Romantic Love

I saw two people last week. One I guess in their mid fifties (male) whom I know well and one slightly younger and female who I know less well. They have been together for more than fifteen years. I have been thinking a lot about romantic love recently and when I saw these two together I realsied what it was. They touched each comfortably though not explicitly and I could feel the charge that existed between them. Never was the two magnets metaphor more appropriate. They were very comfortable commenting on each others vulnerabilities in the most direct ways but were able to divorce their own egos from the critisising. You have to be very sure of each other to do that. And yet, even though this certainty existed, I felt that they still reserved a part of their reactions to each other as one does when you are in the early stages of a relationship. In other words even though they were fifteen years into a relationship they still found each others words interesting and worthy of their time. I enjoyed observing them.

And as I observed them I wondered how many who are in long term relationships or marriage manage to remain romantically in love with their partners in the way they did in the first year of two of their relationship. Do you listen to your partner? do always have time for them first? Do you still get a little thrill if you are away for a day or two and then come back? Is criticism fun and playful rather than biting and nasty? And do you at least get the feeling that occassionally at least you want to take them to bed and have three or four hours of rampant nookie? That is to say that you still find them physically attractive.

Is there anything more important than this? Than real romantic love?