Loving Well

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Cups of soup for the Heart

Loving Well II.

In another cup - What is this thing called love: What the research says - we clarified the nature of romantic love. The kind of love we have in mind when we say that someone is in love.

Our culture is preoccupied with this kind of love. Indeed, it is common for people in Europe and America today to be willing to sacrifice anything in pursuit of romantic love - their money, their friends, their self-respect, even, in many cases, the best interests of their children.

But I would like to raise a simple question. Namely, how does the romantic lover love you? Do they love you well? Or only a lot?

If you study it, I'm afraid it appears to be only a lot.

As we will suggest later, it is possible (though unusual) for romantic love to occur in combination with another kind of love - a very different kind of love called "mature" or "companionate love." But usually it occurs by itself. So let's continue for the moment looking at that typical case. We'll call that the case of the "strictly romantic lover."

I think you should know: If your lover loves you only in this strictly romantic way (it is not combined with another kind of love), their love really isn't for you. It's for them. It's a selfish thing. It is about trying to maintain their romantic high - that altered state.

Suppose, for example, that a man falls romantically in love with a woman. Then the woman changes her hair style. What does the man want? Yes, he wants her to change her hair style back - back to the way it was when he fell in love with her. (Why? Has he suddenly started to read up on the latest hair styles? Does he know something about today's hair fashions that his lady doesn't ? Not! His motivation is this: He's lost that loving feeling (that high). He has associated his altered state with a certain stimulus: they way she looked when he fell for her. That established a stimulus-response bond. And if the stimulus goes away, there is nothing to produce the response - the altered state - he wants to maintain.)

Well, the woman can change her hair style back. But can she keep herself from changing in other ways? (I know a fellow from Louisiana who likes to say that as we get older, eventually we all get "furniture disease." That's when "your chest falls into your drawers.") Yes, over time, we all change physically. How accepting will your romantic lover be of those changes?

And we all change psychologically, too. With more experience, we become more complicated. In fact, you probably want to change in this way. You may be going to school to add new components to yourself. And how will your romantic lover respond to those changes? Well, one of the themes I hear over and over in working with couples runs like this, "She's changed. I don't really want a divorce. But those people she starting working with - or something - has changed her. I want my Suzie back!"

By the way, how does a strictly romantic lover like it if you start going to school? Let's say you work days, so you take an evening class. That takes some of your time. Away from them.

How much of your time does the strictly romantic lover want? Yes, you've probably been there. They want it all. They're jealous of anything that takes you away from them. (You may find this cute for a while. But for how long?)

But I said we'd come back to a simpler point: the fact that romantic love tends not to last. I think the reason for this was best summarized over 40 years ago by Erich Fromm, author of The Art of Loving (a brilliant, beautiful and highly readable book just recently released in a new edition). Dr. Fromm put it this way: Romantic love is purely an emotion. And emotions are unstable. How you feel about a person often changes several times in one day! (Just like how you feel about yourself!)

Dr. Fromm contrasted romantic love with what he called mature love. Mature love, he said, the kind of love that is actually good for the person who is loved, is not a feeling. It's a decision.

Dr. Fromm was not a researcher. (He was a psychiatrist and a philosopher.) But he kept up with the research. In the research journals, what Dr. Fromm called mature love, is usually called companionate love. In short, "companionate love " and "mature love" are two terms for the same thing.

Researchers first coined the term "companionate love'' to describe a type of love that is found among a few unusual married couples. No, NOT the average married couple. That odd couple who were still fascinated with each other after years of marriage!

Yes, they were a few.

But only a few.

Companionate love, it turns out, is a pretty rare thing. Far more rare than romantic love (which is as commonplace as emotions come in our world.)

Nearly everyone has been in romantic love. Most of us several times. But only a minority have enjoyed a relationship based on companionate love. And they usually still have it. This stuff lasts!

More recent research tells us that companionate love is not limited to married couples. But it is found only among couples who have known each other a long time, long enough for each to know all the little peculiarities of the other person. Most important, if they have companionate love, they find it virtually impossible to talk about that person without smiling.

This is the good stuff. This is Loving Well.

To learn more about companionate love, see The Good Stuff: And How it Differs from Purely Romantic love. And Companionate And Romantic Love: Going for Both!

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