Scholarly definitions of romantic love across short-term and long-term relationships

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.

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.

They found that while both parties to a situation of unrequited love failed to understand one another, at the same time they developed an emotional interdependence. Those who fell in love would later look back on the experience as being marked by both intensely positive and intensely negative experiences, while those who were the object of infatuation held primarily negative but also strong emotions. Both parties found the experience to be a negative one; however, both sides also experienced it as an important one that affected them after it was over.

Both sides of such relationships constructed narratives to help legitimize their own experiences. Those who rejected would-be lovers created stories that helped them to feel less guilty for having caused emotional hurt while those who had been rejected created stories that helped them to see themselves as more worthy of love in the future. This research thus creates a model of love that is not external to the lovers nor located within an individual as a form of self-expression but rather that arises in the space between individuals' competing narratives.

What's in a Genotype Would Not Look as Sweet

Swami, Stieger, Haubner, Voracek, & Furnham (2009) looked at the importance of physical attractiveness in romantic relationships and found that -- in a confirmation of earlier research -- that individuals are likely to rate their partners as more-than-averagely attractive. (a phenomenon that they refer to as "love is blind." ) Not only did the individuals rate their partners as above-average in looks, but they rated individual body parts as more-than-averagely attractive.

This is not terribly surprising, perhaps. A more important finding of this research is that as a relationship lasted longer, people began to have more realistic views of their partner's physical attractiveness. In other words, people could remain in love even as they became more accurate in their assessments of their partners. Another important finding is that those individuals who had a high degree of playfulness in their relationship tended to have an accurate assessment of their partner from the beginning.

Conclusion

The different studies cited here create a range of definitions and models for romantic love. This is true in part because the authors are concerned with different questions and are investigating different populations. The questions that they ask are -- as is always the case in any research -- influenced by the subjects they are studying.

The particulars of a research project will always affect the definitions and operationalizations used by the scholars pursuing the research. However, it is also possible to create definitions that can be used across different research projects with different assumptions and goals. The research examined here suggests that a working definition of romantic love that could be useful in a variety of contexts. Such a model will focus on a realistic assessment of partners by each other, the necessity for passion and sexual attraction, the inclusion of playfulness and the exclusion of obsession and mania, and reference to similar cultural models and narrative arcs.

Such a model is complex, but sufficiently clear in its components so that it could to be the basis for a strong hypothesis in a range of experimental situations and a number of different disciplines.