I was at a party recently and a friend asked,
“How do you get the passion back in your relationship, when you start getting bored of each other?”
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself – a lot actually.
What do you do when the sizzle fizzles?
What if you say you want more passionate kissing and he says he needs more passion before he can get to the kissing?
What keeps your relationship where you want it to be?
What are the ingredients? And how do you want to maintain them?
When you hear these questions, you might think:
“I don’t want to ‘work’ at having to have passion! I want passion to be effortless. I work at so many other things in life, why would I want to ‘work’ at passion?”
I get it. Maybe you even start to tally up all the ways you’ve already put effort into passion…
Planning a weekend getaway… Signing up for a course exploring your erotic nature…Talking to your partner about what you want in bed….Getting inspired with new ideas from a coach…Scheduling time together without the distraction of social media, texts, news, phone call, netflix, amazon etc…?
Maybe you’ve suggested all of these things, and done some of them, but your passion still isn’t jamming?
What next?
Do you start to ask yourself if you’re in the ‘right’ relationship?
Abort that question!….Here’s why.
Asking yourself if you’re in the right relationship, as I once was told, isn’t practical.
It prevents you from feeling the disappointment for the things that you wish were different.
If you don’t let yourself feel the disappointment, you’ll spend a lot of time and energy trying to do things to avoid feeling disappointed.
Disappointment is different from self-pity. Disappointment is a kernel of some un-met need that often has nothing to do with your current partner, and everything to do with un-expressed feelings from the past.
Feeling your disappointment frees up space to make more clear decisions about how you want to give and take. In my case, feeling my disappointment helps me to let go of resentment. Big relief!
Feeling your disappointment also frees you from focusing on “fixing a problem”, so you can start being creative and playful with exploring new options. Now, that sounds like a lot more fun, doesn’t it?
So the question isn’t do you love your partner enough to put in the work?
The question is, do you love yourself enough to put the work in?
I’m in this with you. Relationships are an ever-evolving art.
And sometimes asking yourself the right questions makes all the difference in making it an enjoyable ride!