What can we learn from the Passion-Attraction Model? While the model can apply to everyone, we each have different values and circumstances, so we each have to choose for ourselves how to live our lives and act in relationships. Understanding the Passion-Attraction Model and its consequences can help you understand yourself and your partners, on your own and in relationships if you feel it describes you well. (If you don't, it may not help you, though it may help you understand your partners if they feel it describes them.) It can help you navigate your emotions and relationships and choose your behavior and partners. You don't have to adopt it verbatim. Like all models, it has flaws and oversimplifications, but so does any other model…

Yesterday's post considered a single alternative to a committed partner. If you plan to commit to someone for ten, twenty, thirty, or more years, you can expect you and your partner will meet people who, in the moment, attract you and excite passion more than each other. Review and discussion about One Alternative Recall, the Passion-Attraction Model doesn't tell you how to behave, though if you feel it represents your experience it may help you respond. Nor am I evaluating possible responses. I'm only using the model to understand how people will feel in relationships. The last section, "One Alternative," for example, predicted that people late in long-term relationships are susceptible to a third person exciting more passion and attraction than the long-term committed partner.…

Yesterday's post ended by describing a typical goal -- what you hope to get if you want to commit to a relationship, at least concerning passion and attraction: an enduring relationship with lots of passion and attraction, smooth edges, and never fading away. When you and a partner both reach that goal, many people choose to commit to each other. In my experience, choosing to commit doesn't mean living happily ever after with no more relationship work. It means the beginning of a new type of work -- potentially deeply rewarding work, but work nonetheless. After all, you don’t find passion, you create it with your behavior and beliefs. Committing to someone like the blue curve above means you get the high levels of emotional rewards…

Yesterday covered how the Passion-Attraction Model described passion and attraction in a relationship. Today we'll look at how you might grow as a person and parter. We'll end today with a typical goal you might work toward (before moving on to challenges and risks tomorrow). Despite the nice clean curves in the graphs, you don't know what curve you're on. If you feel like you're at the peak of a relationship, you don't know how long your feelings will last -- that is, you don't know if you're on the red or blue curve below, or a different curve entirely. Is your relationship about to end or will it endure? Or maybe what feels like a long-term peak is just noise that will soon fade.…