Just because the honeymoon phase is over doesn’t mean you will never feel excitement for your partner ever again. It doesn’t mean they can’t thrill you, or inspire passion in you.
What will happen is the fire won’t be as volatile or vulnerable as it was in the early days.
The secret to long lasting passion, I’ve found, is fully embracing the fact that you and your partner grow and change throughout time. If you’re with someone who brings out the best in you, and vice versa, then life isn’t stagnant it’s a constant discovery.
My partner and I are excited to see who we become together. I want to see what new facets he develops as he experiences more. I will make sure that I encourage him to always grow towards the light, towards his best self. And he does and will do the same for me.
Thus as we change and grow together there are always new things to love about each other. New things to fall in love with. That remind you again and again why you fell in love in the first place. But it’s not falling. It’s growing, building.
This comes back to my theory that love isn’t a static thing. It’s a process. A project that you work on together with another person.
When my partner and I decided to become committed, it was because we simultaneously had an epiphany of not just who we were now, but of each other’s higher selves. We all have a secret ideal we strive for. A secret self that contains our most noble desires, greatest beauty and greatest vulnerability. Showing it to someone and having them not understand, or even tell you that you’re not capable of being who you want to become, is shattering and makes you feel insecure about yourself. So we hide it. But if a loved one SEES not just who you are but who you want to be, strive to be, and shows you themselves, and you both say “yes, this is you, I believe in you” — then that’s the partner you want by your side throughout the metamorphosis of life.
And through that process, if you hold true to seeing that best self and to the quest of trying to become that person, mutually validating, helping and celebrating each other — THAT is how the fire blazes again and again and even grows in strength once the first flash of honeymoon phase is over.
