Love

What Happened When I Traded Passion For Comfort In My Marriage

Photo: Josep Suria / Shutterstock
woman looking away from man on couch

You know that passion you have at the beginning of a relationship? When every moment is about getting closer to each other and nothing is more important than seeing that person naked? How nothing else matters, not food or shelter or work?

Yeah, that intensity is kind of hard to maintain, especially when you have a young child as I do.

I fully realize that this is a no-brainer for anyone who’s ever been in any sort of relationship, even a casual one, and I don’t think for a moment that I’m telling you anything revolutionary.

I’m just saying that even in the most idyllic of relationships, it’s possible to become complacent. No one can keep up that new relationship pace, but it doesn’t make a person want to stop trying.

When I talk about the loss of that initial passion, I’m not saying that the romance dies a horrible death; it’s just that the manic focus gives way to a wider field of vision, one in which making dinner actually seems necessary and paying your electric bill is seen as a good thing.

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This is all fine and good, but sometimes you miss that all-consuming passion in your marriage or relationship.

I find that it’s harder to get to that single-minded state when I come home and the house is a wreck or I look into the kitchen and see a pile of dishes waiting for me. It’s not that my husband doesn’t do enough around the house; far from it, in fact. It’s just that life can be something of a mood killer.

When my husband swoops me into his arms and carries me up the stairs, I don’t want to find myself thinking about the laundry on the hamper next to the bed, you know what I mean?

My husband and I are constantly trying to remind ourselves of that flirtatious feeling we had way back when. Our ideas for re-igniting things range from more even distribution of chores to cutting out alcohol to sampling some herbal enhancers from our local health food store: simple things like maca and chasteberry; nothing that will induce Smurf vision or trips to the emergency room.

We’re attempting to take up Pilates together in the hopes that exercise will help us shed some of the effects of everyday stress. We’re being more spontaneous (as much as a couple can when there’s a young child to care for) and trying to enjoy being a couple.

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I wish I could say we have the same insatiable need to be with each other as we did when we first got together, but that would be next to impossible. We don’t pounce on one another at the door anymore, but we make up for it in other ways.

He knows what treats to get me when he goes to the grocery store, and I know what movie currently streaming on Netflix he would wildly appreciate. We’re comfortable in our skins when we’re together.

I miss the crazy passion of our first days, but the familiarity of where we now seems to have its own appeal. If we can’t go back to where we were, that may not be such a terrible thing.

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Amber Copeland is a contributor to Yourtango who writes about love and relationships.