Instant Relationship - Just Add Water!

When I was younger, I believed it was all about the passion. Like many, I was addicted to the neurochemical high of falling in love.

Now, I have been deceived by passion enough times to know that it is not the wisest voice on the council. Not that it doesn't deserve to be heard, it just does not merit a position of leadership.

For starters, passion is our limbic brain doing its level best to urge us to propagate the species, as if the survival of the human race depended on it. Well, we know that is not true.

Passion can also convince us that we absolutely must have someone in our lives who could actually make a miserable partner for us. It doesn't consider things like lifestyle differences or availability or whether we want the same things in a relationship. It just wants us to merge with as many different partners as possible, and specifically, with the one who is turning us on in this moment.

If we listen primarily to passion, we will experience a lot of those juicy beginnings, but also a lot of endings. It's fine if you want to go that route, but that's not for me.

Why not take the time to get to know whether you can enjoy one another's company without sex or passion skewing the data? If one person is moving 65 mph and the other is moving 45 mph, even if you're moving in the same direction, the result will be distance. If the faster-moving partner slows down to accommodate the slower-moving one, it will give the slower partner a chance to build momentum, and the two may eventually find a pace they can happily maintain together.