Rekindling Passion in your Relationship

What is passion? Passion is Eros, one of the Greek Creator Gods. According to legend Eros, along with Chaos and Gaia, created the Earth. Passion is life force. When we feel passionate we are full of energy and often longing for connection with someone or something. In this state we feel alive and in a state of flow, engaged and attuned to our process. Passion is energy that goes out and when we think of passion as desire, we mean it is the passion to have union in sexual love. It is the will to unite, to bring someone into you. Passionate love is the feeling of self-expansion when you include within yourself the person of your desire. Passion is not always desirous and loving. It can be hateful and angry at times. This is just as connecting as loving passion. Anger and wrath can be expressed at the disappointed and pain our most cherished ones inevitably cause us at times. Passion from a heated place of anger can be a wakeup to the values you want to live by, to help you realign with your intentions and goals. It’s the ability to know in those moments what is right or wrong for you. And that may be a call to your partner to step up, to meet you. It’s all connecting energy wanting to bring your partner into your sphere. Sometimes passion can be the moment you realise you need to make changes in your life. It’s the fresh new energy that suddenly lights you up in love or in the knowledge you know what you need to do, even if that means setting new sights on a different life. This is often the overlooked aspect of passion, which is the will to persevere through hardship because you are striving for what your heart is guiding you to. It is knowing that following your passion means there is a cost, the cost of letting go of other choices you could have taken. If your aim is monogamy, choosing to commit to a partner means turning down other potential mates. Passion can see you through the hard times. 

Passion is a contagion. You can feel it emanating as energy from a passionate soul nearby. You may remember a passionate teacher or college lecturer who inspired you to see the world differently. Passion as eros can be seductive. We may be swung into the mood for love by a passionate partner. Their focus and energy can be electric. Passion as energetic attraction, like magnetism, is the electric feeling of catching someone’s eye across a room, or the street. In those moments passionate charge is communicated. 

Beware: Where’s there’s passion, there’s the shadow of passion which shows up as laziness, opposition and withdrawal. You may notice a swing in your relationship from passion to laziness, from one of you pushing forward and the other pulling back. This is normal and part of the cycle of relating, but there’s also a risk of getting stuck in this position. The important thing to remember about passion is that it is relative and contextual. When one of you is feeling passionate, the other will respond either in following, or opposing. If you push forward, the other might pull back. If you pull back, the other can come forward. That’s the logic that applies to dyadic relationships.

At the beginning of a love relationship we are easily intent on observing and focusing on our partners. We are charmed; the word means under a magic spell and in this state we notice every thing our beloved does and says. There’s an intensity in talking and engaging with each other in these early days of love. During this time we a busy internalising our partner, which also feels hugely rewarding and expanding. We are literally expanding our self to include this other being. Eventually though this feeling of expansion becomes normal, we get used to our new partner. We start making them into a habit by using our internal version of them, the version we have downloaded, instead of actually looking at them afresh. We need to refresh our browsers to be able to get a present take on our partner instead of referring to our download of them. When we forget to do this, things go stale, because we are not noticing, are not relating in the present moment, not being fully alive to the real person before us. We begin to build expectations based on prior experience and this can lead to bitter disappointment when our partner doesn’t respond in the way we think they will. 

An intimate relationship between two people is a neurophysical experience usually below the threshold of awareness. Thomas Hübl uses the phrase ‘I feel you feeling me’. It’s a two way process of response and recognition in the body which is sensitive to the relational field between you. Remember the power of attraction in the first days you met? It’s often something you can really feel. You may have had the experience of exchanging a glance with a stranger and feeling a sense of connection or recognition between you. Or you might feel someone looking at you and turn around. It can be electric and you can feel it coming towards you. That’s the energetic force of attraction. Being present in this relational field is the key to rekindling passion, because you need to be aware of the subtleties of it and be grounded in your own body. A questions to ask yourself are ‘How am I in this moment with you?’ ‘What am I feeling and sensing?’ Being attuned to yourself is the first important step of attuning to your partner. When you can do both, charge and energy can flow between you.

Passion is eros, heat and fire and thus needs oxygen to thrive. Open the windows to your self, disclose your emotional depths and open to psychological intimacy. As intimacy increases so does passion. Bring yourself to an encounter with your partner with openness and curiosity; be prepared to find something new in them. But come with something to offer, something fresh in yourself too. Passion needs intention, oxygen and aliveness. Having relationship goals, known as approach goals, also helps rekindle passion. So think about something new with your partner, an activity together, as this will help you feel closer and more passionate.

I mentioned at the beginning that passion can also manifest in anger. If anger is released in a healthy, non-aggressive way that is not aimed at the partner, it can be a healing tonic for the relationship. Anger is hope, hope for change, hope for something different. If I’m not angry about an injustice or something that my partner did that infringed my boundary in some way, then I don’t care. Not caring is disinterest. That is the true killer of passion in a relationship, when one partner is withdrawn to the extent of having no further investment in the relationship. Expressing anger and being validated by your partner in your anger, allows other feelings to follow, such as relief, love and affection. Suppressed anger blocks those feelings. 

There is a distinction between wanting and needing. Passion is about wanting. Wanting is passionate, it goes out to get and bring home what is wished for. Wanting is assertive and active. Needing should really be confined to those things that we depend on for our survival. A need for a glass of water for instance, is valid in satiating thirst and keeping the body hydrated. But it is unlikely your partner will want to deliver intimacy, love and sex to you when you express that as need. There is something passive and disempowered about needing your partner for those reasons. That is coming from a place of emptiness. Not a place of fullness where you have something to offer your partner through your passion. Wanting is longing and yearning. Needing is desperation.

When wanting to rekindle passion in your relationship, think of ‘beginners mind’ from the Zen Buddhist tradition. Practice the art of looking without preconception, hold back from judgement, attune to your senses, notice accurately what you perceive through touch, body sensations, feelings and thoughts. Seek to expand yourself ever more to include new information about your partner and try new activities together. Above all open to discovering new things about yourself to share with your partner so you can bring something to the table. 

Something to be careful of when taking awareness into your body, is the body can be a place of pain and injury. Many of us have suffered abuse and trauma and may have vacated areas of our bodies that are too painful to reconnect with. So go gently on yourself when practicing being aware of sensations in the body.