Just So You Know, Passion Won’t Save Your Relationship

During a telesummit interview, I sat on my favorite loveseat to get myself into the right mindset. When the interview began, she asked me (to the best of my memory): “How do you keep the passion alive ALL the time in a marriage?”

I politely, yet authentically, told her I didn’t think that was possible.

She didn’t like that answer as that was the entire premise of her series. Oh well, truth before ego, right?

I continued by saying I believe having that as a goal sets couples up for disaster, crushing expectations, making them think they are broken, that their marriage has failed, or that their somehow not good enough if they don’t want to rip each other’s clothes off 24/7.

We haven’t been taught to value sadness. We haven’t been taught to honor fear, navigate anger, or move through resistance. Feelings are not a bad thing or wrong. We should not feel guilty for having feelings.

Uncomfortable intense emotions are gifts from which to grow, expand, and learn. We don’t grow by sitting around like spectators, watching our lives go by.

The capacity to truly savor one moment in totality comes from the ability to sit in the fire in moments of not having what we want but what we need and keeping our hearts open in the face of it all and loving ourselves.

If we don’t develop the capacity to savor each moment, we would just continue to move blindly through life, bouncing from one moment to the next, grasping and seeking anything from the outside to squelch the pain and fill the void of emptiness inside.

Nonetheless, one of the greatest and most precious blessing of an intimate relationship is being invited to sit in the fire and not kill each other off when you’d rather annihilate each other. Instead, you are able to be kind, curious, vulnerable and authentic and to navigate the intensity through to the other side where there’s a deeper connection, broader respect, wider compassion, and endless tenderness. Being in oneness with the moment and one another’s soul, while feeling out of control.

When we can lean in and value the tough times, we are able to savor the good times even more richly. We stop judging the ups and downs of a relationship.

Can we really say that the day is any better than the night? That the waves coming in are any better than the waves going out? That the inhale is any better than the exhale? That our partner in fear is inferior to our partner in joy?

Isn’t unconditional love about embracing all aspects of ourselves and our partner?

My intention is that you get a taste of what I mean to truly embody, savor and appreciate BOTH the ups and downs of relationship as equally profound. I invite you to consider letting yourself off the hook from having to create a 24/7 passion filled relationship and instead to embrace the times where you just want to sit on the other side of the room, not speaking, just being together. Not inferior to what others may be experiencing, just different.