Romantic love
-the kind we "fall" into-can happen in an instant. Your entire life can be transformed by the magical meeting of two hearts. Love researchers Ellen Bersheid and Elaine Walster describe passionate love as a "wildly emotional state in which tender and sexual feelings, elation and pain, anxiety and relief, altruism and jealousy coexist in a confusion of feelings."
Romantic love is heady, powerful, painful, passionate, confusing, turbulent, addictive stuff.
Wait. Addictive?
Yes, addictive. In the marvelous book The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains that passionate love affects our brains in the same way as heroin or cocaine. We get high from the experience of loving. With heroin and cocaine, our brains adjust to the increased chemicals that create the high and reestablish equilibrium. The drug effect wears off and it takes more of the drug to get high again. The same is true of romantic love.
In other words, that intoxicating, giddy, euphoric true-love-that-will-last-forever feeling will eventually...end. The drug of passionate love has to wear off because our brains adapt to the increased chemicals that trigger euphoria and so the euphoria fades.
While in the throes of it you believe that your romantic/passionate love will endure forever. Nobody has ever loved as deeply, as purely, as wholeheartedly as you do. Profound poetry and sublime music immortalize your love.
It is, you're certain, true love.
Then it begins to change. The shift can be gradual or sudden. You notice that your beloved's cute habits are actually annoying. That lovely spike of joy you felt at the sound of your beloved's voice is less spiky. The glow is fading.
You begin to doubt that it's true love.
If by "true love" you mean a burning passionate love that will last a lifetime, you're right. It's not. It can't be. Wisdom comes from understanding this. That wisdom can save you a whole lot of heartache.
Haidt writes:
People are not allowed to sign contracts when they are drunk, and I sometimes wish we could prevent people from proposing marriage when they are high on passionate love because once a marriage proposal is accepted, families are notified, and a date is set, it's very hard to stop the train. The drug is likely to wear off at some point during the stressful wedding planning phase, and many of these couples will walk down the aisle with doubt in their hearts and divorce in their future.
Do you think that if passionate love doesn't last, you don't belong together? If so, you could be making a big mistake. You could be walking away from the kind of love that can last a lifetime.
Companionate love
starts slowly and builds over time. It grows from shared experiences, common values, kindness, laughter, trust, vulnerability, emotional transparency.
starts slowly and builds over time. It grows from shared experiences, common values, kindness, laughter, trust, vulnerability, emotional transparency.
As the heat and ardor of passionate love subside, you can think clearly again and evaluate where you are with your partner. You might part ways because the rocket fuel is spent. If there's no basis for companionate love, then parting may be the wise choice.
If you find the foundation of companionate love and nurture it, you can have the kind of love that is, indeed, true. Passion can continue as a vital element of your life together. But when a couple says on their 60th anniversary that they're more in love now than ever, companionate love is what they mean.
I heartily recommend reading Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis. Euphoric passionate love comes effortlessly but lasts for only days or months. Companionate love takes care and attention and nurturing but can last the rest of your life.
I hope that you find both with the same person.
Jerilyn Marler is a freelance writing coach and editor with over 35 years of experience. Over the years she has written three books about WordPerfect for MIS:Press, a subsidiary of Henry Holt Publishers; edited dozens of technical books; edited a children's book, a medical text book, and a book on divorce at the same time and managed to stay sane; and has written/edited end user documentation and marketing materials for more products than she can count. She recently launched her own publishing company, Quincy Companion Books, and has published two books that help military families cope with the challenges of deployment separation.
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