember passion? The strong, powerful feelings of sexual desire, when you can’t take your hands off each other. No doubt that most of your relationships started out with some degree of passion or lust. When I think of lust, the uncontrolled appetite or craving for sexual desire, I think temporary, perhaps like a fling or someone you don’t really see a future with.
What is so wonderful about passion is the feeling of being physically satisfied and the fun physical connection. You can’t wait to see someone because you can’t keep your hands off them; you know that the foreplay and sex will be fantastic. Passion, it is what keeps you going back for more and is one of the foundations of a relationship.
Soon enough all the passion leads to seeing each other more and then building a stronger relationship of getting to know one another on a different kind of level which eventually leads to respect and love. Love - the feeling of warmth and deep emotional attachment towards another person. Love is wonderful because you have the capability of being so comfortable with someone, having someone to count on and the ability to connect on an emotional level.
Even if your relationship started out as just sex but moved into a relationship can the passion be disguised as love? You go from casual sex to doing it more frequently to dating because of this one connection. After a while your heart may confuse this passion with feelings of love. What happened to the agreement of ‘just sex’? It was thrown out the door because something in your brain was telling you wanted to know that person more so you spend more time doing things other than having sex. Perhaps you know that it is not the best choice to start a relationship with this person based on some big differences, but your head is in the clouds because the pull for passion and feelings of the heart is larger than the argument in your head. You tell yourself that those differences can work out later because with feelings like this, how can you not be together forever?
But routines set in and soon you are left with love but little passion. Where did it go? Is it capable of coming back? Sure there are times you look at your partner and you find them attractive and you still are capable of having some great sex, but more often than not, something is missing, that little light of ignition that turns you on quickly is gone. What you are left with is an amazing level of comfort and reliability for the other person.
Obviously I am not an expert in this area, but I feel that most of the people I know are in relationships where the passion is gone. When I searched for passion on Google, I found articles more about turning each other on and giving into sex, than I did about keeping the passion. Sure you can have a great night here or there by trying something new but would it be long lasting or would it fizzle back out after a week? Even in my past when I can say I had a decent sex life in a relationship, it wasn’t always filled with passion; it was consumed by routine sex. I think it is healthy to have a decent sex life, to me meaning somewhere between 5 – 15 times a week. If I can do it that often then one could argue that there must be a little passion there and many times there was a small flirty spark but I think it was also habit: doing it in the morning at night and sometimes in the afternoon. Habits are hard to break. So was it a habit or was it passion or a little bit of both?
In relationships we tend to let ourselves go so if our partner gains a bit of weight, and we are slightly less attracted to them, we lose some passion. Sure the yellow flag could go up and we can tell our partner we should start exercising or dieting, doing things together to get back into shape and hope that it is enough to restore some of that passion. In some cases, such as mine, it is important to realize that both parties gained weight and it is unfair to only blame one person. Is the simple act of gaining weight enough to break up with someone or even an excuse to find passion elsewhere? Does the lack of passion that leaves you unsatisfied lead to cheating? Is that why my ex cheated? If we had enough passion what was his other reasons for his infidelity? Was he unsatisfied and if he was satisfied with his mistress, why did he still need me, something about her was unsatisfying too?
Can one remain satisfied without passion? If you aren’t getting hot for your lover, can you remain satisfied enough to stay with them for years to come? Will you be happy? Or is this something that a few years into the relationship you should be thinking about to end the relationship and hope that the next might work out better – or left to regret the passion decision.
What are you more fulfilled by: passion or love? And is it possible to have both in the long run?
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