MISPLACED PASSION

You're married. You're very married. Or you're in a serious committed relationship, either way, you know you shouldn't be doing this. "This" being an incredibly HOT passionate affair you are completely caught up in, despitenyour best intentions.

You only meant it as a one-night stand, a "Gee, wouldn't it be nice just for one night" thing. You were both adults, you figured no one would ever be the wiser, it was only supposed to be the one time, you just wanted to see what it was like (after all these years) to sleep with someone else - and yet here you are, cheating regularly on your significant other, doing the one thing you swore you'd never do and would just HATE if your significant other was on the doing end.

So now what? You aren't in love with your lover, you're aware enough to know that. You have no intention of leaving your significant other, your love
and you both know that, so what's the problem? Why don't you just sayn"It's been great, good-bye?" Why don't you just leave?
Because of the passion. Not because of the sex, in and of itself, but because of the passionate nature of the sex, because of the intensity it generates, the focus, the exhilaration, the completeness of the experience.

What you can't give up is - the passion.

Passion is what is lacking in too many of our lives too much of the time. Unfortunately we tend to equate sex with passion, when nothing could be farther from the truth. Sex can run the gamut from passionless (even disgusting) to passionate, with everything in between. Passion is a separate element, a quality of experience which can arise out of any number of situations. You can be passionate about work, about art, about politics, about motherhood, about saving whales, about food, about literally anything.
People who are successful are invariably passionate about some aspect of what they are doing.

What you have found in your illicit affair, what is making it almost impossible to leave that relationship (which is doomed to either fail or ruin your primary relationship) is a passion you clearly don't have in the other parts of your life. The affair seems to bring you an aliveness you haven't felt in years, and so you keep doing it. Passion is addictive. It feels utterly fantastic. But misplaced passion will destroy you. What's the solution? Create passion for yourself in your life. Notice I didn't say "find" passion. Passion isn't something that lives outside yourself. It certainly may seem that way, when you're involved in an affair.

But passion is the result of a chemistry between you and another, a dynamic of something within you and something within the other - and that "other" can be a person, place or thing. It's up to you to go exploring, to discover what intrigues you, and then learn about that thing, focus on it, work with it, until what was a spark of interest becomes a genuine passion.

For example, life is ho-hum, everything is OK, but nothing turns you on. What intrigues you? Nothing, you say. Then start looking. Take the odd one-evening seminar, pick up a book on something, notice what intrigues other people, and commit 3 months to intense study of or working with onenthing. If after 3 months, the thing fails to excite you, explore something else. Make your dedicated pursuit of passion - passionate!

Life isn't fun without passion. You don't need to be doing something passionate all of the time, but we all need passion some of the time. Why do you think people love to watch sports so much? It allows them to get passionate!

Rather than wait until something ignites you into passion (which is how that affair got started into the first place), take charge, and look for something you want to get passionate about. You'll find life becomes wonderfully exciting - and you won't destroy your relationship in thenprocess. nnn