Jan 07 2009
Relationships; love yours?
Loving relationships can be hard work, and finding love is not always easy. Different combinations of several ingredients such as passion, intimacy and commitment are needed to form relationships, but these elements are not always present simultaneously.
Some types of relationships may have two of these components, while others have only one. Consummate love, which has all three elements, is considered to be the most sought after kind of love, particularly in Western society.
When intimacy is the only part of a relationship, it can mean that the people involved are merely friends who share their private thoughts rather than having a romantic relationship. Passion alone refers to sexual intimacy, and two people can be sexually intimate without being in love. Adolescents sometime claim to have fallen in love at first sight when passion is the only driving force of the relationship. However, when passion is coupled with sharing intimate thoughts and feelings unrelated to sex, it could be said that the couple are in love and not just physically attracted to one another. This romantic type of love is a more harmonious blend of both elements, and can help to form the foundation of a long term relationship.
Commitment is the key ingredient for successful long term relationships. Commitment and passion combined can result in fatuous love, and a couple involved in this type of relationship can expect longevity if some level of intimacy has a chance to develop. Intimacy here, is the missing ingredient, and although these marriages have been known to last, people may be likely to turn to another person outside the marriage if it is not part of the formula.
Commitment and intimacy can describe a couple who have spent a considerable amount of time together, and who possibly share children, but the level of romance has tapered off and they behave more like very close and committed friends. At times, commitment is the only element left in a relationship, where a couple may have grown apart over many years and lost both intimacy and passion, but stay together because of other family obligations.
Understanding the true meaning of passion, intimacy and commitment can help couples determine what their relationship may be lacking and help them identify areas of weakness which will become the focus of rescuing their relationship.
