Let’s say you have to choose Door A or Door B for your future life. Behind Door A is a person you could love passionately all your life. But your fate is to spend only a  short time with Person A, and you cannot know how long. Behind Door B is a person you’ll be with all your life, a life of mutual affection, and you will be content with Person B… but you will never love this person passionately. Which would you choose? Would you give up your chance at passion for the lifelong contentment of caring affection?

Romantic passion is a strong, often overwhelming emotion; on the other hand, companionable love, associated with long-term couples, can be profound for some, yet mild in nature, more daily affection than dramatic, burning, obsessive passion. Passion is one form of love, based on an intense longing and desire for another, usually with ardent sexual desire; devoted affection for a partner is another kind of love altogether, with varying degrees of sexuality. Though very different, in English they’re both commonly called “romantic love,” which can be confusing. And what’s worse, misleading.

Romance novels are generally about passion, which is clearly more dramatic, and that’s also true for most ancient poems, medieval folk tales, and classic love stories like Jane Eyre. Tellingly, happy-endings fiction often concludes with a declaration of forever love; the reader doesn’t get to see in the novel how that future love works once the commitment is made, an omission that makes for more enjoyable reading. Ordinary life has its ups and downs, of course, but your everyday love can be humdrum and boring, especially to others. Yet the culture of romance in our society pressures us to declare (to ourselves, as well as to others) that we’re “in love,” even if it’s really about finding a partner you can live with contentedly.

Passion is given a lot of lip-service in modern media, so it has high status and many claim to have it. Yet they also want the secure, safe, reliable love that endures. The cliché everywhere that reconciles this problem is that in real life, romance starts with passion, seen as unstable, which then slowly gives way to secure affection when a couple is together for some time. But I doubt that’s generally true for most of us.

It may be hard to sustain passion, because it lives on insecurity, obstacles, and constant need for the other, but it’s also hard to reach and sustain a secure mutual devotion, in which each person in the couple has the same desires and depth of feeling. I’m sure some relationships do begin with a passion that fades smoothly to domestic love. But my guess is that many marriages begin with the calm, contented sort of affection that has more to do with “making a life together” than helplessly intense feelings. It’s easier to go with a muddled concept of “love” than to admit to lack of passion.

Which of these forms of love is better? I’ll tackle that one in Part II: Love vs Passion