Romantic Love Causes and Consequences

Romantic Love

Causes and Consequences of Romantic Love

How do I love these -- let me count the ways. So the poet advises the lovers of the world, but the advice could just as well be given to scholars investigating the ways in which romantic love is understood and explicated. This paper examines the ways in which a number of different scholars have defined love, trying to put into words an emotion that can feel for those who are experiencing far too deep for everyday speech.

While there are important differences among the findings of these ten different studies, there are important connections among the studies, especially when other factors are taken into account, such as whether love is being defined in terms of long-term or short-term relationships. Other important factors that are taken up in different studies are the importance of the ways in which parents and other family members affect a couple's view of their relationships, and cultural archetypes of what passion and love are "supposed" to feel like.

The purpose of this literature study is to determine what elements can be drawn from these different studies to allow for a single, integrated definition that can be used in a future study. Such a working definition of romantic love would prove to be an extremely powerful operationalized variable in a range of different academic projects.

Does a Long-term Relationship Kill Romantic Love?

That is the question asked by Acevedo & Aron (2009). The two scholars performed a meta-study of twenty-five different studies of personal satisfaction of individuals in both short-term and long-term relationships. Their findings were that it is indeed possible for romantic love to endure over the long-term. Sexual passion and desire do not have to diminish over time, they concluded, but this is only true if a couple has a certain kind of relationship to begin with. Those romantic relationships that are marked by an obsessive level of attraction, while they may seem the strongest at the beginning, are less likely to endure than relationships that are based on what the writers describe as "romantic love."

Acevedo & Aron (2009) defined romantic love as being centered on a type of friendship that they call "companionate love." Unlike friendship, however, their definition of romantic love also includes a high degree of sexual desire, and a highly intense level of engagement between the partners. But just as important as it is for a healthy long-term romantic relationships to have these characteristics, it is equally important that such a relationship not include any obsessive behaviors, the kind of behaviors often described as manic.

Part of the problem that many couples face, they suggest, is that relationships touched with mania or obsessiveness are more exciting for the partners at the beginning of a relationship. As a result, people are often drawn into relationships that will not last. This is true even when past experience tells them that these relationships that have manic or obsessive elements tend to end badly. However, the attractiveness of the mania at the beginning of a relationship makes it impossible for individuals to pass up the relationship and move on to one that is less irrationally thrilling at the beginning but that has a much higher chance of success for the long-term.

Change Happens

Sprecher (1999) found support for the idea that long-term romantic relationships can be stable and rewarding, although this is probably the case in part because people are in some measure deceiving themselves. Using a longitudinal research design, the author found that people reported that long-term intact relationships improved over time and that they became increasingly satisfied with the relationship as well as their partners.

However, the author also found that if a couple ended their relationship then they revised their assessment of the quality of the relationship downward. Thus it may not be the quality of the relationship that actually improves over time but rather a tendency of individuals to value what they have that pushes them to assess extant relationships in a positive way.

Would We Want Othello's Love?

Hendrick, Hendrick, & Adler (1988) provided some of the core work upon which Acevedo & Aron (2009) based their definitions of different types of romantic relationships. They focused on the aspect of manic or obsessive love that Acevedo & Aron noted was anathema to long-term stable but passionate relationships. They described the aspect of mania as being marked by an intense longing either by one person for another or between two people that is marked by intrusive thoughts. The type of manic or obsessive love that Hendrick, Hendrick, & Adler (1988) describe is also marked by jealousy and often severe doubt about the other person's loyalty and love.

An extreme model of this type of manic love is that expressed by Othello for Desdemona. And while not all such examples of obsessive love end as badly as did the marriage of this pair, the potential for misery if not outright tragedy is very high. The degree of attachment, or at least of perceived attachment, between individuals engaged in an obsessive relationship does not allow for the stresses of everyday life and the many competing demands on an individual's time -- from caring for children to holding down a job to -- that subtract from a total focus on the beloved -- cannot be endured.

Manic love, according to these authors, is marked by an intense desire to merge with another person. Because it is never possible for one person to become one with another, this desire to merge will be constantly frustrated. This level of frustration will prove to be destructive at levels ranging from the relatively minor to the catastrophic.

Hendrick, Hendrick, & Adler (1988) also described as an essential part of the kind of manic love that they were describing a high state of emotional lability or fluctuation. The kind of monomania that such a form of love both requires and induces does not allow for the kind of emotional overall stability required to maintain a relationship over the long-term -- or indeed for mental health over the long-term.

It Takes Three to Triangulate

Sternberg (1988) also created a model of romantic love that incorporates several different key aspects. In this case, romantic love must include intimacy, commitment, and passion. These three can be combined in different ways to form the basis for different types of relationships. When none of them is present, there is a state of "non-love." "Consummate love" -- which is akin to what others scholars call romantic love -- is the presence of all three of these attributes in a relationship.

This work, like others cited in this paper, is striking in that it attempts to differentiate friendship from romantic love. This attempt to differentiate the two, however, tends to underscore the way in which the two overlap each other.

Romantic Love -- Childlike in its Origin?

Hazan & Shaver (1989) argue that romantic love is far more akin to the kind of love that children feel for their parents than is usually acknowledged. To link these two kinds of love, they suggest, is considered to be inappropriate because it suggests that there is something erotic in the attraction that children feel toward their parents. While Freud was certainly inclined to focus on what he saw as the erotic nature of the love that children have for their parents, such an eroticization of childhood love is generally considered to be at the very least inappropriate -- and possibly a felony.

Hazan & Shaver (1989) argue that it is entirely appropriate to focus on the similarities between a child's love for her parents and other caregivers and the romantic love that exists between adult partners. The key to their model is that such a comparison is not based on an eroticization or a sexualization of children's love but rather a recognition that the kind of attraction that children feel from their earliest years is carried through their entire lives.

The authors base their analysis on a model of attachment, which is the relationship that infants and older children develop as they come to depend on and love the adults who care for them. They describe three major attachment styles that infants establish. They may be securely attached to their caregivers if the relationship is stable and healthy. Children form avoidant relationships with their caregivers if they do not trust them or find them dependable. Some children develop ambivalent attachment styles with their caregivers if the relationship is marked by some degree of trust, but not as secure as in a secure relationship.

The authors of this study argue that the type of attachment style that is established during infancy and childhood becomes an enduring part of an individual's interpersonal style. In other words, an infant who has a secure attachment style to parents or other caregivers will grow up to have secure romantic relationships as an adult. This model is based on a model of attachment as part of an overall model of personality in which traits and styles of behavior are persistent across the lifespan.

This model is no longer generally held to be a valid one. While attachment style is still considered to be important, human motivation and behavior are considered to be sufficiently flexible that no one style of interpersonal relationship will endure over the lifespan.

When Parents Say No

Driscoll, Davis, & Lipetz (1972) looked not to Othello but to Romeo and Juliet. They argue that the network of relationships in which a couple lives can have a highly important effect on the durability as well as the intensity of the relationship. While in some cases, that influence can be to further the relationship, in many cases the result is that disapproval of a relationship on the part of parents, other family members, or friends, the couple may feel that their love is in fact validated.

The kind of relationship that is strengthened by the disapproval of those who are otherwise important to an individual tends to be marked by the kind of obsessive or manic elements that were described above. That tendency to become entirely absorbed in each other with its concomitant tendency to doubt the trustworthiness of people can promote a sense of isolation, the feeling of a world in which there are only the lovers.

The authors of this study focus on the importance of trust in a relationship. But equally important to their model is the importance of distrust, in this case of parents. By viewing their love as being besieged by everyone, including their own families, individuals in certain kinds of relationships can waive away any disapproval on the part of others as a sign that their love is in fact the real and enduring thing.

Love as External Force

Dion & Dion (1973) focus on an aspect of love that is culturally based and that connects to the above findings. They argue that for many people in Western societies, there is a model of love that it is an external force rather than something that arises from within an individual (or from within the dynamics that exist between individuals who are in love). This model of love as an external force (or entity) is consistent with the model of love expounded by Romeo and Juliet and examined by Driscoll, Davis, & Lipetz (1972), for the young lovers see themselves as being swept up by an external force that they are powerless to overcome.

The adherence to a culturally sanctioned model of love as an external force allows individuals to place the responsibility for their actions outside of their own behavior. The rejection of others of the legitimacy of the love of those who construe love as an external force further allows individuals to see love as something that lies beyond their responsibility.

One of the most interesting findings of Dion & Dion (1973) is that those who understand love to be an external force are more much more likely to fall in love and to consider love to be a core element of their lives than are those who believe love to be an internal force that arises from within themselves. It is not clear to what extent these results would be reversed if the subjects were chosen from cultures with a different archetype of the romantic relationship.

An Act of the Imagination

Safer's 1991 review of Person's book on romantic love also touches on the ways in which cultural tropes about love affect the ways in which individuals search for, interpet, and dedicate themselves to romantic relationships. Person's view of love as practiced in the modern West is not that of the external force that overpowers Romeo and Juliet but rather an aspect of personal growth. The model for love is not, for Person, so much romance or passion but something like the love that is extolled in self-help books.

As Safer notes, Person describes love in an oddly dispassionate way. It seems to be not so much something that is shared between two individuals but something that exists within the individual as s/he strives to discover and nurture a sense of self-worth. This shift from earlier models of romantic love as being an external, nearly insatiable force, reflect a larger cultural shift in which attention to the internal, individual psyche has become more and more important. Love is not a neurotic delusion, Person argues, but a vehicle for self-help and self-growth.

A Script for Love

Baumeister, Wotman, & Stillwell (1993) look not to cultural archetypes of love per se but rather to internalized narratives of love that each individual carries with her or him. They focus on incidences not of true love (as perceived by the individuals at the time) but rather of love that is unrequited, looking at instances of negative love as a way of understanding what is missing from relationships that do not work. Their key finding is that in a non-mutual relationship, both parties interpreted the relationship in negative terms.