Keeping the Flames of Passion Alive in Marriage

Sex and intimacy, desire and love are surprisingly difficult for many couples to manage. And yet, it is not at all surprising when you think about all the conditioning we have around sexuality and the vulnerability that is required for intimacy. Add to that the challenge of trying to keep theflames of passion going with one person over time and you end up with some interesting paradoxes.

Intimacy is created through sharing yourself with one you love. There are many expressions of intimacy and we all have different levels of awareness and willingness to share who we are. Some, maybe most of us have lost sight of the light and the beauty within and it feels as if we never really knew ourselves at all. How can we reveal what we do not know?

I do not think, as one often hears, that we cannot love someone until we fully love ourselves or that we cannot create intimacy without fully knowing ourselves. It is in honestly coming together with another admitting we don’t fully know and love ourselves that helps to reveal our essence. Saying “I don’t know” is a place of honesty, humility, and vulnerability that allows learning to take place. Through such transparency we can help one another grow and mature. We shape and influence one another for better or worse.

In her book, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic, Esther Perel eloquently describes another such paradox:

“Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism in numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting. An expression of longing, desire requires ongoing elusiveness. It is less conce
ed with where it has already been than passionate about where it can still go. But too often, as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air.”

So keeping passion alive in a long term relationship requires being intentional about creating the conditions in which love and intimacy are nurtured on the one hand, and sex and desire are given air to breathe on the other. As described in the Dynamic Marriage Map, this means continuing your individual journey of becoming who you are, and also building skills to deepen connections with each other. It means not putting the burden on sex to make you feel validated, but giving freedom for sex to express love, passion, playfulness, or deep connection. It means revealing yourself to your partner and yet keeping some mystery about you. It means realizing that you do not belong to each other; rather each must take ownership of self. As soon as you are able to acknowledge that your separateness and mystery are always present, sustained erotic desire becomes a real possibility.