The Rundown

When I was nineteen my parents got divorced. This hardly came as any big surprise to me. I knew for most of my life that they weren’t in love with each other but I never ever saw them fight. The lack of love was pretty easy to see however – my Mom, who would celebrate the anniversary of losing a tooth, never celebrated her wedding anniversary. But both of my parents came from broken families, and when they got married they vowed that they would stay together until all three of us kids were grown up.

This is not a good plan for people who despise each other and I think it was easier for my Dad who did truly love my mother. But my Mom always wanted something else – she always saw that what she had was far less than what she wanted. And I think that it was passion.

My Dad wasn’t exactly a passionate man with her, and how can I blame the guy since she stayed mainly for us kids and not for him. Not exactly a big incentive to lay out the love. Dad has since remarried to a woman that he was sweethearts with when they were six years old, and to see the two of them together all mushy and gushy in love, he is hardly recognizable.

My Mom on the other hand spent the last ten years hoping to fall in love. She was with a complete asshole for about five of the past years. He was a controlling psychologically abusive man who I finally convinced her to leave one night. She stayed with him through a lot of shit because she was always hopeful that there would be passion.

And I can see myself reflected in this. When I met Bud nearly four years ago in Australia, I was, as I have mentioned before, with someone else. But when we met I got swept up in a torrent of passion with him that I was helpless to resist. I knew that he was bad news from the start for me (but in such a good way), but I was paralyzed and unable to help myself from seeing him. For those three months before I had to leave Sydney, we were caught in the incredibly exciting beginning of a relationship where there is an enormous thrill is just being beside one another.

We couldn’t keep our hands off each other and every minor parting was filled with the sense of emptiness at his absence. I remember talking to a girlfriend of mine back in Montreal during this time and wondering whether it was Bud that was pulling me away from my then current boyfriend or if I was just missing the passion.

If it was the latter then I knew that I was going to be in trouble. Because the passion does not stay. Eventually, the passion fades as the titan of familiarity overtakes it. Bud and I are definitely less passionate with each other than at the beginning. We went though months of a four times a day excitement to the far less frequency that exists at the moment. And many of the simple passionate things like long kisses seem relegated to the past. Holding hands together is more the oddity than the norm.

Now there are undoubtedly a lot of wonderful things that come from a long-term relationship and I wouldn’t trade Bud in for anyone. I love him deeply and I can’t see that changing. But I worry about the craving for passion. This is not a craving for the excitement of sexual conquest or the thrill of the first kiss with someone new. Part of it is the exploration of a new person and also the excitement that comes with the ego-stroking realization that someone really likes you. And I would be a liar if I said that I didn’t miss that passion of long ago.

And I don’t want to end up where my mother was at – yearning for passion above all else. But I recognize in myself a craving for that excitement. However, the best part of this craving is that I am not craving having that passion with anyone else other than Bud. And so, I’ve got to figure out a plan of attack. Part of it has to do with getting back into shape. My main drive in my return to crazy workouts has not been for myself but to reinvigorate Bud. But the passion also has to take other forms. Its been hard when I’ve been working such long hours to get myself motivated to get out and actually do things in my time off (but winter doesn’t help there either), but I’ve got to get this going.

In a long-term relationship I can’t expect the passion to just return without any work from me. And while I know that I don’t want to find it with anyone else – I can’t possibly be sure that Bud wouldn’t want it. I know that he loves me deeply, but that tsunami of emotion that comes with a grand passion can be very difficult to resist.

I know that better than anyone. And if I want to avoid what many would call a karmic justice, I’ve got to think of something.