Question of passion and other musings...

First of all, for no particular reason other than I just got stuck behind a bunch of these, God save me from the faux-shinistas. You know the ones I mean. The high maintenance girls (don’t care if they’re 23, 34, or 42, they’ll always be girls) with the annoying, nasal voices they think sound sophisticated and their faux designer knock-off everythings – big, huge plastic faux Chanel sunglasses that worked on Audrey Hepburn but not you, sweetie; the enormous, obviously vinyl D&G over-studded and over-ugly bag and, my favorite, the gi-normous raincoat yellow, uglier than sin purse that looks like you could fit a Volkswagen in it on the few days that it rains in LA. And god forbid you should get behind this bunch of chickies when you’re trying to order a simple Coke and a cookie while they each order some kind of stupid soy milk vegan low fat decaf espresso frothy drink with tons of whipped cream – and then they all pay individually while they dig through they’re obviously fake, horribly cheesy knock-off purses for their just as fugly knock-off wallets. And then tip the guy a quarter.

Okay, glad I got that off my chest.

I made an interesting observation while my brother was here on vacation. He and his wife have been married probably 17 years, I guess. Their son is 15 – and, boy, is he 15. But that’s for another blog. What I noticed with my brother and his wife is what I’ve noticed with a lot of long term relationships – they’re more like roommates than lovers. There was no passion between them, no affection, no comfortable hand-holding or sweet kisses exchanged. Just day-to-day, get through the day, what do you want to do now kind of conversation.

It got me wondering about a lot of things, mainly about when and why does the passion die in a relationship and does it need to. And it got me wondering about whether I ever really felt that passion for my ex. And if I did, when did that die?

I was trying to think of that moment when I feel in love with my ex. I can kind of remember when I fell for my first husband, although it’s more just a warm, fuzzy memory than anything exact. There was a moment when he smiled at me with his off-kilter, slightly dangerous smile and that was it. I was maybe 18 and I had lost a good piece of my heart in that moment. I don’t remember where we were or what we were doing, I just remember that look. Even the OOMA, I can remember when I thought, wow, I think I might actually be in love with him. It was a very late night, very innocuous situation, just sitting and talking and eating and laughing and I thought, I could do this for a very long time.

But I don’t remember falling in love with my current ex. It just seemed like I floated along, moving in with him, letting him propose to me, marrying him because it just seemed like the thing to do. My memories might be colored by the hurt and anger and pain surrounding the thought of him lately but it makes me very sad that I can’t point to a moment and say, that’s when I fell in love with him. I think I went with him because he seemed to love me, he felt familiar (now I know why, thanks to my therapist) and there didn’t seem to be anybody else breaking down my door. I hate to think I spent 18 years with someone I wasn’t passionate about.

I think I was more passionate about his talent and his drive than he himself. I saw us as this power couple who could take Hollywood by storm. He also had the capacity to be incredibly romantic but, for the most part, so much of it felt like he was being romantic because he decided he needed to be in order to keep our relationship going rather than to be romantic because his heart moved him to be. There were very few of those moments that felt really motivated from his heart, not his head.

The last few years we were together, I really didn’t even want to have sex with him. While I’m sure some of that was because of my depression, a lot of it was just that I was starting to fall out of love with him. There had been so much damage done to me that I certainly didn’t want to expose myself to him anymore than I had to. And it had become pretty textbook by then. I could map out the one of three options that he would probably take depending on how things started. I won’t bore you with details because I spent enough time being bored as it was. But it started me thinking about passion in a long term relationship, even then. Shouldn’t I want to make love to my husband, no matter whether we’ve been married five years or 15 years? Shouldn’t you always want to make love to your spouse or significant other? Aren’t they supposed to turn you on?

I had become a secretary and a roommate and a housekeeper (although not a very good one) and somewhere along the line, we had stopped being in love. He said the words but I think it was gone on his side as well. Neither of us understood it in the moment, neither of us knew what to do about it. Hard to say whether starting couples counseling earlier would have saved our marriage. I think it had been dead for a very long time by the time we recognized that it was a corpse.

What does all this have to do with anything right now? I’m not sure. I just know that I don’t want to be roommates with someone again. I want to be with someone who stirs my heart just as much in 15 years as it does when we first meet. I want to be with someone who’s going to stay passionate - truly, honestly passionate – and not become a rout participant in our relationship. I don’t know that I’ll ever have another relationship that lasts long enough to test this, maybe because I’m afraid no relationship can stand up to that bar. But does that mean I should lower that bar? I don’t think so. If I’m going to give up my heart again, it has to be something magical and special and the thing I have been searching for my whole life. I haven’t been able to find it yet obviously and I may never be able to find it. That may mean I’ll spend the rest of my life standing by the side, watching relationships come and go while I wait for my perfect passion. But after seeing relationship after relationship chug along in mediocrity just because both people are too afraid of being alone, I think I’d rather spend my time holding out for something that comes close to that perfect passion rather than waste my heart on something that is just settling for something at this moment in time.

In the meantime, I’ll wave as the rest of the world goes by.