How do you know if it is really time to get out of a relationship?

Many years ago, I thought I was entering it for the right reason, but maybe I just wanted the white picket fence. I now have comfort, companionship, mutual friends and a “couple’s life,” but I stopped finding my partner attractive. The sex evaporated long ago. I still crave passion and sex, but just don’t want it with my partner.

Online, I have met someone new; we have chatted and phoned for months—and despite our having never physically met, I’m in romantic love with him. He offers the spark that I’ve been missing. Should I leave and go for this missing self actualization, or try to repair a relationship that is only 80% there, knowing that my heart does not feel the same passion?

—Spark Plugged

Dear Spark Plugged,

In gay and straight relationships alike, it’s common—and normal—for sexual and romantic desire to diminish and ultimately evaporate, as it did in yours. The problem is that nobody tells us this!  In fact, the popular media lie to us. Movies, songs and TV reality shows all focus on only the beginning of relationships which is romantic love. They don’t bother to mention that they are celebrating only the first six to 18 months of the typical relationship. After that hormone-driven push, we settle into a comfortable routine. We become more like friends than sexual lovers—and that transition takes effort.

It doesn’t take work to be lovers and be sexy to one another at the beginning. Nature give us a boost with infatuation (or as the late psychologist Dorothy Tennov called it, limerence) — love’s initial, exciting phase when chemistry dominates. Limerence occurs in the beginning when your relationship feels intense, emotional and passionate. Some cultures do not trust it or even aspire to it, because they understand that limerence, by whatever name, cannot last—and nor should it determine with whom you decide to partner. Its entire purpose is to help us attach to that significant person.

Also, it’s naturally supposed to end—but no one tells us.

But I am telling you that after limerence ends, the real work of a relationship begins. Problem is, so many people won’t, and don’t, do the work. Instead, they settle for the mundane, endure continuous conflicts, or have affairs—which it sounds like you’re engaged in with this person online. I call that a relationship exit, a way for individuals to take conflicted energy about their partner and direct it outside of their relationship.

An exit can be any behavior or action that distracts you from problems or the lack of feelings within your relationship. Exits can include working long hours at your job, getting overly focused on children or pets, sleeping, watching sports on television, the ever-popular drinking and drugging—anything that coaxes you to devote more attention to it than on your relationship. Right now, your exit it is an emotional affair. Given what we know about romantic love, you are experiencing limerence with this person you met on the Internet.

No ongoing long-term relationship can compete with romantic love. Whoever you’re infatuated with will always outweigh the mundane, less impassioned partner. That said, I do recommend you end the emotional affair. It will simply trump all the good you do have in your relationship and distract you from knowing whether your current partner is right for you.

Why don’t you want sex with your partner? So that you can clearly know the reasons, I recommend you close your exit and focus on what you have in front of you. To figure this out, the best way is to talk to your partner. Admit your feeling that things have grown stale, and that you want to resurrect sexual desire and passion. Yes, it can be done! Plenty of books explain how to bring back passion. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any gay or lesbian books that address to this. However, there is one great book, even though written primarily for to straight couples, is Tammy Nelson’s Getting The Sex You Want (Quiver Books, 2008).

Good luck, and remember close your exit. End the distraction so that you can focus clearly on what you really do want out of what you already have.

Joe Kort, MA, MSW, is a psychotherapist and Board Certified Sexologist who specializes in gay affirmative therapy, relationship therapy, sex therapy and sexual addiction. He is the author of 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives, 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Find Real Love, and  Gay Affirmative Therapy for the Straight Clinician.  He provides workshops for gays and lesbians as well as trainings for straight clinicians around the country. His website is www.joekort.com.