I live in the desert and have had to endure many long, hot summers; sweltering heat that you can literally see waving within your field of vision. Summer in the desert is not for the faint-hearted: heat so intense that when you open the door, it feels like you are walking into a blow torch. Your car becomes a kiln and you dry up like a prune.

Then, there is the monsoon. Suddenly, a tsunami of dust can envelop you with shearing winds. This is sometimes followed by torrential rains and subsequent flash flooding. If you can’t escape to a more temperate zone, one of the few remaining ways to cope with the intensity of a long hot summer in the desert is to see the meaning in it. So, here goes.

Sometimes our love-relationships are like the long, hot desert summer. Loving someone can be searing with burning passion. Conversely, it can include dry spells that leave us, as partners, quenching for replenishment.  Love can predictably kick up an incredible amount of old dust that overwhelms us and makes it hard to see and even harder to breathe. It can involve the collision of two volatile fronts that create a micro burst of exceptional energy. Loving someone can build-up a climate of thick, soupy emotional pressure that culminates with a torrid thunderstorm of upset, followed by a flood of cleansing tears and a calming, cooling-down.

Seasons of loving someone. Our love-relationships can, at times, be like the desert’s long, hot summer.