People often blame the lack of passion and desire in long-term relationships on over-familiarity, busy lifestyles, hormonal problems, and having children. Or simply that it is unavoidable in long-term relationships. But there is another reason, not yet known to many people.
When we explore beneath the surface of our personality, we discover that within our subconscious mind and in the unconscious exists various known sub-personalities, energy patterns, or selves.
So we are not one self, but many.
Which self met your partner, and which self is around now?
Different selves within your personality are dominant at different times in your life, even at different times each day. You might currently have a responsible self, a perfectionistic self, an inner critic, a needy inner child, or a pleaser. And your partner has his or her inner selves.
All these selves have their own rules, values, and desires and their particular way of communicating. They all play a role in your relationship, with some being primary and running the show, while others take a back seat and don’t get their needs met or even heard.
The selves within you bond with the selves in your partner in particular patterns that restrict your behavior, feelings, and desires. Your selves, and how they interact with the selves in your partner are the reason so many couples experience a lack of passion (amongst other issues).
There are two types of bonding patterns: positive and negative.
Negative bonding patterns can range from the mildly irritating type, such as when you are the tidy person in your relationship, and your partner is the messy person, to the full-blown world-war-type of pattern where you wish you had never met your partner and can’t imagine what you ever saw in them.
Positive bonding patterns, on the other hand, are when the feelings are positive: good, caring, loving – but where neither person will express anything that might rock the boat.
Both types of bonding patterns place limitations on how fulfilling a relationship can be.
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Being in a bonding pattern is a bit like standing on one leg and having our partner, also using only one leg, to balance us, so we don’t fall. This can feel safe and familiar (a positive bonding pattern), but it requires that each of us stay put to stabilize the other. If one leaves, we both fall.
In a negative bonding pattern, each person’s primary self is in a state of judgment about the other person’s primary self. The judgment occurs because there is a vulnerability in both people that they are not attending to.
This vulnerable feeling is uncomfortable to your primary self, who knows no other way of dealing with such feelings but to push them far away to where you won’t feel them so that you can feel powerful and in control again.
The more identified you become with your primary self and its perspective, and the more you push aside your other selves, the less you can see things from any other perspective, particularly your partner’s.
You become very good friends rather than lovers and will suppress any feelings that might rock your relationship boat. Sexuality disappears, or you become attracted to other people. Most relationships stagnate or end because of positive bonding patterns.
On the other hand, couples who break out of a positive bonding pattern without awareness of what is going on will end up in a negative bonding pattern. That means bitterness and arguing, with long periods of unhappiness, lack of passion, or to the relationship ending.
The level of passion in your relationship is a wonderfully accurate gauge of whether a bonding pattern has taken hold in your relationship. If there’s a lack of passion, then you’re in a bonding pattern.
This could be the role of nurturing mother, pleasing daughter, workaholic, responsible father, withdrawn father, critical mother, caretaker, etc.
If you can’t work this out yourself, ask your partner to help. They are likely to have some insight into which part of you has become the main ‘you,’ just as you will probably be able to see which selves of theirs have become primary in them.
Remember the things you enjoyed doing that made you feel alive. Some of these selves might include a sports enthusiast, skier, dancer, skateboard rider, photographer, theatergoer, hiker, meditator, magical child.
Write down the qualities in other people you judge or over-value.
You’ll probably find that if you judge:
If you are in awe of:
Find a way of reconnecting with the qualities you judge or over-value in others.
If you usually plan outings in detail, try going somewhere spontaneously. Do you typically take responsibility for everything? Hand over responsibilities to your partner or children. If you usually take time to get ready for work, go out with something you’ve quickly thrown together.
You’re able to communicate better because you have a greater understanding of and compassion for others. You can more easily find solutions to relationship problems, and you can make better choices.
The more you grow and develop in this way, the less often you’ll end up feeling negative and angry at your partner, and you’ll be able to connect with your partner from a more enriched and whole sense of who you are.
Every relationship goes through stages, ups, and downs, and is affected by various life events. Instead of seeing a lack of passion as a problem, we can see it as an indicator of where we are at and how we can grow.