Love in Four Acts: What is Romantic Love?

In a strange way, ro­man­tic love is the least un­der­s­tood part of the hu­man psyche be­cause we are con­tent in be­liev­ing that “it just hap­pen­s”, that it is some­thing so sa­cred that it clear­ly re­sists ra­tio­n­al un­der­s­tand­ing, or that it is an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ence for ev­ery­one such that it is im­pos­si­ble to ar­tic­u­late. In­deed, so­cial psy­chol­o­gy text­books talk a great deal about the fac­tors that im­pact re­la­tion­ship for­ma­tion (proxim­i­ty, fa­miliar­i­ty, shared at­ti­tudes etc), but they typ­i­cal­ly do not have a lot to say about ro­man­tic love as some­thing se­parate from pla­ton­ic friend­ships. But per­haps un­der­neath the mys­ti­cal, maybe even myth­i­cal, glow of love’s façade, there is some­thing that we can ar­tic­u­late and talk about mean­ing­ful­ly. And per­haps un­der­s­tand­ing ro­man­tic love em­pow­ers us rather than cor­rupt­ing love through de­lib­er­ate ex­plo­ra­tion. This is a sto­ry about ro­man­tic love from four dif­fer­ent in­ter­twined per­spec­tives: fairy tales, Jun­gian psy­chol­o­gy, col­lect­ed in­ter­views, and bi­ol­o­gy. This is a sto­ry about what four dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives can tell us about ro­man­tic love.

It makes the most sense to be­gin with a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of ter­mi­nol­o­gy – what do we mean by “ro­man­tic love”? Al­most 3 de­cades ago, in 1978, Elaine Hat­field wrote a sem­i­nal book on the top­ic of love - teas­ing apart pas­sio­nate and com­panio­nate love. She defined pas­sio­nate love as "a state of in­tense long­ing for union with another" and com­panio­nate love as "the af­fec­tion we feel for those with whom our lives are dee­p­ly en­twined". Around the same time, Dorothy Ten­nov was try­ing to an­sw­er the same ques­tion in her book "Love and Limer­ence" and, sim­i­lar to Hat­field, quick­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed be­tween the “love” that is sin­cere con­cern and car­ing as op­posed to the “love” that is fiery, eu­phoric and ephe­mer­al. But Ten­nov re­al­ized that there is some­thing more ir­ra­tio­n­al and com­plex about this lat­ter kind of love than what Hat­field de­scribed. Ten­nov coined the term “limer­ence” for the lat­ter so as to be able to dis­cuss it as a con­cept se­parate from “love”. She not­ed that “love” is an emo­tion that is act­ed on, while “limer­ence” is more of a trans­formed state that peo­ple go in­to (the dif­fer­ence in the prover­bial “I love you, but I’m not in love with you”). Af­ter in­ter­views with hun­dreds of in­di­vi­d­u­als who were "in love", Ten­nov put to­gether a list of the symp­toms of limer­ence:

1) In­tru­sive thoughts about the ob­ject of pas­sio­nate de­sire (the “limer­ent ob­jec­t” or LO)
2) Acute long­ing for re­cip­ro­ca­tion
3) Mood be­comes de­pen­dent on the LO’s ac­tions
4) In­a­bil­i­ty to re­act limer­ent­ly to­wards more than one per­son at the same time (ex­cept when limer­ence is at low ebb)
5) Unsettling shy­ness and fear of re­jec­tion when in the pres­ence of the LO
6) In­ten­si­fi­ca­tion through ad­ver­si­ty (up to a cer­tain point)
7) Acute sen­si­tiv­i­ty to any act or con­di­tion that could be in­ter­pret­ed as fa­vor­able
8) An ach­ing of the “heart” (a pal­pa­ble heavy sen­sa­tion in the front of the ch­est)
9) Buoy­an­cy (a feel­ing of “walk­ing on air”)
10) An in­ten­si­ty of feel­ing that leaves other con­cerns in the back­ground
11) A re­mark­able abil­i­ty to em­pha­size the pos­i­tive traits of the LO, while ren­der­ing the LO’s neg­a­tive traits as “en­dear­ing” to the point where it is per­ceived to be another pos­i­tive trait. --- (pg. 23)

The cen­tral para­dox of limer­ence is that some­one who is ac­tive­ly limer­ent feels like they are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the most unique, rap­tur­ous ex­pe­ri­ence in the world even though limer­ence seems to have fair­ly uni­ver­sal char­ac­teris­tics (at least in West­ern cul­tures, al­though it could be argued that tra­di­tio­n­al Asian cul­tures do un­der­s­tand limer­ence but don't use it as a ba­sis for mar­ri­age). In fact, as Ten­nov not­ed, there is a very well-re­hearsed cul­tu­r­al script for falling in and out of limer­ence: the ini­tial buoy­an­cy, the en­su­ing anxi­e­ty and self-con­s­cious­ness, in­tense dis­trac­tion and eu­pho­ria, usu­al­ly fol­lowed by a de­v­as­tat­ing dis­il­lu­sion­ment. Ev­ery­one knows this script.

And one rea­son why we know this script so well is be­cause we’ve been hear­ing about it since we were chil­dren. We have all gone to bed as a child with the fresh­ly-told fairy tale sto­ry still bub­bling in our mind. Mar­cia Lie­ber­man has criti­cized fairy tales as con­di­tion­ing girls in­to be­com­ing sub­mis­sive wo­m­en who be­lieve that beau­ty and do­cil­i­ty are the on­ly traits that are re­ward­ed in life, but in her es­say “Some Day My Prince Will Come”, she al­so points out some­thing very in­ter­est­ing about ro­man­tic love it­self. Most fairy tales end with the “hap­pi­ly ev­er af­ter” clause, but th­ese same fairy tales al­most al­ways have the pro­ta­g­on­ist come from a bro­ken fam­i­ly. Ei­ther one of the par­ents is dead, miss­ing, or there is an evil step-par­ent. Th­ese fairy tales im­p­ly that ro­man­tic love leads to hap­py mar­ri­ages and yet all the fam­i­lies that they por­tray are bro­ken. The para­dox of love in fairy tales is that ev­ery­one ends up hap­pi­ly ev­er af­ter, but no one seems to be hap­py. The “hap­pi­ly ev­er af­ter” of love is al­ways em­pha­sized, but nev­er shown.

What does it mean to grow up with sto­ries with such a strange jux­ta­po­si­tion of what ro­man­tic love is? But in fact, th­ese sym­bols and themes still sur­round us as adults. The prince and princess mere­ly change forms and show up on TV sit­coms, movies and fill the roles in nov­els, plays and even songs. The same sto­ry is be­ing re-en­act­ed over and over again for all ages.

In his book “We: Un­der­s­tand­ing the Psy­chol­o­gy of Ro­man­tic Love”, Robert John­son shows how we grow up to be­lieve in the ir­ra­tio­n­al as­sump­tions of the fairy tale script of ro­man­tic love. As a Jun­gian an­alyst, Robert John­son is in­ter­est­ed in ex­plor­ing the cul­tu­r­al arche­type of ro­man­tic love to un­cov­er its psy­cho­log­i­cal essence and mean­ing. Like Ten­nov, he dif­fer­en­ti­ates ro­man­tic love from sin­cere love – “Ro­man­tic love is not love but a com­plex of at­ti­tudes about love – in­vol­un­tary feel­ings, ide­als, and re­ac­tion­s” (pg. 45, orig­i­nal em­pha­sis). John­son points out a cen­tral ide­al of love that Ten­nov does­n’t em­pha­size and it is this:

When we are “in love” we feel com­plet­ed, as though a miss­ing part of our­selves had been re­turned to us; we feel uplift­ed, as though we were sud­den­ly raised above the lev­el of the or­d­i­nary world. Life has an in­ten­si­ty, a glo­ry, an ec­s­ta­sy and tran­s­cen­dence (pg. 52)

For John­son, ro­man­tic love is a kind of pri­mal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence – both rev­e­la­tion and rap­ture - that is a fun­da­men­tal part of our col­lec­tive un­con­s­cious­ness. The tragedy of our cul­tu­r­al un­der­s­tand­ing of ro­man­tic love is that it makes us place un­rea­son­able de­mands on our ro­man­tic part­n­ers be­cause we be­lieve that they have “the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for mak­ing our lives whole … mak­ing our lives mean­ing­ful, in­tense, and ec­stat­ic” (pg. 61).

The cause of the problem is that when we are in love, we be­come “en­tranced, mes­mer­ized … with a mys­ti­cal vi­sion – but of some­thing se­parate and dist­inct from [our] hu­man selves” (pg. 51). We see our ro­man­tic part­n­ers as ide­al­ized, god-like ver­sions of who they are. And we are eu­phoric with this vi­sion in­stead of the other per­son. For John­son, the para­dox of ro­man­tic love is that “it nev­er pro­duces hu­man re­la­tion­ships as long as it stays ro­man­tic” (pg. 133) be­cause we are in love with our own fan­tas­ti­cal cre­a­tions in­stead of the other per­son for who they re­al­ly are.

More trag­i­cal­ly, “we as­sume that the sin­gle in­gre­di­ent that we need for ‘re­la­tion­ship’ … is ro­mance” (pg. 103) and that a re­la­tion­ship with­out this heady, fiery kind of love has very lit­tle worth to the point where “if a di­rect, un­com­pli­cat­ed, sim­ple re­la­tion­ship of­fers us hap­pi­ness, we won’t ac­cept it” (pg. 134). The tragedy de­rives from the sim­ple fact that ro­man­tic love al­ways fades, and most peo­ple do not know how to de­rive a sin­cere, hu­man re­la­tion­ship from one that is fan­tas­ti­cal and rap­tur­ous. And if they learned any­thing from fairy tales, they learned that a re­la­tion­ship with­out ro­man­tic love is worth­less. All their lives, they have had a vi­sion of what love would be, and they now be­lieve that their “true love” must then still be out there wait­ing for them. Many peo­ple are stuck for­ev­er in this wash-and-rinse cy­cle of ro­man­tic love be­cause they be­lieve that fiery ro­man­tic love can be ev­er­last­ing.

The ro­man­tic cou­ples who have been to­gether for half their lives have some­thing quite dif­fer­ent from ro­man­tic love. John­son calls it “stir­ring-the-oat­meal” love – “it rep­re­sents a willing­ness to share or­d­i­nary hu­man life, to find mean­ing in the sim­ple, un­ro­man­tic tasks … to find the re­lat­ed­ness, the val­ue, the beau­ty, in the sim­ple and or­d­i­nary things, not to eter­nal­ly de­mand a cos­mic dra­ma … or an ex­traor­d­i­nary in­ten­si­ty in ev­ery­thing” (pg. 195). In a strange way, this is true love be­cause it can be ev­er­last­ing, but this is not the love script that we are bom­bard­ed with from ev­ery lit­erary or en­ter­tain­ment form in our lives.

Yet if ro­man­tic love or limer­ence is so de­struc­tive and ir­ra­tio­n­al, why does it hap­pen at all? Ten­nov brie­f­ly pon­ders the pos­si­ble bi­o­log­i­cal un­der­pin­n­ings of limer­ence in her book. As an evo­lu­tio­nary adap­ta­tion, limer­ence might be a re­ac­tion to a set of phys­i­cal at­trac­tive­ness or ge­net­ic fit­ness cues. Pri­ma fa­cie, it makes a lot of sense that we be­come in­tense­ly at­tract­ed to high­ly de­sir­able sex­u­al part­n­ers, but that is lust – an in­tense erot­ic re­ac­tion, which is dif­fer­ent from limer­ence – the set of re­spons­es and at­ti­tudes that can be in­de­pen­dent from sex­u­al de­sire. When we are in limer­ence with some­one, we want to be with them and we want them to like us. When we are in lust with some­one, we just want to have sex with them. There is an im­por­tant dif­fer­ence be­tween the two. It makes sense for us to lust a high­ly de­sir­able sex­u­al part­n­er, but why would we be­come limer­ent over them?

The an­sw­er may lie with the size of our brains. Our pelvis­es have de­creased in size over the past few mil­lion years while the size of our brains have in­creased. The problem is that ba­bies can­not ful­ly de­vel­op in the mother’s womb other­wise they would be too large to be giv­en birth to. The com­pro­mise is that hu­man in­fants are born “pre-ma­ture” so they can fin­ish de­vel­op­ing out­side the womb. But this leaves both the mother and in­fant high­ly vul­n­er­able in the small trib­al hun­ter-gather­er en­vi­ron­ment. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause hu­man in­fants can­not cling on­to their mothers the way all pri­mate in­fants can (a conse­quence of hair­less­ness and short­er arms). In fact, the on­ly way a hu­man in­fant can sur­vive in the an­ces­tral en­vi­ron­ment is if both par­ents are pre­sent. Limer­ence is per­haps an evo­lu­tio­nary adap­ta­tion that cre­ates an ir­ra­tio­n­al emo­tio­n­al at­tach­ment to another in­di­vi­d­u­al for the like­ly du­ra­tion of con­cep­tion, birth and child care. This du­ra­tion is around 2-3 years, which is al­so how long mar­ri­ages usu­al­ly last – long enough to bear one child and for that child to be old enough to walk.

Of course, Ten­nov is prob­a­b­ly right that limer­ence is trig­gered by some set of traits that im­p­ly ge­net­ic fit­ness (such as phys­i­cal at­trac­tive­ness) which dif­fer from per­son to per­son. For ex­am­ple, it has been shown that we are at­tract­ed to or re­pelled by the na­t­u­ral body odor of other in­di­vi­d­u­als to dif­fer­ing de­grees. Re­search has shown that we are typ­i­cal­ly not at­tract­ed to the body odors of close fam­i­ly mem­bers (another in­cest safe­guard) or peo­ple whose ge­net­ic make­up is very dif­fer­ent from ours. We typ­i­cal­ly find in­di­vi­d­u­als who are in the op­ti­mal mid­dle area most erot­ic-smelling. The un­der­ly­ing the­o­ry is that the phero­mones in our body odor are a sig­na­ture of our im­mune sys­tem blueprint, and one rea­son why sex ex­ists to be­gin with is to in­crease ge­net­ic vari­a­tion against the con­s­tant­ly evolv­ing virus­es and bac­te­ria. It’s es­sen­tial­ly an arms race be­tween us and virus­es that forces us to in­crease the ge­net­ic vari­a­tion of our off­spring or per­ish. In short, limer­ence as an evo­lu­tio­nary adap­ta­tion is plau­si­ble.

Many of us have at one point or another been im­pri­s­oned by the pain­ful, ir­ra­tio­n­al clutch­es of limer­ence gone bad. But in a cul­ture where ro­man­tic “love” is of­ten pre­sent­ed in en­tire­ly para­dox­i­cal ways, it is in­e­vitable that many peo­ple are un­able to un­tan­gle limer­ence from love. Ro­man­tic love and all its im­pli­ca­tions are dee­p­ly root­ed in our cul­ture, and per­haps th­ese ir­ra­tio­n­al re­ac­tions have evo­lu­tio­nary un­der­pin­n­ings, but that does not mean we have to be im­pri­s­oned by them. For as long as we pro­ject god-like ide­al­iza­tions on­to our ro­man­tic part­n­ers and de­mand that they make us hap­py as the fairy tales de­scribe, we will nev­er tru­ly love them as hu­man be­ings. Limer­ence may be a won­der­ful way to be­gin a re­la­tion­ship, but that re­la­tion­ship will nev­er get any­where un­less both in­di­vi­d­u­als are willing and able to see each other for who they are. In the end, the ba­sis of a sta­ble re­la­tion­ship is found­ed on a love that emerges not in spite of but be­cause of the other per­son­’s flaws and weak­ness­es, be­cause ul­ti­mate­ly it is our im­per­fec­tions that make us hu­man. We can seek out limer­ence with an­gels, but we can on­ly find true love among mor­tals.


Notes:

1) One of the things that start­ed Ten­nov on her study of limer­ence was her dis­cov­ery of na­t­u­ral non-limer­ents - peo­ple who do not ex­pe­ri­ence limer­ence and not be­cause they are ac­tive­ly deny­ing their own emo­tions. Ten­nov doc­u­ments sev­er­al in­di­vi­d­u­als she meets who have nev­er been limer­ent and are con­fused by the me­dia por­tray­al of this set of emo­tions and at­ti­tudes. A bi­o­log­i­cal un­der­pin­n­ing ac­tu­al­ly does al­low for a spec­trum of "limer­ent re­ac­tions" with in­di­vi­d­u­als on both ends of that spec­trum.

2) Robert Stern­berg has a triarchic the­o­ry of love, com­posed of 3 fac­tors: In­ti­ma­cy, Pas­sion and Com­mit­ment, and in his paradigm, you need all 3 to have "con­sum­mate" love. While this may seem to con­tra­dict what Ten­nov and John­son say, this may be caused by Stern­berg's more mild con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of Pas­sion which does not in­clude the more ir­ra­tio­n­al, emo­tio­n­al­ly-charged, dra­ma-rid­den el­e­ments that Ten­nov and John­son de­scribe. Stern­berg's Pas­sion is bet­ter de­scribed as warm ro­mance.

Ref­er­ences:

Hat­field, E., & Wal­ster, G. W. (1978). A new look at love. Ad­di­son-Wes­ley.
John­son, Robert A. We: Un­der­s­tand­ing the Psy­chol­o­gy of Ro­man­tic Love. Har­p­er San Fran­cis­co. 1983.
Lie­ber­man, Mar­cia K. "'Some Day My Prince Will Come': Fe­male Ac­cul­tu­r­a­tion through the Fairy Tale." In Don't Bet on the Prince: Con­tem­po­rary Femi­n­ist Fairy Tales in North Amer­i­ca and Eng­land. Ed. Jack Zipes. New York: Methuen, 1986, pp. 185-200.
Ten­nov, Dorothy. Love and Limer­ence. Scar­bor­ough House. 1979.
Thorn­hill, Randy, Ganges­tad, Steven W. The scent of sym­me­try: A hu­man sex phero­mone that sig­nals fit­ness? Evo­lu­tion & Hu­man Be­havior Vol 20(3) (May 1999): 175-201