I had written a long post that got zapped by a lost connection.
Haha, Gordie - the SAME thing happened to me when posting on your thread the other day! Hit a wrong button or something and,,, poof... GONE. It was also a long post so I did the rewrite on 'pages' on the computer. Then pasted to your thread. Things written on Pages don't disappear so easily!
Quote:
When you say there was a lack of passion but that you were okay with that...and neither of you did anything about it...could you elaborate? Asking for a friend (wink, wink).
Two kinds of love: Eros and Agape.
Eros love (passion, sex) seems effortless in the beginning. It is exhilarating, and makes us feel so good. It is more about how the partner makes us feel than how we feel about our partner.
Agape love is more about actively choosing to love someone because you want the best for them in all things. It isn't typically present in the beginning but grows and deepens over time while the Eros love typically dwindles over time. Eros love is more selfish but Agape love is selfless.
It takes effort for long term marriages to keep Eros love strong. But when Agape love is very strong, it can be enough for some of us, so the effort to maintain Eros love often falls away.
Does this help explain my 'lack of passion' comment? Eros had dwindled but with deep Agape love we were okay with it. Until... the unthinkable happened, and an affair was born to satisfy the desire for Eros love. So it's really NOT okay to ignore Eros love either. It definitely needs to be present in a healthy marriage.
This is a pretty simplistic way of explaining and others might disagree. I believe that MLC also defies this explanation. I think it was a factor in my marriage, but wouldn't go so far as to say it caused the MLC or could have prevented it.
