The hero looks deeply into the heroine’s eyes, getting ready to say what she’s been wanting him to say for weeks, months, or even years. He wraps his arms around her so tight that she is unable to escape, and confesses his undying, unquenchable love for her. He can’t live without her. He’d give up everything for her. And then he kisses her passionately for a good 5-10 seconds… and all the women in the movie theater sigh.

Ah, the female fantasy. It always involves some tight embrace or deep kiss, doesn’t it? In the female mind it is usually the symbol of a man desiring her completely– physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. But in reality, that’s not primarily the case.

Now, I’m not saying men are emotionless when it comes to sex or kissing, what I’m trying to say is that physical passion doesn’t always equal emotional passion. Sometimes we want so badly to be accepted and loved that we will mistake someone’s physical desire for us as the emotional passion we’ve been searching for.

The passion we want actually comes from emotional intimacy. It comes from knowing someone on a deep level. It comes from being able to trust someone fully; to feel accepted and wanted for who we are. It comes from a completely committed relationship.

But we can easily confuse commitment and passion.

Sometimes we dive too quickly into physical passion because we want emotional intimacy but it takes too long to sit down and emotionally connect with someone. In doing so, however, all we get out of our impatience is a broken heart or a messy relationship with a shaky foundation.

Commitment should come before passion, not the other way around. We need to protect our hearts, and not get carried away by feelings or the thrill of living romance novel scenarios. A kiss can be passionate, but if it’s not true, what good does it do us? In waiting for commitment first, we deepen the spiritual and emotional intimacy we’ve been seeking from physical contact, and we end up making it far more sweeter than it could ever be outside of commitment.

Passion isn’t commitment, but commitment winds up producing passion.