Inquiring minds

[firecat]

via klwalton, an article called "Why Marriages Fail" (http://www.shrinktalk.net/archives/why_marriages_fail_1.phtml) contains the following quote:

couples that don't ever fight eventually don't have sex either. Why? They are both forms of passion. If you give up one form of intensity you'll ultimately leave the other as well.

Is this true in your experience?

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Comments

[crazed-lynn.livejournal.com]

They are NOT both signs of passion unless you water down the definition of passion to include any emotional expression.

I fought continuously with my first wife. Sex ended very quickly in that relationship. The marriage continued for 15ish years, but the relationship was really over before the wedding even took place.

I didn't fight with the second wife until we were near the end of the marriage. Sex died about the same time.

But those are only correlations, not cause and effect. Propbably the same root cause, though.

I have never fought with the third. We average twice a day for sex.

I used to be an angry man. Very angry. I had no appetite for the company of other people much less engage in sex with any of them. For me, anger was the expression of feeling powerless -- not being powerless necessarily, but feeling powerless. It was my response to believing I had no control of my life. Things were not going as I wanted. My fate was not in my hands.

That is the way the world seemed only because I abdicated.

For me, anger was not passion, it was terror.

Mostly for me, sex isn't passion, either. It is play.

As for the quote, it is one point of view and the person who believes it will find that their lives work that way.

It is not the point of view I have. If I feel an urge to fight (rarely, these days), I know it is just that old feeling of powerlessness sneaking its nose under the tent wall. I laugh at it and it goes away for awhile.

I also do not subscribe to the nothing that an end to a relationship is a failure.

I could jump right up on my soapbox about the underlying assumptions in that quote in relation to the "why_marriages_fail" url. But, really, I no longer feel the compulsion to change other people's minds. I am tempted, but not driven. :)