What sustains a committed relationship? It can’t only be passion or solely compassionate love that keeps us together, but a combination of both woven together over time. We start out with one another ecstatic. As the passion begins to wane some disillusionment shows up and we look for things that are wrong with our partner and/or ourselves, which is where compassionate love kicks in. We need the ecstasy at times and to also give each other a break as much as is possible and acceptable, allowing for a partner and ourselves to be human and flawed. Afterall, life is a series of stops and starts, ups and downs, with some passion and so much compassion holding us together. Jonah Lehrer has a post titled “Marriage” that helps illustrate this point. Here is an excerpt:

What’s wrong with seeking passion? Don’t we need to experience that dopaminergic surge of early love, in which the entire universe has been reduced to a single person? (“It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”) The only problem with this romantic myth is that passion is temporary. It inevitably decays with time. This is not a knock against passion – this is a basic fact of our nervous system. We adapt to our pleasures; we habituate to delight. In other words, the same thing happens to passionate love that happens to Christmas presents. We’re so impossibly happy and then, within a matter of days or weeks or months, we take it all for granted.

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