Is it Better to be Best Friends or Sizzling Lovers?

When I was a growing up, the advice I heard (and read) over and over was that it's better to marry your best friend than someone you feel intense sexual attraction to.


The reasoning was that, once the fire dies down you need to be able to fall back on that close friendship - that the camaraderie will be, in the end, much more bonding and important than the physical chemistry ever was.


Worse, sexual attraction could influence you to make bad choices and end up with someone who was incompatible with you in other, more important ways.


I took that advice to heart, marrying someone who shared my hobbies and interests and with whom I was able to talk -- a lot.  We chatted over dinner, we griped over lunch, we blabbered during TV shows. 


Better, we tended to agree on almost everything from politics to movies. In short, we were 'compatible'.


So we did we eventually go our separate ways?


We'd stopped having sex, for one.


Sure, the mental friendship was there.  What was missing was any reason to hold hands, sleep close together, spend long melting moments kissing. The romance, the intensity, the 'need' to make it work -- that was long gone.


Without the physical, the mental suffered.  Without the sexual need, the emotional intimacy became extinct in the marriage.  With that event, nit-picking began. Fault finding. Chinks appeared in the armor. It became a 'working' relationship like my parents had, complete with arguing and anger, but then (because I am not my Mother) distance.  Distance legally.  You see, I eventually couldn't take a marriage without passion -- the loving, intimate, physical, romantic  kind.


Now, for some (maybe most) simply being married, having a companion, having 'a husband' or 'a wife' is enough.  The security, especially in old age, definitely has advantages.


For others, though, a marriage without the passion is like a glorious sunrise hidden by clouds.


I've spoken to women who have grown 'old enough' to admit being set in their ways and now find no room in their lives for a live-in boyfriend or a husband.  They claim they're 'too old for that nonsense' now.


Too old?


I admit it's tough to combine your life with another as you get older, especially if your relationship is lukewarm. But if it's hot? Passionate? 


To me, I can have lots of friends.  It doesn't mean I want to jump their bones and wake up to their morning-breath every day. It takes a special relationship to endure the bad with the good, and to me a hot attraction keeps the 'work' aspect from outweighing the 'pleasure'.


Would you make room for a relationship like that in your life?


Is passion, in the end, as important (or even more so) than friendship?


I invite you to leave you thoughts.


Have a great one ---


Cathy


ps Having a relationship crisis? Check out this resource for making up with your mate, before it's too late to save your relationship.