If I were to ask you which you would prefer to have in your life, passion or romance which would you choose?  Most people assume that passion is more sexual while romance is something that leads up to the sexual encounter.  Most people also assume that both passion and romance will fizzle out as a relationship progresses.

Here’s the thing though, romance does not have to fizzle out in a long term relationship and studies have found that romantic love can in fact last a lifetime and be the very thing that leads to a happier and healthier relationship.

Bianca P. Acevedo, PhD, who is a leading researcher, said that “many people believe that romantic love is the same as passionate love but it isn’t.”  Passionate love is more obsessive and normally comes with feelings of anxiety and uncertainty which is only good for short relationships.  Romantic love on the other hand has the intensity and sexual chemistry of passionate love but this one lasts.

There was a study carried out on passionate versus romantic love and the findings of this study were published in the March 2009 issue of Review of General Psychology which is published by the American Psychological Association.  This study looked at 6,070 people in both short and long term relationships and the findings found that those who reported to have a greater romantic love with their partners were more satisfied whether it was a long or short term relationship.  Those who reported greater passionate love were actually more satisfied in the short term but not in the long term.

The study also found that those couples who had more satisfying relationships were also a lot happier about themselves and had higher self esteem.  This comes from the feeling of knowing that your partner is there for you and this is what makes for the feelings needed for romantic love.  They are the feelings of security.  Passionate love on the other hand comes with feelings of insecurity and these feelings make way for less satisfaction and lower self esteem.

This discovery could be the very thing that will help to change people’s expectations of what they should be looking for in a long term relationship.  Do you want to have a passionate relationship and feel insecure and anxious or would you prefer to have a romantic love that has all the passion you want but feelings of security?

Most couples expect that their long term relationship will progress to what is called companionship love but this can be an unnecessary compromise.  If you have romantic love you can revive this whenever you want.  It really is an attainable goal, all you need is some energy and time to devote to it.

Let me ask you the original question again, would you prefer to have passionate love or romantic love?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Save