My last post defined sexual fulfillment.

It is the first element of romantic love.

Emotional connection is the second element.

I want to define that now.

Emotional connection is VALUING someone.

Because of this you want to share yourself with them.

You don’t just value how they make you feel.

You value who they really are as a PERSON.

You can experience emotional connection with anyone you encounter in your life. With your fellow humans, or with a friend, or even with your children.

When you experience this?

You desire to give yourself.

To close the distance.

To really connect with them.

This is why you want to reach out through various acts of affection. You want to spend time together talking, and doing things, and physically embracing in different ways.

One unique form this experience takes?

It’s when you value your sexual opposite.

When you experience emotional connection with them?

Romantic love begins.

The emotional connection you both feel?

It makes you desire sexual union.

It is important to distinguish this from what I called in my last post reproductive sexual attraction. That is the “romantic love” depicted in Hollywood movies all the time.

Real romantic love includes attraction.

But it is never front and center.

That is infatuation.

Being in love with how YOU feel.

Being addicted to sex as a guy.

Or addicted to being swept off your feet as a girl.

When you are really in love, you desire to share yourself with your partner. You value each other for who you are, and want to give yourselves in the deepest way.

You desire to merge with each other.

To truly become one together.

This is why romantic love’s deepest expression?

It is to make love of course!

This dynamic of valuing your partner is why romantic love isn’t “just sex,” and also isn’t “just friends” either. In romantic love, sexual desire and emotional connection become completely transformed.

Sex becomes about emotional connection.

Emotional connection becomes about sex.

When these two energies merge?

They BECOME romantic love.

You don’t desire sex and connection.

You desire this single new experience.

This is why if you lack the desire for BOTH sexual fulfillment and emotional connection, you are not romantically in love with your partner, even if you were in the past.

When you are in love?

You don’t have to TRY to be.

You desire to spend time together.

To share yourselves.

To encounter each other.

You desire to make love.

What do you think? Can you see now why sexual fulfillment and emotional connection are both necessary for romantic love to flourish?