Keeping the heat and passion alive in a long-term love relationship is essential to its survival. The lack of heat and passion is a common source of complaint among married couples. The quality of strength is a major component in succeeding at keeping a relationship passionate. Simply put, strength is a turn on. It is our strengths which keep our partners interested and engaged. Strengths are a personal asset. If weaknesses or hurtfulness out-weighs our strength, they lose their polish and charm. The trouble is that in a long-term relationship, partners’ faults, flaws and weaknesses become more of a focus, and are more a part of partners’ awareness than in the relationship’s beginning. In long-term relationships, since togetherness is challenged by experiencing someone over the long haul, the effect of a partner’s choices, habits and behaviors is cumulative. This accumulation is more likely to have a deleterious effect, just as the fallibility and humanness of our partner is obviously clear to us…no matter how successful that person may be in others’ eyes, or in his or her professional life.
Just as in the newspaper where bad news is common, it is the failures and problems of our relationships and partner which get attention. That is our challenges as partners, spouses and lovers; to make the effort so that our strengths are experienced by our loved one rather than our failings…and this is possible so long as our failings don’t cause pain to the other. The task is not about hiding our flaws, which further fuels weakness, but of growing so areas of weakness are transformed into areas of our strengths.
Strength alone is nothing without a characteristic to which it is applied. Yet each characteristic alone is worthy of admiration…but when put together with other strengths, becomes a turn-on, when we are experienced by our partner as a strong person. Examples such as strength of integrity, strength of humor, a strength of discipline, strength of nourishing, strength of love, strength of intellect, strength of kindness, strength of compassion, strength of health, strength of beauty, strength of ethics, of morals highlight the ways strengths shine. Each of these is a likely turn-on for someone, especially when first getting to know someone. When combined with other characteristics, strength of character is manifested. A person who has many strengths is experienced as a well-rounded “strong person,” who may be found attractive by many. Too many people, being aware of these truth, portray the illusion of strength often in order to attract another, but possess many hidden weaknesses.
Throughout the marathon that is a marriage, being experienced as strong helps to maintain the attraction that your spouse has for you. If you notice that when anyone points out some kind of turn on, or an attraction, at its root is always some kind of strength that the other possesses. If we no longer get turned on by another, such as our spouse, it is certain that we are not experiencing our spouse as strong in an area of our relationship that is vital to us.
Remember when you first met your spouse? After the point at which you were aware of the attraction, you began making the effort to display your strengths to that person…that is because we all instinctively know that strength is a turn on. Strength attracts. This fact needs to be acted upon during your long-term relationship. First impressions only last so long. Andrew Aaron, LICSW, AASECT is a love relationship and sex therapist who practices in the
New Bedford
Seaport.