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Relationships • Breaking Up & Heartbreak

Why True Love Doesn’t Have to Last Forever

One of the big assumptions of our times is that if love is real, it must by definition prove to be eternal. We invariably and naturally equate genuine relationships with life-long relationships. And therefore it seems almost impossible for us to interpret the ending of a union after only a limited period – a few weeks, or five or ten years, or anything short of our or the partner’s death-date – as something other than a problem, a failure and an emotional catastrophe that is someone’s fault, probably our own. There are people desperate that they have failed because their relationships have lasted only thirty-two years. We appear fundamentally unable to trust that a relationship could be at once sincere, meaningful and important – and yet at the same time fairly and guiltlessly limited in its duration.

There are, of course, a few very good reasons for our collective valorisation of the life-long love story. A great many of the pleasures and virtues of relationships do only reveal themselves over time, once trust has been established and loyalty fully demonstrated. When two people know it is forever, they will work harder than at anything else in their lives, there is no option to avoid some necessary but unpleasant issues, they will do their utmost to understand the mysteries of the other’s psyche, they will show reserves of tenderness and vulnerability they wouldn’t ever otherwise have accessed. They will learn to apologise and reach a modesty about their own shortcomings. They will grow up. And in the meantime, day-to-day, they will sample the modest but genuine pleasures of cosy Sunday evenings together and shared walks in country parks. Not least, children always benefit.

But it’s because the charms of the long-term are so clear in our collective imaginations that we should acknowledge the danger of cruelly and normatively suppressing all the legitimate claims of short-term love, an arrangement which deserves to be interpreted not merely as a pathologically stunted or interrupted version of a long-term union, but as a state with distinctive virtues of its own, one that we might rationally choose from the outset, knowing from the start that it would be better for both parties if there was a termination point more or less in view.

So much can go right with short-term love:

– When two people know they don’t own one another, they are extremely careful to earn each other’s respect on a daily basis. Knowing someone could leave us at any time isn’t only grounds for insecurity, it’s a constant catalyst for tender appreciation.

– When it isn’t forever, we can let differences lie. If the journey is to be long, absolute alignment can feel key. But when the time is short, we are readier to surrender our entrenched positions, to be unthreatened by novelties and dissonances. The distinctive things they have in their fridge and the peculiar things they like to watch and listen to aren’t affronts to our values, they are unthreatening invitations to expand our personalities.

– Very few of us come out well from being closely observed, 24 hours a day, in a limited space. These may simply not be the preconditions for getting the best out of some of us. Our interesting and generous sides may need, in order to emerge, our own bedroom and bathroom, quite a few hours to ourselves, some space to read and think and a series of mealtimes alone staring rather blankly out of the window without having to explain how we feel. It’s not a sign of evil, just what we require to be the best version of ourselves.

– What makes people difficult and dooms relationships is almost never the people involved. It’s what we are trying to do with them. Inviting someone to marry you is really not a very kind thing to do to someone you love, because it’s going to drag the beloved into a range of really rather unpleasant and challenging things: doing the accounts with you, meeting your family regularly, seeing you exhausted and bleary-eyed after work, keeping the living room tidy, bringing up a child. To really love someone – that is, to wish the best for someone – might more fairly mean foregrounding your best qualities for a few ecstatic months, then mutually and tenderly parting at check-in.

– Long-term relationships reward some qualities – especially the administrative ones – but obscure others, for example, those related to skills at having interesting speculative conversations about ethics or psychology late into the night. It should be no insult to determine that some people simply won’t be able to shine in the conditions of long-term love, and that it is very kindly playing up to their strengths to leave them long before we ever need to try to arrange a cutlery drawer with them.

We should beware of succumbing to the debilitating feeling that because it didn’t last forever, it can have been nothing at all. In other areas of life, we know that ‘going on for ever’ isn’t the ideal (even when something is very good). We don’t necessarily think we have to stay in the same house all our lives though we might really like one we are in; we’re not betraying it or destroying it when we recognise that for a range of reasons it would be wisest to go elsewhere.

We need to have an account of love which allows that a relationship can end without anyone having viciously or pathologically killed it prematurely, for only against such a backdrop can we reduce the debilitating quantity of bitterness, guilt and blame otherwise in circulation. How we see the endings of love depends to a critical extent on what our societies tell us is ‘normal’. If it was meant to last forever, every ending will by necessity have to be described as a horrifying failure. But if we allow imaginative space for short-term love, then an ending may signal a deeper loyalty, not to setting up of a home and domestic routines, but to a deep appreciation and admiration one felt for someone for a time; we’ll walk away with a fair and generous sense of all that has been preserved and enhanced by the relationship not being forced to last forever.

Full Article Index

01. On Feeling Manic
02. Ostracism Anxiety
03. The Need For A Modern Monastery
04. Why the World Can Seem So Frightening – and How to Make It Feel Less So
05. Four Ways of Coping With Anxiety
06. Might You Be Hypervigilant? A Sombre Questionnaire
07. A Question to Ask Ourselves When We're Feeling Low and Paranoid
08. The Importance of Not Knowing
09. Why We May Be Addicted to Crises
10. The Causes of Obsessive Thinking
11. What Our Bodies are Trying to Tell Us
12. Anxiety-as-Denial
13. Our Anxious Ancestry
14. Auditing Our Worries
15. Why We May Need a Convalescence
16. Don't Hope for the Best; Expect the Worst
17. The Age of Agitation
18. How to Sleep Better
19. How and Why We Catastrophise
20. On Being 'Triggered'
21. OCD — and How to Overcome It
22. How Mental Illness Impacts Our Bodies
23. Signs You Might Be Suffering from Complex PTSD
24. On Skin Picking
25. Stoicism and Tigers Who Come to Tea
26. The Seven Most Calming Works of Art in the World
27. After the Storm
28. Thoughts for the Storm
29. Emotional Maturity in a Crisis
30. Preparing for Disaster
31. How to Stop Being Scared All the Time
32. The Ultimate Dark Source of Security
33. What Everybody Really Wants
34. Simplicity & Anxiety
35. A Way Through Panic Attacks
36. Self-Hatred & Anxiety
37. The Question We Should Ask Ourselves When Anxious
38. On Anxiety
39. The True Cause of Dread and Anxiety
40. On Being Scared All the Time
41. The Importance of Having A Breakdown
42. On Asking for Help
43. The Normality of Anxiety Attacks
44. On Panic Attacks
01. Might I Be Feeling Lonely Rather Than Worried?
02. A Place for Despair
03. On Being Gaslit In Our Childhoods
04. How to Make It Through
05. When Our Battery is Running Low
06. The Many Moods We Pass Through
07. When I Am Called to Die
08. If You Stopped Running, What Would You Need to Feel?
09. Can We Live With the Truth?
10. Five Questions to Ask Yourself Every Evening
11. Why Things May Need to Get Worse Before They Can Get Better
12. The Limits of the Conscious Mind
13. Why Life is Always Difficult
14. What is a Transcendental Experience?
15. Building the Cathedral
16. Rewriting Our Inner Scripts
17. What Sleeping Babies Can Teach Us
18. How to Endure
19. Everything Is So Weird
20. Escaping Into History
21. The Inevitability of Choice
22. What Would Jesus Do?
23. Stop Worrying About Your Reputation
24. You Still Have Time
25. I Will Survive!
26. On Trying to Control the Future
27. A Few Things Still to Be Grateful For
28. No One Knows
29. There is No Happily Ever After
30. The Catastrophe You Fear Will Happen has Already Happened
31. There is Always a Plan B
32. The Consolations of History
33. The Lessons of Nature
34. What Others Think of You - and The Fall of Icarus
35. On the Sublime
36. Gratitude for the Small Things
37. Why ‘Earthrise’ Matters
38. On Flowers
39. The Valuable Idea Behind the Concept of the Day of Judgement
40. The Wisdom of Animals
41. The Lottery of Life
42. Untranslatable Words
43. The Wisdom of Rocks: Gongshi
44. Wu Wei – Doing Nothing 無爲
45. The Faulty Walnut
46. Perspectives on Insomnia
47. On the Wisdom of Space
48. Memento Mori
49. On the Wisdom of Cows
50. On Calming Places
51. Why Small Pleasures Are a Big Deal
52. The Consolations of a Bath
53. The Importance of Staring out the Window
54. Clouds, Trees, Streams
55. On Sunshine
01. The Ecstatic Joy We Deny Ourselves
02. Why Illusions Are Necessary to Achieve Anything
03. Preparing for a Decent Night of Sleep
04. Returning Anger to Where It Belongs
05. Controlling Insomnia – and Life – Through Pessimism
06. How to Be Cool the Yoruba Way
07. Why We Should Refuse to Get into Arguments
08. The Perils of Making Predictions
09. Making Peace with Life's Mystery
10. The Promise of an Unblemished Life
11. Daring to Be Simple
12. Haikus and Appreciation
13. The Call of Calm
14. What Would Paradise Look Like?
15. How to Process Your Emotions
16. The Wisdom of Dusk
17. The Appeal of Austere Places
18. How to Go to Bed Earlier
19. Why We All Need Quiet Days
20. The Benefits of Provincial Life
21. How to Live in a Hut
22. For Those Who (Privately) Aspire to Become More Reclusive
23. The Hard Work of Being 'Lazy'
24. Expectations - and the 80/20 Rule
25. Taking It One Day at a Time
26. Spirituality for People who Hate Spirituality
27. How to Spill A Drink Down One’s Front - and Survive
28. How To Stop Worrying Whether or Not They Like You
29. On Soothing
30. What Is Wrong with Modern Times - and How to Regain Wisdom
31. The Disaster of Anthropocentrism - and the Promise of the Transcendent
32. On Needing to Find Something to Worry About — Why We Always Worry for No Reason
33. How We Are Easily, Too Easily, 'Triggered'
34. Hypervigilance
35. If The Worst Came to the Worst...
36. The Wonders of an Ordinary Life
37. In Praise of the Quiet Life
38. The Pursuit of Calm
39. Insomnia and Philosophy
01. African Proverbs to Live By
02. Why We Are Haunted by Ghosts of the Past
03. How to Be Cool the Yoruba Way
01. What Goes With What
02. Eight Rules to Create Nicer Cities
03. The Secret Toll of Our Ugly World
04. Henri Rousseau
05. Albrecht Dürer and his Pillows
06. On the Consolations of Home | Georg Friedrich Kersting
07. Francisco Goya's Masterpiece
08. How Industry Restores Our Faith in Humanity
09. Rembrandt as a Guide to Kindness
10. Buildings That Give Hope - and Buildings That Condemn Us
11. Katsushika Hokusai
12. Agnes Martin
13. The Importance of Architecture
14. The Secret of Beauty: Order and Complexity
15. Le Corbusier
16. Two World Views: Romantic and Classical
17. Oscar Niemeyer
18. Against Obscurity
19. Why Do Scandinavians Have Such Impeccable Taste in Interior Design?
20. Art for Art's Sake
21. Why We Need to Create a Home
22. Why You Should Never Say: ‘Beauty Lies in the Eye of the Beholder’
23. Andrea Palladio
24. Why Design Matters
25. On Good and Bad Taste
26. On How to Make an Attractive City
27. Art as Therapy
28. On Ugliness and the Housing Crisis
29. Johannes Vermeer
30. Caspar David Friedrich
31. Henri Matisse
32. Edward Hopper
33. Louis Kahn
34. Coco Chanel
35. Jane Jacobs
36. Cy Twombly
37. Andy Warhol
38. Dieter Rams
39. A Therapeutic Approach to Art
40. Christo and Jeanne-Claude
41. On the Importance of Drawing
42. On Art as a Reminder
43. On the Price of Art Works
44. Secular Chapels
45. Relativism and Urban Planning
46. What Art Museums Should Be For
47. On Fakes and Originals
48. The Museum Gift Shop
01. What We Might Learn From The Dandies of The Congo
02. The Beauty of Komorebi
03. The Past Was Not in Black and White
04. The Drawer of Odd Things
05. Why Middle-Aged Men Think So Often About the Roman Empire
06. The Consolations of Catastrophe
07. What is the Point of History?
08. What Rothko's Art Teaches Us About Suffering
09. The Value of Reading Things We Disagree with
10. Easter for Atheists
11. The Life House
12. Why Philosophy Should Become More Like Pop Music
13. Why Stoicism Continues to Matter
14. The School of Life: What We Believe
15. Cultural Mining
16. Lego – the Movies
17. Philosophy – the Movies
18. History of Ideas – the Movies
19. Sociology – the Movies
20. Political Theory – the Movies
21. Psychotherapy – the Movies
22. Greek Philosophy – the Movies
23. Eastern Philosophy – the Movies
24. Art – the Movies
25. On Aphorisms
26. What Comes After Religion?
27. The Serious Business of Clothes
28. What Is the Point of the Humanities?
29. Why Music Works
30. The Importance of Music
31. The Importance of Books
32. What Is Comedy For?
33. What Is Philosophy For?
34. What Is Art For?
35. What Is History For?
36. What Is Psychotherapy For?
37. What Is Literature For?
38. The Joys of Sport
01. Following in the Buddha's Footsteps
02. Six Persimmons
03. The Four Hindu Stages of Life
04. Rice or Wheat? The Difference Between Eastern and Western Cultures
05. Eastern vs Western Views of Happiness
06. Four Great Ideas from Hinduism
07. Zen Buddhism and Fireflies
08. Six Ideas from Eastern Philosophy
09. Wu Wei – Doing Nothing 無爲
10. Kintsugi 金継ぎ
12. Lao Tzu
13. Confucius
14. Sen no Rikyū
15. Matsuo Basho
16. Mono No Aware
17. Guan Yin
18. Gongshi
20. Kintsugi
22. Why so Many Love the Philosophy of the East - and so Few That of the West
01. It Isn't About the Length of a Life...
02. On Luxury and Sadness
03. On Not Being Able To Cook Very Well
04. Food as Therapy
05. What We Really Like to Eat When No One is Looking
06. What Meal Might Suit My Mood? Questionnaire
01. Charles Dickens's Secret
02. Giuseppe di Lampedusa — The Leopard
03. Sei Shōnagon — The Pillow Book
04. Kakuzo Okakura — The Book of Tea
05. Victor Hugo and the Art of Contempt
06. Edward Gibbon — The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
07. How to Read Fewer Books
08. The Downfall of Oscar Wilde
09. What Voltaire Meant by 'One Must Cultivate One's Own Garden'
10. James Baldwin
11. Camus and The Plague
12. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
13. Charles Dickens
14. Gustave Flaubert
15. Fyodor Dostoevsky
16. Marcel Proust
17. Books as Therapy
18. Jane Austen
19. Leo Tolstoy
20. Virginia Woolf
21. James Joyce
01. Machiavelli's Advice for Nice Guys
02. Niccolò Machiavelli
03. Thomas Hobbes
04. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
05. Adam Smith
06. Karl Marx
07. John Ruskin
08. Henry David Thoreau
09. Thoreau and Civil Disobedience
10. Matthew Arnold
11. William Morris
12. Friedrich Hayek
13. John Rawls
01. What Should A Good Therapist Do For Us?
02. The Usefulness Of Speaking Your Feelings To An Empty Chair
03. What's the Bit of Therapy That Heals You?
04. Why We Need Therapy When We Give Up on Religion
05. How Psychotherapy Might Truly Help Us
06. Why You Should Take a Sentence Completion Test
07. Carl Jung's Word Association Test
08. Freud's Porcupine
09. How Mental Illness Impacts Our Bodies
10. How the Modern World Makes Us Mentally Ill
11. Twenty Key Concepts from Psychotherapy
12. Why Psychotherapy Works
13. The True and the False Self
14. What Happens in Psychotherapy? Four Case Studies
15. The Problem of Psychological Asymmetry
16. Freud on Sublimation
17. Sigmund Freud
18. Anna Freud
19. Melanie Klein
20. Donald Winnicott
21. John Bowlby
22. A Short Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
23. Jacques Lacan
01. You Are Living in the Greatest Museum in the World
02. When Something is Beautiful...
03. Albrecht Dürer and his Pillows
04. How Giraffes Can Teach Us to Wonder
05. Sun Worship
06. The Importance of Dancing Like an Idiot
07. Walking in the Woods
08. Getting More Serious about Pleasure
09. On Going to the Zoo
10. The Fish Shop
11. On Small Islands
12. On Stars
13. On Grandmothers
14. Up at Dawn
15. On Crimes in the Newspapers
16. Driving on the Motorway at Night
17. On Sunday Mornings
18. A Favourite Old Jumper
19. Holding Hands with a Small Child
20. Feeling at Home in the Sea
21. The Book That Understands You
22. Old Photos of One’s Parents
23. Whispering in Bed in the Dark
24. On Feeling That Someone Else is So Wrong
25. The First Day of Feeling Well Again
01. St. Benedict
02. Alexis de Tocqueville
03. Auguste Comte
04. Max Weber
05. Emile Durkheim
06. Margaret Mead
07. Theodor Adorno
08. Rachel Carson
01. Three Essays on Flight
02. The Wisdom of Islamic Gardens
03. A World Without Air Travel
04. Walking in the Woods
05. Why We Argue in Paradise
06. The Advantages of Staying at Home
07. The Wisdom of Nature
08. The Holidays When You're Feeling Mentally Unwell
09. The Shortest Journey: On Going for a Walk around the Block
10. How to Spend a Few Days in Paris
11. Why Germans Can Say Things No One Else Can
12. Travel as Therapy - an Introduction
13. Lunch, 30,000 Feet – for Comfort
14. The Western Desert, Australia – for Humility
15. Glenpark Road, Birmingham - for Boredom
16. Comuna 13, San Javier, Medellin, Colombia - for Dissatisfaction
17. Pumping Station, Isla Mayor, Seville - for Snobbery
18. Eastown Theatre, Detroit - for Perspective
19. Capri Hotel, Changi Airport, Singapore - for Thinking
20. Cafe de Zaak, Utrecht - for Sex Education
21. Corner shop, Kanagawaken, Yokohama - for Shyness
22. Monument Valley, USA - for Calm
23. Heathrow Airport, London – for Awe
24. Pefkos Beach, Rhodes - for Anxiety
01. On Flying Too Close to the Sun - And Not Flying Close Enough
02. Kierkegaard on Love
03. Aristotle
04. Baruch Spinoza
05. Arthur Schopenhauer
06. Blaise Pascal
07. Six Ideas from Western Philosophy
08. Introduction to The Curriculum
10. The Stoics
11. Epicurus
12. Augustine
13. Boethius and The Consolation of Philosophy
14. Thomas Aquinas
15. Michel de Montaigne
16. La Rochefoucauld
17. Voltaire
18. David Hume
19. Immanuel Kant
21. Hegel Knew There Would Be Days Like These
22. Ralph Waldo Emerson
23. Nietzsche
24. Nietzsche, Regret and Amor Fati
25. Nietzsche and Envy
26. Martin Heidegger
27. Ludwig Wittgenstein
28. Jean-Paul Sartre
29. Albert Camus
30. Michel Foucault
31. Jacques Derrida
32. E. M. Cioran
01. What to Say in Response to an Affair
02. How To Handle the Desire for Affairs?
03. What Does It Take To Be Good at Affairs?
04. What Ideally Happens When An Affair is Discovered?
05. When Does An Affair Begin?
06. A Brief History of Affairs
07. How to Reduce the Risk of Affairs
08. The Role of Sex in Affairs
09. How To Spot A Couple That Might Be Headed For An Affair
10. How Can An Affair Help A Marriage?
11. The Pleasures of Affairs
12. The Pains of Affairs
13. The Meaning of Infidelity
14. Loyalty and Adultery
15. Why People Have Affairs: Distance and Closeness
01. The Pains of Heartbreak
02. Those Who Cannot Feel Love Until It Is Over
03. The Heroism of Leaving a Relationship
04. Exquisite Agony in Love
05. Why It Should Not Have to Last Forever...
06. When Does a Divorce Begin?
07. Rethinking Divorce
08. Three Questions to Help You Decide Whether to Stay in or Leave a Relationship
09. Stop Repeating the Same Mistakes
10. There's Nothing Wrong with Being on Your Own
11. The Wrong Idea of a Baddie
12. Finding Closure After a Breakup
13. Should Sex Ever Be a Reason to Break Up?
14. When a Relationship Fails, Who Rejected Whom?
15. The Fear of Not Being Able to Cope Practically Without a Partner
16. The Fear of Ending a Relationship
17. What About the Children When Divorce is on the Cards?
18. What If I Just Repeat the Same Mistakes Next Time?
19. Are My Expectations Too High?
20. Overcoming Nostalgia for a Past Relationship
21. The Feeling of Being Back in Love with the Person You're About to Leave
22. The Capacity to Give up on People
23. For Those Stuck in a Relationship
24. 10 Ideas for People Afraid to Exit a Relationship
25. People Who Want to Own Us - but Not Nourish Us
26. The Hardest Person in the World to Break up With
27. A Non-Tragic View of Breaking Up
28. A Guide to Breaking Up
29. How to Reject Someone Kindly
30. When Someone We Love Has Died
31. Why Did They Leave Us?
32. How to Break Up
33. How We Can Have Our Hearts Broken Even Though No One Has Left Us
34. The Psychology of Our Exes
35. 'Unfair Dismissal' in Love
36. How Not to Be Tortured By a Love Rival
37. Coping with Betrayal
38. Can Exes be Friends?
39. How to Get Over Someone
40. Why True Love Doesn’t Have to Last Forever
41. How to Get Over a Rejection
42. How to End a Relationship
43. Stay or Leave?
44. How to Get Divorced
45. On Forgetting Lovers
46. How Not to Break Up with Someone
01. Why Some Of Us Are So Bad At Spotting Red Flags
02. The Appeal of Rescuing Other People
03. Daring to Love
04. People Pleasers in Relationships
05. People Not to Fall in Love With
06. Picking Partners Who Won't Understand Us
07. How Do Emotionally Healthy People Behave In Relationships?
08. The Avoidant Partner With The Power To Drive You Mad
09. On Picking a Socially Unsuitable Partner
10. How to Sustain Love: A Tool
11. Questions To Ask About Someone We Are Thinking Of Committing To
12. Our Two Great Fears in Love
13. The Pains of Preoccupied Attachment
14. Are You Afraid of Intimacy?
15. Why You Will Never Quite Get it Right in Love
16. Understanding Attachment Theory
17. Why We 'Split' Our Partners
18. Why We Love People Who Don't Love Us Back
19. Should I Be With Them?
20. The Seven Rules of Successful Relationships
21. Why We Must Explain Our Own Needs
22. How Good Are You at Communication in Love? Questionnaire
23. Why Some Couples Last — and Some Don't
24. The Difference Between Fragile and Strong Couples
25. What Relationships Should Really Be About
26. The Real Reason Why Couples Break Up
27. 6 Reasons We Choose Badly in Love
28. Can People Change?
29. Konrad Lorenz & Why You Choose the Partners You Choose
30. The Stranger You Live With
31. The Attachment Style Questionnaire
32. Why Anxious and Avoidant Partners Find It Hard to Leave One Another
33. The Challenges of Anxious-Avoidant Relationships — Can Couples With Different Attachment Styles Work?
34. On Rescue Fantasies
35. How to Cope with an Avoidant Partner
36. What Is Your Attachment Style?
37. 'I Will Never Find the Right Partner'
38. Too Close or Too Distant: How We Stand in Relationships
39. How Are You Difficult to Live with?
40. Why We're Compelled to Love Difficult People
41. Why Your Lover is Very Damaged - and Annoying
42. Why Tiny Things about Our Partners Drive Us Mad
43. How to Love Ugly People
44. Why Polyamory Probably Won’t Work for You
45. Why We Go Cold on Our Partners
46. An Instruction Manual to Oneself
47. The Terrors of Being Loved
48. The Partner as Child Theory
49. On the Fear of Intimacy
50. Meet the Parents
51. On Finding the 'Right' Person
52. If You Loved Me, You Wouldn't Want to Change Me
53. The Problems of Closeness
01. How to Break Logjams in a Relationship
02. The Miseries of Push-Pull Relationships
03. A Way To Break Logjams In A Couple
04. When Your Partner Loves You – but Does Their Best to Drive You Away...
05. A Rule to Help Your Relationship
06. Secret Grudges We May Have Against the Other Gender
07. The Demand for Perfection in Love
08. On Being Upset Without Knowing It
09. Who is Afraid of Intimacy?
10. Why Good Manners Matter in Relationships
11. A Role for Lies
12. The Secret Lives of Other Couples
13. On Saying 'I Hate You' to Someone You Love
14. When Love Isn't Easy
15. Two Questions to Repair a Relationship
16. Three Steps to Resolving Conflicts in Relationships
17. Stop Avoiding Conflict
18. An Alternative to Passive Aggression
19. Why We Must Soften What We Say to Our Partners
20. How to Be Less Defensive in Love
21. On Gaslighting
22. Why We Play Games in Love
23. On 'Rupture' and 'Repair'
24. Why it's OK to Want a Partner to Change
25. On Arguing More Nakedly
26. Do You Still Love Me?
27. Why We Need to Feel Heard
28. Five Questions to Ask of Bad Behaviour
29. The Art of Complaining
30. The Challenges of Communication
31. How To Have Fewer Bitter Arguments in Love
32. The Arguments We Have From Guilt
33. Attention-Seeking Arguments
34. When Our Partners Are Being Excessively Logical
35. When We Tell Our Partners That We Are Normal and They Are Strange
36. When Your Partner Tries to Stop You Growing
37. When Your Partner Starts Crying Hysterically During an Argument
38. Why We Sometimes Set Out to Shatter Our Lover's Good Mood
39. Why People Get Defensive in Relationships
40. A History of Arguments
41. The Fights When There Is No Sex
42. What We Might Learn in Couples Therapy
43. On the Tendency to Love and Hate Excessively
44. An Alternative to Being Controlling
45. Why We Should Not Silently Suffer From A Lack of Touch in Love
46. Why Anger Has a Place in Love
47. The Importance of Relationship Counselling
48. How to Argue in Relationships
49. Why We (Sometimes) Hope the People We Love Might Die
50. Be the Change You Want To See
51. I Wish I Was Still Single
52. Love and Sulking
53. On Being Unintentionally Hurt
54. The Secret Problems of Other Couples
55. On the Dangers of Being Too Defensive
56. On How to Defuse an Argument
57. How to Save Love with Pessimism
58. How 'Transference' Makes You Hard to Live With
59. Why You Resent Your Partner
60. Why It Is Always Your Partner's Fault
61. If It Wasn't for You...
62. Why You Are So Annoyed By What You Once Admired
63. Why You’re (Probably) Not a Great Communicator
01. The Need for Honesty on Early Dates
02. Why Dating Apps Won't Help You Find Love
03. Being Honest on a Date
04. Why Haven't They Called - and the Rorschach Test
05. Dating When You've Had a Bad Childhood
06. Varieties of Madness Commonly Met with On Dates
07. How to Seduce with Confidence
08. A Brief History of Dating
09. How to Prove Attractive to Someone on a Date
10. Existentialism and Dating
11. What to Talk About on a Date
12. What to Eat and Drink on a Date
13. How to Seduce Someone on a Date
14. How Not to Think on a Date
01. Getting Better at Picking Lovers
02. How We May Be Creating The Lovers We Fear
03. What If the People We Could Love Are Here Already; We Just Can't See Them?
04. The Lengths We Go to Avoid Love
05. Our Secret Wish Never to Find Love
06. Why We All End up Marrying Our Parents
07. True Love Begins With Self-Love
08. The Importance of Being Single
09. Why We Keep Choosing Bad Partners
10. Celebrity Crushes
11. Romantic Masochism
12. What Do You Love Me For?
13. If Love Never Came
14. On the Madness and Charm of Crushes
15. Why Only the Happy Single Find True Love
16. Should We Play It Cool When We Like Someone?
17. In Praise of Unrequited Love
18. Two Reasons Why You Might Still Be Single
19. How We Choose a Partner
20. Why Flirting Matters
21. Why, Once You Understand Love, You Could Love Anyone
22. Mate Selection
23. Reasons to Remain Single
24. How to Enjoy a New Relationship
01. Alternatives to Romantic Monogamy
02. Twenty Ideas on Marriage
03. For Moments of Marital Crisis
04. What to Do on Your Wedding Night
05. Who Should You Invite to Your Wedding?
06. Pragmatic Reasons for Getting Married
07. The Standard Marriage and Its Seven Alternatives
08. Utopian Marriage
09. When Is One Ready to Get Married?
10. On the Continuing Relevance of Marriage
11. On Marrying the Wrong Person — 9 Reasons We Will Regret Getting Married
01. What Are We Lying To Our Lovers About?
02. Those Who Have to Wait for a War to Say ‘I Love You’
03. What Celebrity Stalkers Can Teach Us About Love
04. The Achievement of Missing Someone
05. How Love Can Teach Us Who We Are
06. Beyond the Need for Melodrama in Love
07. True Love is Boring
08. How to Make Love Last Forever
09. How to Be Vulnerable
10. Why You Can't Read Your Partner's Mind
11. What Teddy Bears Teach Us About Love
12. What Role Do You Play in Your Relationship?
13. Why We Should Be 'Babyish' in Love
14. The Maturity of Regression
15. The Benefits of Insecurity in Love
16. Taking the Pressure off Love
17. A Pledge for Lovers
18. A Projection Exercise for Couples
19. A New Ritual: The Morning and Evening Kiss
20. Can Our Phones Solve Our Love Lives?
21. If We're All Bad at Love, Shouldn't We Change Our Definition of Normality?
22. Other People's Relationships
23. How to Cope with an Avoidant Partner
24. The Pleasure of Reading Together in Bed
25. 22 Questions to Reignite Love
26. The Wisdom of Romantic Compromise
27. How to Complain
28. How We Need to Keep Growing Up
29. Teaching and Love
30. Love and Self-Love
31. Humour in Love
32. The Advantages of Long-Distance Love
33. In Praise of Hugs
34. Why Affectionate Teasing is Kind and Necessary
35. The Couple Courtroom Game
36. Getting over a Row
37. Keeping Secrets in Relationships
38. A Lover's Guide to Sulking
39. Artificial Conversations
40. On the Role of Stories in Love
41. On the Hardest Job in the World
42. On the Beloved's Wrist
01. How Even Very ‘Nice’ Parents Can Mess Up Their Children
02. The Parents We Would Love To Have Had: An Exercise
03. Fatherless Boys
04. How to Raise a Successful Person
05. The Problems of Miniature Adults
06. Mothers and Daughters
07. The Importance of Swords and Guns for Children
08. When Parents Won't Let Their Children Grow Up
09. The Fragile Parent
10. Parenting and People-Pleasing
11. Three Kinds of Parental Love
12. A Portrait of Tenderness
13. What Makes a Good Parent? A Checklist
14. On the Curiosity of Children
15. How to Lend a Child Confidence
16. The Importance of Play
17. Why Children Need an Emotional Education
18. Coping with One's Parents
19. Are Children for Me?
20. How Parents Might Let Their Children Know of Their Issues
21. How We Crave to Be Soothed
22. Escaping the Shadow of a Parent
23. On Being Angry with a Parent
24. What You Might Want to Tell Your Child About Homework
25. On Apologising to Your Child
26. Teaching Children about Relationships
27. How Should a Parent Love their Child?
28. When people pleasers become parents - and need to say 'no'
29. On the Sweetness of Children
30. Listening to Children
31. Whether or not to have Children
32. The Children of Snobs
33. Why Good Parents Have Naughty Children
34. The Joys and Sorrows of Parenting
35. The Significance of Parenthood
36. Why Family Matters
37. Parenting and Working
38. On Children's Art
39. What Babies Can Teach Us
40. Why – When It Comes to Children – Love May Not Be Enough
01. What We Really, Really Want in Love
02. Falling in Love with a Stranger
03. Why We Need 'Ubuntu'
04. The Buddhist View of Love
05. What True Love Looks Like
06. How the Wrong Images of Love Can Ruin Our Lives
07. Kierkegaard on Love
08. Why Do I Feel So Lonely?
09. Pygmalion and your Love life
10. How to Love
11. What is Love?
12. On Romanticism
13. A Short History of Love
14. The Definition of Love
15. Why We Need the Ancient Greek Vocabulary of Love
16. The Cure for Love
17. Why We Need to Speak of Love in Public
18. How Romanticism Ruined Love
19. Our Most Romantic Moments
20. Loving and Being Loved
21. Romantic Realism
22. On Being Romantic or Classical
01. The Difficulties of Impotence
02. What is Sexual Perversion?
03. Our Unconscious Fear of Successful Sex
04. The Logic of Our Fantasies
05. Rethinking Gender
06. The Ongoing Complexities of Our Intimate Lives
07. On Post-Coital Melancholy
08. Desire and Intimacy
09. What Makes a Person Attractive?
10. How to Talk About Your Sexual Fantasy
11. The Problem of Sexual Shame
12. Who Initiates Sex: and Why It Matters So Much
13. On Still Being a Virgin
14. Love and Sex
15. Impotence and Respect
16. Sexual Non-Liberation
17. The Excitement of Kissing
18. The Appeal of Outdoor Sex
19. The Sexual Fantasies of Others
20. On Art and Masturbation
21. The Psychology of Cross-Dressing
22. The Fear of Being Bad in Bed
23. The Sex-Starved Relationship
24. How to Start Having Sex Again
25. Sexual Liberation
26. The Poignancy of Old Pornography
27. On Porn Addiction
28. A Brief Philosophy of Oral Sex
29. Why We Go Off Sex
30. On Being a Sleazebag
31. A Brief Theory of Sexual Excitement
01. Work Outs For Our Minds
02. Interviewing Our Bodies
03. The Top Dog - Under Dog Exercise
04. A Guide For The Recovering Avoidant
05. Where Are Humanity’s Problems Really Located?
06. On Feeling Obliged
07. Why We Struggle With Self-Discipline
08. Why We Should Practice Automatic Writing
09. Why We Behave As We Do
10. Mechanisms of Defence
11. On Always Finding Fault with Others
12. The Hidden Logic of Illogical Behaviour
13. How to Weaken the Hold of Addiction
14. Charles Darwin and The Descent of Man
15. Why We Are All Addicts
16. Straightforward vs. Complicated People
17. Reasons to Give Up on Perfection
18. The Need for a Cry
19. On Confinement
20. The Importance of Singing Badly
21. You Don't Need Permission
22. On Feeling Stuck
23. Am I Paranoid?
24. Learning to Be More Selfish
25. Learning How to Be Angry
26. Why We're All Liars
27. Are You a Masochist?
28. How Badly Adapted We Are to Life on Earth
29. How We Prefer to Act Rather Than Think
30. How to Live More Wisely Around Our Phones
31. On Dreaming
32. The Need to be Alone
33. On the Remarkable Need to Speak
34. Thinking Too Much; and Thinking Too Little
35. On Nagging
36. The Prevention of Suicide
37. On Getting an Early Night
38. Why We Eat Too Much
39. On Taking Drugs
40. On Perfectionism
41. On Procrastination
01. Why We Overreact
02. Giving Up on People Pleasing
03. The Benefits of Forgetfulness
04. How to Take Criticism
05. A More Spontaneous Life
06. On Self-Assertion
07. The Benefit of Analogies
08. Why We Need Moments of Mad Thinking
09. The Task of Turning Vague Thoughts into More Precise Ones
10. How to Catch Your Own Thoughts
11. Why Our Best Thoughts Come To Us in the Shower
13. Confidence
14. Why We Should Try to Become Better Narcissists
15. Why We Require Poor Memories To Survive
16. The Importance of Confession
17. How Emotionally Healthy Are You?
18. What Is An Emotionally Healthy Childhood?
19. Unprocessed Emotion
20. How to Be a Genius
21. On Resilience
22. How to Decide
23. Why It Should Be Glamorous to Change Your Mind
24. How to Make More of Our Memories
25. What’s Wrong with Needy People
26. Emotional Education: An Introduction
27. Philosophical Meditation
28. Honesty
29. Self-Love
30. Emotional Scepticism
31. Politeness
32. Charity
34. Love-as-Generosity
35. Comforting
36. Emotional Translation
38. On Pessimism
39. The Problem with Cynicism
40. On Keeping Going
41. Closeness
42. On Higher Consciousness
43. On Exercising the Mind
44. Authentic Work
45. The Sorrows of Work
46. Cultural Consolation
47. Appreciation
48. Cheerful Despair
01. What Is It Like to Be Mentally Unwell?
02. How 'Mad' People Make a Lot of Sense
03. Why We Keep Repeating Patterns of Unhappiness
04. Your Self-Esteem is a Record of Your History
05. Why Some People Love Extreme Sports
06. The Overlooked Pains of Very, Very Tidy People
07. On Feeling Guilty for No Reason
08. The Fear of Being Touched
09. Why Most of Us Feel Like Losers
10. One of the More Beautiful Paintings in the World...
11. The Origins of a Sense of Persecution
12. How to Overcome Psychological Barriers
13. The Sinner Inside All of Us
14. How to Be Less Defensive
15. Are You a Sadist or a Masochist?
16. You Might Be Mad
17. Fears Are Not Facts
18. Why It's Good to Be a Narcissist
19. Am I a Bad Person?
20. Why Some of Us Are So Thin-Skinned
21. The Five Features of Paranoia
22. Why So Many of Us Are Masochists
23. In Praise of Self-Doubt
24. Why We Get Locked Inside Stories — and How to Break Free
25. Why Grandiosity is a Symptom of Self-Hatred
26. The Origins of Imposter Syndrome
27. The Upsides of Being Ill
28. The Roots of Paranoia
29. Loneliness as a Sign of Depth
30. How Social Media Affects Our Self-Worth
31. How to Be Beautiful
32. Trying to Be Kinder to Ourselves
33. The Role of Love in Mental Health
34. Trauma and Fearfulness
35. On Despair and the Imagination
36. On Being Able to Defend Oneself
37. The Fear of Death
38. I Am Not My Body
39. The Problems of Being Very Beautiful
40. 6 Reasons Not to Worry What the Neighbours Think
41. Am I Fat? An Answer from History
42. The Problem of Shame
43. On Feeling Ugly
44. The Particular Beauty of Unhappy-Looking People
45. How Not to Become a Conspiracy Theorist
46. The Terror of a ‘No’
47. On Being Hated
48. The Origins of Everyday Nastiness
49. The Weakness of Strength Theory
50. On Self-Sabotage
51. FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out
52. On a Sense of Sinfulness
01. We All Need Our North Pole
02. We Need to Change the Movie We Are In
03. Maybe You Are, in Your Own Way, a Little Bit Marvellous
04. Why We Deny Ourselves the Chance of Happiness
05. How to Live More Consciously
06. Our Secret Longing to Be Good
07. Why Everyone Needs to Feel 'Lost' for a While
08. On the Consolations of Home | Georg Friedrich Kersting
09. On Feeling Rather Than Thinking
10. How to Be Interesting
11. Am I Too Clever?
12. A More Self-Accepting Life
13. 'Let Him Who Is Without Sin Cast the First Stone'
14. The Roots of Loneliness
15. Small Acts of Liberation
16. Overcoming the Need to Be Exceptional
17. The Fear of Happiness
18. The Truth May Already Be Inside Us
19. What Is the Meaning of Life?
20. The Desire to Write
21. Are Intelligent People More Lonely?
22. A Better Word than Happiness: Eudaimonia
23. The Meaning of Life
24. Our Secret Fantasies
25. Why We’re Fated to Be Lonely (But That’s OK)
26. Good Enough is Good Enough
27. An Updated Ten Commandments
28. A Self-Compassion Exercise
29. How to Become a Better Person
30. On Resolutions
31. On Final Things
01. How to 'Grow'
02. The Life-Saving Nature of Poor Memories
03. The Stages of Development - And What If We Miss Out on One…
04. Who Might I Have Been If…
05. Yes, Maybe They Are Just Envious…
06. We Are All Lonely - Now Can We Be Friends?
07. How to Make It Through
08. 12 Signs That You Are Mature in the Eyes of Psychotherapy
09. The Breast and the Mouth
10. A Test to Measure How Nice You Are
11. What Hypochondriacs Aren't Able to Tell You
12. The Origins of Sanity
13. The Always Unfinished Business of Self-Knowledge
14. Learning to Laugh at Ourselves
15. A Simple Question to Set You Free
16. Locating the Trouble
17. Who Knows More, the Young or the Old?
18. Beyond Sanctimony
19. The Ingredients of Emotional Maturity
20. When Illness is Preferable to Health
21. What Should My Life Have Been Like?
22. Why We Need to Go Back to Emotional School
23. The Point of Writing Letters We Never Send
24. Self-Forgiveness
25. Why We Must Have Done Bad to Be Good
26. Finding the Courage to Be Ourselves
27. What Regret Can Teach Us
28. The Importance of Adolescence
29. How to Love Difficult People
30. On Falling Mentally Ill
31. Splitting Humanity into Saints and Sinners
32. Becoming Free
33. Learning to Listen to the Adult Inside Us
34. The Ultimate Test of Emotional Maturity
35. Can People Change?
36. When Home is Not Home...
37. Learning to Lay Down Boundaries
38. You Could Finally Leave School!
39. When Do You Know You Are Emotionally Mature? 26 Signs of Emotional Maturity
40. How to Lengthen Your Life
41. We Only Learn If We Repeat
42. The Drive to Keep Growing Emotionally
43. On Bittersweet Memories
44. Small Triumphs of the Mentally Unwell
45. The Importance of Atonement
46. How To Be a Mummy's Boy
47. On Consolation
48. The Inner Idiot
49. The Dangers of the Good Child
50. Why None of Us are Really 'Sinners'
51. How We Need to Keep Growing Up
52. Are Humans Still Evolving?
53. On Losers – and Tragic Heroes
54. On the Serious Role of Stuffed Animals
55. Why Self-Help Books Matter
01. Living Long Term With Mental Illness
02. Suffering From A Snobbery That Isn’t Ours
03. How to Recover the Plot
04. Why We Have Trouble Getting Back To Sleep
05. When, and Why, Do We Pick up Our Phones?
06. What is the Unconscious - and What Might Be Inside Yours?
07. Complete the Story – and Discover What's Really On Your mind
08. Complete the Sentence – and Find Out What's Really on Your Mind
09. The One Question You Need to Understand Who You Are
10. Six Fundamental Truths of Self-Awareness
11. Why Knowing Ourselves is Impossible – and Necessary
12. Making Friends with Your Unconscious
13. Do You Believe in Mind-Reading?
14. Questioning Our Conscience
15. A Bedtime Meditation
16. How to Figure Out What You Really, Really Think
17. Why You Should Keep a Journal
18. In Praise of Introspection
19. What Brain Scans Reveal About Our Minds
20. What is Mental Health?
21. The One Question You Need to Ask to Know Whether You're a Good Person
22. Eight Rules of The School of Life
23. No One Cares
24. The High Price We Pay for Our Fear of Being Alone
25. 5 Signs of Emotional Immaturity
26. On Knowing Who One Is
27. Why Self-Analysis Works
28. Knowing Things Intellectually vs. Knowing Them Emotionally
29. The Novel We Really Need To Read Next
30. Is Free Will or Determinism Correct?
31. Emotional Identity
32. Know Yourself — Socrates and How to Develop Self-Knowledge
33. Self-Knowledge Quiz
34. On Being Very Normal
01. How History Can Explain Our Unhappiness
02. How Lonely Are You? A Test
03. The Wisdom of Tears
04. You Don't Always Need to Be Funny
05. On Suicide
06. You Have Permission to Be Miserable
07. The Pessimist's Guide to Mental Illness
08. Why Do Bad Things Always Happen to Me?
09. Why We Enjoy the Suffering of Others
10. The Tragedy of Birth
11. What Rothko's Art Teaches Us About Suffering
12. Our Tragic Condition
13. The Melancholy Charm of Lonely Travelling Places
14. Nostalgia for Religion
15. Parties and Melancholy
16. Why Very Beautiful Scenes Can Make Us So Melancholy
17. On Old Photos of Oneself
18. Are Intelligent People More Melancholic?
19. Strangers and Melancholy
20. On Post-Coital Melancholy
21. Sex and Melancholy
22. Astronomy and Melancholy
23. Nostalgia for the Womb
24. Melancholy and the Feeling of Being Superfluous
25. Pills & Melancholy
26. Melancholy: the best kind of Despair
27. On Melancholy
01. The Impulse to Sink Our Own Mood – and Return to Sadness and Worry
02. We Are Made of Moods
03. Why Sweet Things Make Us Cry
04. Overcoming Manic Moods
05. Learning to Feel What We Really Feel
06. Exercise When We're Feeling Mentally Unwell
07. Why You May Be Experiencing a Mental Midwinter
08. Living Long-Term with Mental Illness
09. The Role of Sleep in Mental Health
10. The Role of Pills in Mental Health
11. Mental Illness and Acceptance
12. Mental Illness and 'Reasons to Live'
13. Taming a Pitiless Inner Critic
14. Reasons to Give Up on Human Beings
15. The Window of Tolerance
16. On Realising One Might Be an Introvert
17. Our Right to be Miserable
18. How to Manage One's Moods
19. On Living in a More Light-Hearted Way
20. On Disliking Oneself
21. Of Course We Mess Up!
22. Learning to Listen to One's Own Boredom
23. On Depression
24. In Praise of the Melancholy Child
25. Why We May Be Angry Rather Than Sad
26. On Not Being in the Moment
27. 'Pure' OCD - and Intrusive Thoughts
28. Twenty Moods
29. How the Right Words Help Us to Feel the Right Things
30. The Secret Optimism of Angry People
31. On Feeling Depressed
32. The Difficulty of Being in the Present
33. On Being Out of Touch with One's Feelings
34. Our Secret Thoughts
35. The Psychology of Colour
36. On Self-Pity
37. On Irritability
38. On the Things that Make Adults Cry
39. On Anger
40. Detachment
01. On Those Ruined by Success
02. The Demand for Perfection in Love
03. The Secret Lives of Other Couples
04. How the Wrong Images of Love Can Ruin Our Lives
05. Self-Forgiveness
06. How Perfectionism Makes Us Ill
07. Reasons to Give Up on Perfection
08. Are My Expectations Too High?
09. Of Course We Mess Up!
10. Expectations - and the 80/20 Rule
11. Good Enough is Good Enough
12. The Perfectionist Trap
13. A Self-Compassion Exercise
14. On Perfectionism
01. How Good Are You at Communication in Love? Questionnaire
02. How Prone Might You Be To Insomnia? Questionnaire
03. How Ready Might You Be for Therapy? Questionnaire
04. The Attachment Style Questionnaire
01. Why It Can Take Us So Long to Understand How Unwell We Are
02. Intergenerational Trauma
03. How the Unfinished Business of Childhood is Played Out in Relationships
05. Can Childhoods Really Matter So Much?
06. What Some Childhoods Don’t Allow You to Think
07. The Legacy of an Unloving Childhood
08. Why You Don’t Need a Very Bad Childhood to Have a Complicated Adulthood
09. When People Let Us Know What the World Has Done to Them
10. The Healing Power of Time
11. You Are Freer Than You Think
12. On Parenting Our Parents
13. Letting Go of Self-Protective Strategies
14. How to Tell If Someone Had a Difficult Childhood...
15. Childhood Matters, Unfortunately!
16. How Should We Define 'Mental Illness'?
17. Taking Childhood Seriously
18. Sympathy for Our Younger Selves
19. How Music Can Heal Us
20. What Your Body Reveals About Your Past
21. Why Adults Often Behave Like Children
22. How to Live Long-Term With Trauma
23. Should We Forgive Our Parents or Not?
24. Reparenting Your Inner Child
25. The Agonies of Shame
26. How Trauma Works
27. Why Abused Children End Up Hating Themselves
28. Why We Sometimes Feel Like Curling Up Into a Ball
29. How to Get Your Parents Out of Your Head
30. Why Parents Bully Their Children
31. On Projection
32. Self-Archaeology
33. It's Not Your Fault
34. If Our Parents Never Listened
35. Why Everything Relates to Your Childhood
36. Why Those Who Should Love Us Can Hurt Us
37. The Upsides of Having a Mental Breakdown
38. How Perfectionism Makes Us Ill
39. How We Should Have Been Loved
40. Self-Hatred and High-Achievement
41. A Self-Hatred Audit
42. How Mental Illness Impacts Our Bodies
43. Two Reasons Why People End up Parenting Badly
44. What is Emotional Neglect?
45. How Unloving Parents can Generate Self-Hating Children
46. How Mental Illness Closes Down Our Minds
47. Trauma and EMDR Therapy
48. How to Fight off Your Inner Critic
49. The One Subject You Really Need to Study: Your Own Childhood
50. Sharing Our Early Wounds
51. Trauma and How to Overcome It
52. Why We're All Messed Up By Our Childhoods
53. The Golden Child Syndrome
54. The Importance of Being an Unhappy Teenager
55. How We Get Damaged by Emotional Neglect
56. The Secrets of a Privileged Childhood
57. What We Owe to the People Who Loved Us in Childhood
58. Criticism When You've Had a Bad Childhood
59. On Suffering in Silence
60. How a Messed up Childhood Affects You in Adulthood
61. Daddy Issues
62. The Non-Rewritable Disc: the Fateful Impact of Childhood
63. On the Longing for Maternal Tenderness
01. The Need for Processing
02. The Subtle Art of Not Listening to People Too Closely
03. The Art of Good Listening
04. Becoming More Interesting
05. In Praise of Small Chats With Strangers
06. Why We Should Listen Rather Than Reassure
07. How We Can Hurt Without Thinking
08. Leaning in to Vulnerability
09. How to Become Someone People Will Confide in
10. How To Write An Effective Thank You Letter
11. How to Be a Good Listener
12. How to Comment Online
13. Listening as Editing
14. The Importance of Flattery
15. How to Narrate Your Life Story
16. The Art of Listening
17. How to Narrate Your Dreams
18. How to Talk About Yourself
19. Communication
20. How to Be a Good Teacher
21. On How to Disagree
22. On the Art of Conversation
01. On Feeling Painfully Different
02. Abandoning Hope
03. How to Leave a Party
04. On Becoming a Hermit
05. How to Have a Renaissance
06. Think Like an Aristocrat
07. Van Gogh's Neglected Genius
08. How to Be Quietly Confident
09. How to Live Like an Exile
10. How to Cope With Bullying
11. Stop Being So Nice
12. The Origins of Shyness
13. On Friendliness to Strangers
14. What to Do at Parties If You Hate Small Talk
15. How to Approach Strangers at A Party
16. How to Be Comfortable on Your Own in Public
17. Akrasia - or Why We Don't Do What We Believe
18. Why We Think So Much about Our Hair
19. Aphorisms on Confidence
20. How Knowledge of Difficulties Lends Confidence
21. How Thinking You’re an Idiot Lends Confidence
22. How to Overcome Shyness
23. The Mind-Body Problem
24. The Impostor Syndrome
25. On the Origins of Confidence
26. Self-Esteem
27. On Confidence
28. On Not Liking the Way One Looks
02. Why Losers Make the Best Friends
03. Our Very Best Friends
04. The Difficulties of Oversharing
05. Is It OK to Outgrow Our Friends?
06. Why Everyone We Meet is a Little Bit Lonely
07. On 'Complicated' Friendships
08. The Friend Who Can Tease Us
09. Don't Be Too Normal If You Want to Make Friends
10. The Forgotten Art of Making Friends
11. The Friend Who Balances Us
12. The Purpose of Friendship
13. Why the Best Kind of Friends Are Lonely
14. How to Lose Friends
15. Why Misfits Make Great Friends
16. How to Handle an Envious Friend
17. Loneliness as a Sign of Depth
18. Companionship and Mental Health
19. How Often Do We Need to Go to Parties?
20. Virtual Dinners: Conversation Menus
21. The Cleaning Party
22. On Talking Horizontally
23. Dinner Table Orchestra
24. On Sofa Jumping
25. On Studying Someone Else's Hands
26. What Women and Men May Learn from One Another When They are Just Friends
27. How to Say 'I Love You' to a Friend
28. How to End a Friendship
29. What Can Stop the Loneliness?
30. Why Men Are So Bad at Friendship
31. What Would An Ideal Friend Be Like?
32. 'Couldn't We Just Be Friends?'
33. On Acquiring an Enemy
34. Why Old Friends Matter
35. Why Not to Panic about Enemies
36. What Is the Purpose of Friendship?
37. Friendship and Vulnerability
38. On Socks and Friendship
39. The Teasing of Old Friends
01. The Boring Person
02. The Loveliest People in the World
03. The Life Saving Role of Small Chats
04. The Origins of Shifty People
05. The Many Faults of Other People
06. Why Nice People Give Us the 'Ick'
07. How to Become a More Interesting Person
08. The Challenges of Hugging
09. Dale Carnegie — How to Win Friends and Influence People
10. The Origins of People Pleasing
11. The Eyes of Love
12. Kindness Isn't Weakness
13. Why We're All Capable of Damaging Others
14. Rembrandt as a Guide to Kindness
15. What Love Really Is – and Why It Matters
16. The Need for Kindness
17. 6 Reasons Not to Worry What the Neighbours Think
18. What to Do When a Stranger Annoys You
19. How to Choose A Good Present
20. How to Be a Good Guest
21. How To Make People Feel Good about Themselves
22. How To Tell When You Are Being A Bore
23. What Is Empathy?
24. How Not to Rant
25. How Not to Be Boring
26. On Eggs and Compassion
27. How to Become an Adult
28. People-Pleasing: and How to Overcome It
29. Why Truly Sociable People Hate Parties
30. How to Be Diplomatic
31. Sane Insanity
32. Charity of Interpretation
33. How to Be a Good Teacher
34. The Solution to Clumsiness
35. How to Be a Man
36. Political Correctness vs. Politeness
37. Aphorisms on Kindness
38. Why We Don’t Really Want to Be Nice
39. The Charm of Vulnerability
40. The Ultimate Test of Your Social Skills
41. How to Be Open-Minded
42. Why Kind People Always Lie
43. How to Be Warm
44. The Problem of Over-Friendliness
45. How to Forgive
46. Why We’re Fated to Be Lonely (But That’s OK)
47. How to Cope with Snobbery
48. On Charm
49. On Being Kind
50. On Gratitude
51. On Forgiveness
52. On Charity
53. On Wisdom
01. How to Fire Someone
02. Diplomacy at the Office
03. How to Tell a Colleague Their Breath Smells
04. How to Screw Up at Work
05. In Praise of Teamwork
06. How to Become an Entrepreneur
07. The Need for Eloquence
08. The Nature and Causes of Procrastination
09. In Praise of Networking
10. Why Creativity is Too Important to Be Left to Artists
11. How to Survive Bureaucracy
12. Machismo and Management
13. What Art Can Teach Business About Being Fussy
14. On Novelists and Manuals
15. How Not to Let Work Explode Your Life
16. How to Sell
17. Innovation, Empathy and Introspection
18. Innovation and Creativity
19. Innovation and Science Fiction
20. The Acceptance of Change
21. The Collaborative Virtues
22. Towards Better Collaboration
23. How To Make Efficiency a Habit
24. On Raising the Prestige of 'Details'
25. Monasticism & How to Avoid Distraction
26. How to Dare to Begin
27. On Meaning – and Motivation
28. The Psychological Obstacles Holding Employees Back
29. On Feedback
30. How to Better Understand Customers
31. On Bounded and Unbounded Tasks
01. What Should Truly Motivate Us at Work
02. Nature as a Cure for the Sickness of Modern Times
03. The Difficulties of Work-Life Balance
04. The Challenges of Modernity
05. Businesses for Love; Businesses for Money
06. Countries for Losers; Countries for Winners
07. Towards a Solution to Inequality
08. Free Trade - or Protectionism?
09. Should We Work on Ourselves - or on the World?
10. Why Is There Unemployment?
11. Artists and Supermarket Tycoons
12. Business and the Arts
13. Sentimentality in Art - and Business
14. How to Make a Country Rich
15. First World Problems
16. On Devotion to Corporations
17. Good vs Classical Economics
18. What Is a Good Brand?
19. Good Economic Measures: Beyond GDP
20. What Good Business Should Be
21. On the Faultiness of Our Economic Indicators
22. On the Dawn of Capitalism
23. Utopian Capitalism
24. On Philanthropy
01. Why Do We Work So Hard?
02. On Eating a Friend
03. Is the Modern World Too 'Materialistic'?
04. On Consumer Capitalism
05. How to Choose the Perfect Gift
06. The Importance of Maslow's Pyramid of Needs
07. How to Live More Wisely Around Our Phones
08. Money and 'Higher Things'
09. Why We Are All Addicts
10. Why We Are So Bad at Shopping
11. Business and the Ladder of Needs
12. Consumer Self-Knowledge
13. "Giving Customers What They Want"
14. The Entrepreneur and the Artist
15. What Advertising Can Learn from Art
16. What the Luxury Sector Does for Us
17. On Using Sex to Sell
18. Understanding Brand Promises
19. Consumer Education: On Learning How to Spend
20. Good Materialism
21. Why We Hate Cheap Things
22. Why We Continue to Love Expensive Things
23. Why Advertising Is so Annoying - but Doesn't Have to Be
24. On Good Demand
25. On Consumption and Status Anxiety
26. On the Responsibility of the Consumer
27. Adverts Know What We Want - They Just Can't Sell It to us
28. On the True Desires of the Rich
01. How to Be Original
02. When Are We Truly Productive?
03. The Importance of the Siesta
04. Career Therapy
05. On Meritocracy
06. The Vocation Myth
07. The Good Sides of Work
08. The Good Office
09. The EQ Office
10. Good Salaries: What We Earn - and What We’re Worth
11. What Good Business Should Be
12. On the Pleasures of Work
01. How Does An Emotionally Healthy Person Relate To Their Career?
02. The Concept of Voluntary Poverty
03. The Dangers of Having Too Little To Do
04. How Could a Working Life Be Meaningful?
05. On Learning to Live Deeply Rather than Broadly
06. What They Forget to Teach You at School
07. Authentic Work
08. Why We Need to Work
09. How We Came to Desire a Job We Could Love
10. Why Work Is So Much Easier than Love
11. Work and Maturity
12. How Your Job Shapes Your Identity
13. Authentic Work
01. Do We Need to Read the News?
02. On Gossip
03. How the Media Damages Our Faith in Humanity
04. Why We Secretly Love Bad News
05. Celebrity Crushes
06. On Switching Off the News
07. We've Been Here Before
08. In Praise of Bias
09. The News from Without - and the News from Within
10. History as a Corrective to News
11. Emotional Technology
12. What's Wrong with the Media
13. On the Dangers of the Internet
14. On Taking Digital Sabbaths
15. On the Role of Censorship
16. On the Role of Disasters
17. On the Role of Art in News
18. Tragedies and Ordinary Lives in the Media
19. On the Failures of Economic News
20. On Health News
21. What State Broadcasters Should Do
22. On the Role of Cheerful News
23. On News and Kindness
24. On Maniacs and Murderers
01. The United States and Happiness
02. Political Emotional Maturity
03. On Feeling Offended
04. A Guide to Good Nationalism
05. Why We Do - After All - Care about Politics
06. Why Socrates Hated Democracy
07. The Fragility of Good Government
08. Romantic vs. Classical Voters
09. Africa after Independence
01. Should I Follow My Dreams?
02. How to Retire Early
03. The Agonies of Choice
04. The Creative Itch
05. Broadening the Job Search
06. Our Families and Our Careers
07. The Challenges of Choosing a Career
08. On Career Crises
09. The Output/Input Confusion
10. Finding a Mission
11. How to Serve
12. Why Work-Life Balance is an Illusion
13. On Gratitude – and Motivation
14. How to Find Fulfilling Work
15. On the Origins of Motivation at Work
16. On Becoming an Entrepreneur
17. On Being an Unemployed Arts Graduate
01. On Small Talk at the Office
02. On Falling Apart at the Office
03. The Sorrows of Competition
04. What Is That Sunday Evening Feeling?
05. How Parents Get in the Way of Our Career Plans
06. Why Modern Work Is So Boring
07. Why Pessimism is the Key to Good Government
08. The Sorrows of Colleagues
09. The Sorrows of Commercialisation
10. The Sorrows of Standardisation
11. Confidence in the System
12. Job Monogamy
13. The Duty Trap
14. The Perfectionist Trap
15. On Professional Failure
16. Nasty Businesses
17. The Job Investment Trap
18. How Your Job Shapes Your Identity
19. The Pains of Leadership
20. Would It Be Better for Your Job If You Were Celibate?
21. On Stress and Inner Voices
22. On Being Wary of Simple-Looking Issues
23. On Commuting
24. On the Sorrows of Work
25. On Misemployment
26. On Guilt-trips and Charm
01. The Dangers of People Who Have Been to Boarding School
02. Giving Up on Being Special
03. The Problem with Individualism
04. Winners and Losers in the Race of Life
05. Being on the Receiving End of Pity
06. Shakespeare: 'When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state...'
07. Overcoming the Need to Be Exceptional
08. On the Loss of Reputation
09. The Secret Sorrows of Over-Achievers
10. You Are Not What You Earn
11. Artistic Philanthropy
12. The Need to Keep Believing in Luck
13. On Glamour
14. The Incumbent Problem
15. How to Cope with Snobbery
16. On the Dangers of Success
17. On Doing Better Than Our Parents
18. Success at School vs. Success in Life
19. Why We Look Down on People Who Don’t Earn Very Much
20. What Is 'Success'?
21. On Children and Power
22. On Pleasure in the Downfall of the Mighty
23. On Status and Democracy
24. On Failure and Success in the Game of Fame
25. On Envy
26. A Philosophical Exercise for Envy
27. On the Envy of Politicians
28. On Consumption and Status Anxiety
29. On the Desire for Fame
30. On Fame and Sibling Rivalry
01. Why Humanity Destroyed Itself
02. How Science Could - at Last - Properly Replace Religion
03. Our Forgotten Craving for Community
04. Why isn't the Future here yet?
05. On Changing the World
06. What Community Centres Should Be Like
07. On Seduction
08. The Importance of Utopian Thinking
09. Art is Advertising for What We Really Need
10. Why the World Stands Ready to Be Changed
11. On the Desire to Change the World
12. Utopian Collective Pride
13. Envy of a Utopian Future
14. Utopian Artificial Intelligence
15. Utopian Education
16. Utopian Marriage
17. Utopian Film
18. Utopian Culture
19. Utopian Festivals
20. Utopian Business Consultancy
21. Utopian Capitalism
22. Utopian Government
23. Utopian Media
24. Utopian Tax
25. Utopian Celebrity Culture
26. The Future of the Banking Industry
27. The Future of the Communications Industry
28. The Future of the Hotel Industry

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Love — True Love: The Power of Love

True Love: The Power of Love

Categories: First Love Love

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Published: Jun 13, 2024

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Introduction, body paragraph 1: personal growth, body paragraph 2: emotional bonds, body paragraph 3: societal well-being.

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Can We Really Make Love Last?

We've all read the fairy tales and watched the "rom-coms," but most of us maintain a certain cynicism when it comes to romantic love. Sure, it may exist, but it certainly doesn't last in long-term relationships. Passion and romance give way to routine, boredom, and even infidelity. This is just the disappointing truth about romance, right?

Not necessarily, according to Bianca Acevedo and Arthur Aron, two psychologists at Stony Brook University. In a recent paper, published in the Review of General Psychology , they examined research on long-term relationships and conclude not only that romantic love—intense, engaging, and sexual—can persist, but that it's a reasonable and important goal for couples to work toward. In a meta-analysis of 25 studies of long-term marriage, Acevedo and Aron found that a significant proportion of married couples report being intensely in love. So why are we still so skeptical?

Acevedo and Aron argue that we underestimate long-term relationship satisfaction partly because we confuse romantic love and passionate love, which is like romantic love plus obsession. While many long-term couples report having deep, strongly connected, and sexual relationships, these relationships are no longer characterized by a distracting preoccupation with one another. Acevedo and Aron find that a lack of obsession is certainly not a bad thing; in fact, obsession is associated with poor relationship satisfaction in long-term marriages.

The authors say it's critical to dispel the myth that romantic love cannot persist in long-term relationships. They argue that if partners recognize their potential to love one another for years, they won't settle for the status quo.

"In terms of real-world implications," write Acevedo and Aron, "the possibility of intense long-term romantic love sets a standard that couples (and marital therapists) can strive for that is higher than seems to have been generally considered realistic."

Speaking of Psychology: What makes love last? With Arthur Aron, PhD

Episode 177.

Most of us expect the intensity of new love to fade over time. But some couples remain deeply in love for the long haul, even after years or decades together. What sets those relationships apart? Are some couples just lucky? Or are there things that you can do to sustain love, or rekindle it, in any long-term relationship? Arthur Aron, PhD, of Stony Brook University, discusses what the science says about the secrets of long-term love.

About the expert: Arthur Aron, PhD

Kim Mills: If you have ever fallen in love, you probably remember the intensity of the longing and desire that you felt for the object of your affection, the breathless anticipation of seeing each other, wanting the moments together to last forever. For most of us, that passionate intensity fades over time. Few people celebrate their 10th or 20th Valentine's Day together with the same enthusiasm that they did their first. But, some couples remain deeply and passionately in love, even after decades of marriage. What is it that sets those relationships apart? What makes love like that last? Are some couples just lucky, or are there things that any couple can do to sustain love or rekindle it in a long-term relationship? What does science say about the secrets of everlasting love?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology , the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association, that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

Our guest today is Dr. Arthur Aron, a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University in New York. Dr. Aron has spent decades studying how people develop and maintain close relationships, particularly romantic relationships. He developed the self-expansion model of relationships, which posits that one main motivation for forming bonds with others is our own personal growth. Relationships allow us to grow and expand our sense of self. Outside of academia, Dr. Aron is perhaps best known for developing ”The 36 Questions that Lead to Love,” work that was profiled in a New York Times Modern Love column that went viral a few years ago.

Thank you for joining us, Dr. Aron.

Arthur Aron, PhD: My pleasure to be here.

Mills: Let's start with the big question I posed in the introduction: what makes love last? You've done research on couples who say they're still madly in love after many years together. How do they do it?

Aron: Let me just say a word about the fact that it really can happen. We have a lot of studies showing that. People find it hard to believe it really can happen. For example, in a representative U.S. survey we did a few years ago of people married 10 years or longer, 40% claim to be very intensely in love. And that was on a seven-point scale, where five was somewhat in love, six is a little in love. Those are the low end. But intensely in love, very in love, this is even higher than that, very intensely in love. And if you look at people who were married greater than 30 years, we still had almost that many, 40% of women, 35% of men. Now of course, that's the people who are still together. So it means if you get married and only half are still together 10 years later, 20%, but still that's a lot of people.

And we were concerned about whether this is really the case, or they're just saying so. And so we did some fMRI studies, some brain scan studies. Now I've done, with my colleagues, a lot of studies of people who are newly in love. So we know what the brain looks like, particularly something called the dopamine reward area responds when you've fallen in love.

So we recruited people who claim to be—we went around in New York and we recruited people who said they were still madly in love with their partner, who were married at least 10 years. On the average, the sample we studied was married 20 years. And they claimed to be intensely in love. We interviewed them. They looked like it. My then graduate student, now a very successful professor, researcher, Bianca Acevedo, told me about one couple she interviewed and she could see it. They were saying, “When we talk to our friends,” —these are people who are in their 60s—“When we talk to our friends, they're always complaining because we're always all over each other physically.”

So when we looked at their brains, when we did the same basic brain scan, what happens when you see your partner versus a familiar other, equally attractive? What we see is that same activation, as much as the people who've newly fallen in love. There were some minor differences. They didn't show the anxiety that we see in people who've just fallen in love. And they did show activation in what's called a pair bonding area, which we see in animals. But it does seem like it really can happen. Now, not everyone's happy to hear this, because if you're planning to get married it sounds good, but one of the ways people feel good about their relationships is by comparing to other relationships. But on the other hand, it should be a motivation to do something.

Mills: Are there characteristics that these madly-in-love couples tend to share? Do they meet at older or younger ages? Does that matter? Do they have certain types of personalities? Are they very similar in their outlooks on life? Or are they opposites who attracted?

Aron: Well, as far as initial attraction, that doesn't seem to affect things as much years later. Now, who you are and who your partner is do matter a lot, and your skills matter a lot. And people think similarity is very important, and it turns out it's—I mean, it's important to share values, but it's not so important to share personality. And if one of you gets angry easily, it's not better if both of you get angry easily. But we like to think we're similar on all sorts of things. And of course, as people are longer together, they become more similar. Not just in their ideas, but in their physical appearance. People tend to look more alike over time. Anyway, I won't go into that sidestep—

Mills: You can measure that? I mean, it's for real? People always say that.

Aron: Oh yeah. There's been some wonderful studies done where they've shown people pictures of individuals taken when they were getting married. And then they showed people pictures of who they are now. And they had many different people they showed them. But people, right away, saw much more similarity.

So what can people do to make this happen? And we know quite a bit. We don't know everything, but we know quite a bit. And you can help make it happen. There are certain things that are sort of essential to make it basically okay. And those are crucial because if it's not basically okay, it's hard to spark. There are people who are intensely in love that aren't happy, but not many. Usually, if your partner's responding and you're intensely in love, you're very happy.

So there are basically four basic things that are sort of crucial to make a relationship at least okay. I mean, sometimes they'll manage without them, but they really make a difference. One of the biggest is another one people don't want to hear, and that is yourself. If you're anxious, or depressed, or insecure, it's very hard to feel happy in your relationship. Initially, you might be, but then you sort of start blaming it on the other person or you just go back to being unhappy. So one of the biggest things you can do is to get therapy, or if it's not very big, learn to meditate, or if it's very big, see a psychiatrist, get medication.

If you're insecure, that's another big factor. There are some things you can do. People with low self-esteem have a hard time. Some great work by Murray and Holmes and others. If you have low self-esteem, it's hard to feel your partner likes you. There's that whole joke of Groucho Marx. I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member.

So you wonder if your partner—What's wrong with your partner if they like you, or could your partner really like you? So some nice research has been done showing that one of the things you do is to think if your partner compliments you, try to think about it abstractly. Try to look at sort of why your partner said it and what it means to you. Of course, who your partner is matters too, but it matters even more who you are.

And then another one, a huge one is stress. If you're under great stress or some big thing happens in your life, one of you loses a job, or worse yet, a child dies, those are really hard. And they're not only hard because they affect you. When you're under stress, you don't behave as well and you're likely to—if your partner does one little thing, you may just go off the top. You can't see, “Oh, well they weren't usually like that.” And if your partner does it, it's hard to remember that they're under stress if you're also under stress. So it's important when you're under stress to try to remember this effect that stress can have, because your ability to think broadly is hard. But if you can remember that one thing, it can help in interpreting yourself and your partner's behavior.

And more generally, communication skills is a huge factor. Your partner and you need to feel you're hearing each other, what's called responsiveness. Harry Reis, great social psychologist in this field. He and many of his colleagues have shown that one of the biggest things in interacting with people, especially close others, is feeling that they're responsive to you. They hear you. They understand you. They verify what you say. They care about you. And so you want to show that to your partner and you want to reveal things about yourself. We'll talk more about the 36 questions later, but that's a little what that's about. You want to reveal a little to give the other opportunity to be responsive, and you want to be responsive to your partner. And then of course, there's handling conflict, which is a huge problem.

Mills: I was going to ask that one. That's a big one. Yeah.

Aron: Yeah. Conflict's kind of inevitable in relationships, but it isn't always rising. But one of the recent lines of research on that has shown that when you're in conflict, try to think about it from a third person's perspective who is neutral, but they care about your relationship, but they're not on either side. Try to see if you can reflect it from that perspective. And then there's some sort of rules you should follow. John Gottman's done all this wonderful research. He calls them the four horseman of the apocalypse.

Mills: Right. Right.

Aron: Things you should avoid, criticism, defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling, what he calls kitchen sinking. The person does one thing and you remind him of everything that's always annoyed you. You don't want to do that. In fact, you should sort of sometimes discuss this with your partner when you're not in a conflict so that you have some sort of rules.

And another thing is if you're really worked up, and I mean in a negative way, you're angry or upset, it's not so good to discuss it. If your pulse is over 100, the thing to do is go say to your partner, “I'm not leaving you. I'm not just stopping talking about it, but I should have 20 minutes to settle down.” And then you go back to the discussion and you don't want to just leave it. Anyway, those are some things for handling conflict that we know. It's not my main area of expertise, but it's really important. And then there's one other thing, and that is family and friends, if they disapprove. The iconic example of love in the West is what?

Mills: The iconic example of love?

Aron: In literature in the West.

Mills: Well, I mean there's always Romeo and Juliet, and of course there was family conflict.

Aron: Yeah, how did that work out?

Mills: Not so well.

Aron: Yeah, they were intensely in love, but no, if your family—it isn't as big a problem for most Westerners, but in many cultures, and many people who are from other cultures, what your family thinks matters a lot. In the short run, sometimes it makes you feel better if your parents disapprove, if you're an American. But in the long run, it's hard, especially once you start having children and stuff like that. So you really want to work. And of course, if your friends strongly disapprove, you really want to work to create good relationships. So those are some things that are sort of essential. I mean, essential is a little too strong because there are people who somehow manage if just one of these things is in place, if the other three are out. But it's a lot harder. And so these are things you want to do to get it to the level where it's at least okay.

Mills: So what advice would you give to our listeners who feel inspired by what you're saying and they want to improve their relationships? So what can they do to take a relationship that's maybe okay, or maybe it's gotten a little boring, how can they rekindle the intense love that they felt at the beginning?

Aron: Well, there's a few crucial things. One is, of course, creating time together by yourself, particularly if you have kids or you're living with extended family. You need to have some time by yourself, with your partner, I mean. You need to have some time together. Of course, right now during the pandemic, you may need a little time apart too.

Mills: A little too much time, yeah.

Aron: Yeah. But the thing is to sort of pull yourself out of this environment and just working and this and that, and really have some time together. And then how you use that time is kind of crucial. Being playful is really, really important. And particularly, my research on self-expansion is really central, doing things that are new and interesting with your partner matters hugely, not just same old, same old, but new, different.

Mills: So what might those things be if you're talking about self-expansion?

Aron: Well, on one level, it could be flying in a helicopter together, but it could also just be taking a cooking class together or doing something new and interesting. And it can be a little thing or a big thing. My wife and I, we went kayaking down the river, and that was lovely, on our own. It wasn't dangerous. We picked a river that wasn't dangerous, just the fun of it. It's a little challenging, but that makes it all the better. Or another example is one night we were coming back from a play, and we walked by a bar, and we said, “We haven't hung out in a bar in years and years.” So we went and hung out in a bar for a little while.

So in one of our studies, one of our first studies, we had a large sample of couples who agreed to be in the study. And we gave them a big list of activities couples do together. And for each one separately, we said, “How exciting would this be to do with your partner? And how pleasant would it be?” And then we gave them a list that was based on what both of them rated as highly pleasant but only moderately exciting, and another half were randomly assigned to get a list that was highly exciting but not rated as high on pleasantness, not low on pleasantness. And we asked them to do something for about an hour every week from the list we gave them. And then after 10 weeks, the couples that had done from the exciting lists were substantially increased in their satisfaction with their relationship. In fact, the other couples were slightly less so, but not much so.

It's also—boredom's a problem. We've done lab studies. We had a study where couples came into the lab and they were told they'd be videotaped doing an activity together. And they filled out some questionnaires first. And we did tape them, but it didn't matter what they were doing. In one condition, the expanding condition, we tied their wrists and ankles together with Velcro straps. And they had a big long gym mat that went very long, two or three of across the room. They had to push a foam roller across and back without using their fingers or teeth, and over a barrier in the middle, a round barrier. And they had to do it within a certain amount of time. And they had like four chances to do it.

Mills: Sounds like a TV show, like Beat The Clock.

Aron: Right. And the control condition, they just each went back separately and it was pleasant. They didn't mind that. They thought it was sort of funny. But they didn't know about the other condition. And we timed it. They had to take watches off to do this and stuff. So we timed it so that they didn't quite make it the first two times. The third time they just made, if it was unbelievable that they had made it the third time, then they made it the fourth time. And the couples who did the exciting activity versus the pleasant—well, in a couple of the studies, we had a questionnaire afterwards, but in another study we had them have a conversation afterwards. And again, they didn't know which condition they were in or anything like that.

And the conversation, it was friendly conversation. Suppose you were given a bunch of money to go on a trip, where would you choose to go, or to remodel your home. And we had people coding the conversations who didn't know which condition the subjects were in. And those who were in the exciting condition had much more positive interaction. And then there's been studies by others. I mean, there's been a lot of replication of this, studies that followed people up four months later, things like that.

We did one study where we had a sample that had been—this is from Terri Orbach's group sample, where they had a large sample, national sample. And they followed people for like, what was that, I think it was year 9 and 17, something like that we were looking at. And their ratings of how exciting their daily life is with their partner, how bored they were, predicted their satisfaction at year 17, 9 years later, whatever it was. And some of the most recent research has shown that one of the reasons this is working is that it increases your sex life. It makes your sex more lively. So that's one big thing.

Another big thing is your sex life. And just physical contact is really important. You don't need to have sex every day. Once an hour is—no. You don't need to have sex every day. In fact, once a week for most people is just about the right amount. And it's important that both of you want to have it, you enjoy it. And you have a little variation in what you do a little bit. But that's sort of crucial.

But you know, sometimes, like in the big national sample we did of people who claimed to be intensely in love after 10, 20 years together, there were a few older couples who weren't ever having sex, but they had a lot of physical contact. And in fact, even in the daily basis, aside from the sex, just holding your partner's hand, hugging them, to an extent it's legitimate and feels honest, is really important. And there's a lot of research showing that. So physical contact, sex, and of course, eking time out together alone from your children or your extended family is kind of important, in part, to have sex.

Mills: But it sounds like you should be putting aside some time for sort of a date night and maybe go skydiving, do something that's really going to get your blood pumping.

Aron: You're right. Skydiving's a great example. It's important that you do things that are challenging and interesting, but not more than you can handle. There's this study showing this sort of curvilinear effect that up to the point where you can handle the challenge, the more challenge, the better. But when it goes beyond that.

Mills: Diminishing returns.

Aron: Yeah. Like my wife really loves going out in the water and really loves whales. And I love whales too. So she said, “Why don't we go on a whale watching trip?” But I get seasick. And so we said, “Well, let's try.” And I took all these pills and things you put on your wrist and stuff like that. And we went out and I fed the whales leaning over the edge.

Mills: But she had a great time.

Aron: Well, yeah. She was supporting me. And the support was good, feeling her support. But we had to stay out there a long time because it was a group thing. But so it is important to do things. They have to be new. As I say, taking a cooking class together, or a dance class, of course, is some physical thing, but it's not the physical.

We've done studies when people initially meet. And when they initially meet, being physiologically turned on, I don't mean sexually, but just stirred up, does make you more likely to be attracted to a new person. And the novelty of it isn't what matters. But in a long-term relationship, what matters is the novelty and not the amount of physical stirring. And when you meet a new person, if you've just exercised and worked up for 20 minutes and you're all stirred up, if they're reasonably attractive, you're more likely to think, “Oh, I know why I'm worked up. I'm attracted to them.” But in a long-term relationship, you're used to being worked up from exercising. It's the novelty that sort of rekindles things.

Mills: Yeah. That makes sense.

Aron: And then there's some others that are important. And here's where the 36 questions come in. Deep friendships with other couples matter of a lot. Now, the 36 questions, for the few people who aren't familiar with it, is a procedure that takes about 45 minutes, that we designed so we could create closeness in the laboratory. The problem is that if you want to study the effects of closeness scientifically, you want to be able to randomly assign people to be close or not. If you just take people who are close versus not, they have different histories, they've chosen each other. So we wanted to be able to create a procedure, which in 45 minutes could do that.

And so we developed that procedure. And that was not intended to make people fall in love. It was to make people close. In fact, most of the people in our studies were heterosexual people paired with same sex others. But it created closeness. It created closeness. And that was the idea. Now, of course, if everything else is in place then closeness can add to the chance of falling in love initially, but that wasn't the goal.

Now, what does it do? Well, if you do it with an ongoing partner, it does make you feel closer to your partner if you're in a long-term relationship, but it doesn't particularly increase love. But there's all this research showing that if couples have a close friendship with another couple, they're more likely to be in love and happy in their relationship. We don't know which is causing which. The initial study was done by Rich Slatcher. This was his dissertation, in fact. And then later, I collaborated with him on a bunch of studies and Keith Welker, another former student of his. And what we found was that when a couple does it by themselves, as I say, they get closer, but it doesn't necessarily increase their love. But when two couples do it together as a foursome, each of the four answers each of the 36 questions, it not only makes them closer to each other and to the other couple, but it increases their passionate love within the couple.

Mills: And they're really great questions. I mean, can you just toss a couple out there because I know you start at a certain level of sort of familiar and then you go deep.

Aron: Right. The idea of this came from survey research showing that when people form friendships, which is our main focus at the time, they do so by initially sort of exchanging and then gradually revealing more and more. If someone reveals too much too fast, it sort of is a little scary. It puts you off. And so we set up a set of questions where initially, you answer questions. If you could go out to dinner with anyone in history, who would you want to go out to dinner with, and things like that. And then towards the end, we initially were doing this with college-age students. How would you feel if your mother died? I mean, so it moves along. And we also threw in two or three other questions that mattered. After a little while, we asked have you noticed anything you have in common with the other person? And we never say, have you noticed anything you don't have in common.

Again, being in common in isn't that important, but thinking you’re in common. And then also, a little later, we have some items that say name some things you've noticed you like about the other person. Turns out that's a huge factor in feeling close to someone. And in fact, it's a huge factor in initially falling in love, is thinking the other person likes you. Now people think 36 questions, how long is that going to take? There's three sets of 12 questions. And we say don't rush it. We don't expect you to get through all of them. And the reason we have 12 questions is some people move quickly. We don't want them to run out. But most people will get through six or seven.

And you do this with another couple. You can do it as long as you want. But it's better not to take it too long. You'll get bored with it, but it's really valuable. And in fact, my wife and I have done this once or twice with couples, we know a little bit, by Zoom. It's something you can do by Zoom with another couple who's on the other side of the world, like some friends we have in Sweden. So it's a pretty powerful thing. One thing I should remind people about the 36 questions, if they're using them either initially to get close or with a friend or with someone they're dating, is you can't use the same set of questions again and again and again because you know the answers.

Mills: Right. Well this episode is being timed to mark Valentine's Day. And I'm just wondering, a lot of people kind of pooh-pooh the importance of a Hallmark holiday in a long-term relationship. Do you think that a day set aside to recognize and celebrate romantic love helps relationships, or is it something that just leads to unmet expectations and an overpriced restaurant meal?

Aron: I mean, I don't know of any research on this, but I think putting your attention on the relationship is a good thing. There's a couple more things you can do to sparkle it up. And one of them is to express gratitude and to think about what you're grateful for in your relationship. And a holiday is a good day to do that. What am I grateful for that my partner's given me? And of course, it's also important on a day-to-day basis when something happens. Again, you want to be honest about it. You don't want to say thank you for something that doesn't matter. And one thing that that's interesting from some of the recent research, it especially matters in a long term relationship, when you're saying you appreciate they did that thing, to not only let them know how hard you thought they worked to make it happen, but how much it meant to you, how much you got from their doing it.

So expressing gratitude and feeling gratitude is really important. And it also reminds me. There's one other thing I didn't get to, some wonderful work on celebrating your partner's successes. If your partner has something good happen, don't just say, “Oh, that's nice.” Let them know. Really let them know. It turns out that matters more than supporting them when things go badly.

My wife does this research on the highly sensitive person and we collaborate, which is one of the exciting things we do together. And we've also collaborated on the relationship research. But a while back, she submitted a review paper to a very top journal, a psychology journal, on the state of the research on highly sensitive people. And it was a very top journal. We thought the chances of it being accepted were not that high. I was a co-author, but it was her work. I was home when the email came in saying the editor loved it, the reviewers loved it. And so I made a poster of that and put it on the wall for when she came home. We had a great night. But celebrating your partner's successes also matters. And I suppose you could make a point of that to some extent on like, “Hey, we're still together.” That's a kind of success.

Mills: So some of the relationship stressors that we've talked about, boredom and just tension have been really, really abundant in our lives these last two years. And it may be a little soon to be talking about what we know about what the pandemic is doing to people's relationships. But I'm just wondering, have you thought about this? Are you doing any research in this area? What are you seeing?

Aron: Well, I haven't myself done any research in this area. Several of my collaborators and colleagues have. Rich Slatcher, who actually was on one of these podcasts, has done a lot of work in that. Rhonda Balzarini, a former graduate student of mine, has done a lot of work in this area. But they're still just starting to get their results. And I haven't been following it as closely as I might. So I can't really comment on that.

But I mean, I think the one or two things that follow from my research is that, again, even though you can't do the usual things, or even the usual novel things, look for things you can do. Like I mentioned doing the 36 questions with another couple on the other side of the world, by Zoom. You can take a dancing class by Zoom, or things you can do that are—sit together and cook some food you've never done together if that interesting to you. And also, you do need some time for yourself. And it's important that people, if they're just alone as a couple, also have a little time alone so that they're not feeling overburdened.

Mills: Are there signs that the relationship can't really be salvaged? I mean, sometimes you reach a rocky point, but even the research that you have done and the suggestions that you make to bring people together, are there some relationships where it really just doesn't matter?

Aron: I don't know. It's tough. I mean, obviously if you're being physically abused by someone, a partner, and those kind of cases, or if you've got a partner who's an alcoholic and can't stop and something like that, that can be tough. Short of that, it seems like if people can pull these things together to some extent, they can make almost any relationship work.

Mills: So if you're really sincere in your effort, I mean, you have to take it seriously and try to follow the instructions. I mean, I've read a fair amount of John Gottman, for example. And he does have a lot of things that he recommends that couples do together. And they, at least as far as his work goes, he says they work.

Aron: Yeah, well, you need both members of the couple to be willing to do something. And of course, as I say, sometimes it's just yourself. Sometimes just getting your own therapy or doing something to make yourself better off will make the relationship better, and also give you more freedom to do things to make the relationship better.

Mills: So you've been studying relationships now for, I don't know, 50 years, right? I mean, it's a long time that you've been working in this area. What are the big questions that you still want to answer?

Aron: We know that these things I went through, each of them predicts more love, more satisfaction, but we don't know for sure, we know a little bit from the survey, what the things really make the few couples that are at the very top get there. And so I'm now doing some research with Terri Orbach and Rosie Shrout, who has this great data set. And also, we're trying to gather some other data of people who've done longitudinal research. And we're trying to see what from early on predicts which couples are not only happy, which is what most of it's been done, but which are super happy, which are very intensely in love. And so we're trying to sort out those data. So we're not collecting new data. We're trying to sort that out and try to get a strong handle on it. We presume it's a lot of these factors, but we don't know for sure. I mean, we're pretty sure, but it may be just particular combinations that really make it happen, or something we haven't looked at.

Mills: Well, I will look forward to seeing that. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today, Dr. Aron. Thank you so much.

Aron: Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be able to share so much of what our field knows.

Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website www.speakingofpsychology.org , or on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening on Apple, and you like what you hear, please leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us [email protected] . That's speakingofpsychology, all one word, @apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan.

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.

This episode is brought to you in part by Love Crunch—a division of Nature’s Path brands. Shop now using the code “LOVE14” at http://www.naturespath.com/love-crunch to get 14% off all Love Crunch products.

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Episode 177: What makes love last? With Arthur Aron, PhD

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Real Love Doesn’t Always Last A Lifetime (And That’s Okay)

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There’s a saying that goes something along the lines of: “people generally come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”

If you think about the people who have waltzed in and out of your world over the course of your life so far, you’ll realize just how true that is… even if the reason for their arrival (and possible departure) wasn’t evident at the time.

Here’s the thing: love is powerful and transformative and beautiful, but it doesn’t necessarily have to last for several decades in order to have a profound impact on our lives.

We can experience immeasurable beauty, warmth, companionship, and love with a person who’s only in our lives for a short time, and sometimes a shorter relationship that has a marked effect on us can be a lot more satisfying and life-changing than a mediocre connection that lasts 40 years.

Lessons To Learn

Have you ever had a relationship that helped you grow as an individual?

Maybe it was a whirlwind romance with a stranger while you were travelling, or a tumultuous relationship with someone you loved with all your heart, but which was fraught with drama and difficulty?

It’s probably a safe bet that each experience taught you invaluable lessons about life, love, and who you are as a person. Possibly even who you aren’t, or who you don’t want to be.

If you fall head over heels in love with a person who challenges you on many levels, you may learn greater patience, compassion, and empathy. In turn, they may learn what it’s like to be loved unconditionally as they are, rather than being berated for not living up to another’s unrealistic expectations.

Having a passionate, intimate relationship with a person can heal long-standing wounds, rebuild trust , and unlock aspects of yourself that were thought long gone. Yet those connections aren’t necessarily meant to last a lifetime: they’re meant to be transient; to teach what’s needed in that moment so that you can both move on and keep learning, and growing.

Short-Term Love Is NOT “Failure”

So many people have swallowed the pill teaching us that an ideal relationship is an end goal to aspire to. They forget that what’s important is the growth and experience that comes with the relationship itself.

It’s about the time we spend with others – interacting with one another, helping each other grow and evolve and become better people – not just reaching some finish line that’s expected to stay exactly as is forever.

That can result in stagnation, resentment, and contempt, and having a loving relationship dissolve into that kind of ugliness is something best avoided. Isn’t it far better to think fondly of a deep-yet-ephemeral connection rather than trying to cling to something only to have it wither away and die?

Everything has a natural life cycle, and that includes loving relationships. Again, we’ve been conditioned to believe that unless a relationship results in a marriage/partnership that lasts until death, it has been a “failure,” but this is such utter rubbish.

If someone left a job they’d been at for five or ten years because they needed to change direction in their career, did they fail at that job? No, they’re just not the same person they were when they began, and recognized that their needs have changed accordingly.

You’re not the same person that you were a week ago, let alone a year, or a decade ago. People change constantly, and not always in the same direction, so it’s inevitable that many relationships will end once they’ve served their purpose.

This isn’t failure, it’s personal growth, and should be appreciated and respected as such, rather than condemned. Forcing a relationship to last longer than it should out of a sense of obligation, or fear of failure, means that we’re not truly appreciating the connection in the present moment… and that does both parties a terrible disservice.

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Love’s Ephemeral Nature Can Inspire Sincere Appreciation

Too often, believing that something is going to last forever can result in us taking it for granted , and that goes for loving relationships as well as physical items.

Expectation is something that most of us are guilty of, and the expectation that a relationship is going to last forever means that a lot of things that are important to one or both partners get pushed aside to be done “eventually.” There will always be time for it later, right?

Forgot their birthday? Never mind, the next one will be great.

No anniversary plans? Note to self: next time.

Etc. ad nauseum.

If we appreciate the relationship in the present moment and acknowledge the fact that it may not last forever, it gives us a new perspective. There may not be a next year to do something nice for your partner’s birthday, so it’s a good idea to make this one count.

Did they put effort into a particularly nice dinner for no reason other than they thought it would make you smile? Let them know how much you appreciate what they’ve done, and what it means to you that they did so. It may never happen again, so cherish the moment – savor every bite, and reciprocate in your own way as soon as possible.

When we treat an object or a relationship as potentially fleeting, we tend to appreciate it far more than if we wave it off as something that’ll be around forever, only to miss it once it’s gone and wonder wtf happened and why we didn’t revel in it while it was there.

Real Love Isn’t Always A Romantic Connection

Sometimes, you might meet a person and have an instant soul connection with them. You’ll bask in their company, smile your face off every time you are together, talk for hours about every subject under the sun, and can’t wait to spend more time with them.

…but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the connection you have is a romantically intimate one.

We connect with different people in different ways, but most of us have been so conditioned by TV and films to believe that romantic love is the be-all and end-all of relationships, that we are liable to misconstrue a heartfelt friendship with romantic love.

Whether it’s a “bromance” between a couple of guys who sincerely understand one another, a sister-like friendship between women, or a platonic connection between a man and a woman that’s closer than friends or family, real love can blow us away with its strength and perseverance.

Put bluntly, you don’t need to shag a person in order to experience intense love and a soul-deep connection. Platonic, friendship-based love can be almost overwhelmingly powerful, and whether it lasts for just one hiking trip through Iceland or for 20-plus years, it has the potential to change both of you in quite profound ways.

Ultimately, there are many kinds of love , and the definition of love can be quite different for each person experiencing it. The key is to bask in its light when and if you have the chance to do so. Never turn down the opportunity to love, even though it can be scary. You might get hurt, sure, but you might also experience something beautiful beyond measure. Even if it only lasts a little while, you will be changed by the experience, and certainly for the better.

Still not sure how to cope with the end of your relationship? Chat online to a relationship expert from Relationship Hero who can help you figure things out. Simply click here to chat .

About The Author

Catherine Winter is an herbalist, INTJ empath, narcissistic abuse survivor, and PTSD warrior currently based in Quebec's Laurentian mountains. In an informal role as confidant and guide, Catherine has helped countless people work through difficult times in their lives and relationships, including divorce, ageing and death journeys, grief, abuse, and trauma recovery, as they navigate their individual paths towards healing and personal peace.

There's No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science)

A new book argues that the emotion happens in "micro-moments of positivity resonance."

In her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become , the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson offers a radically new conception of love.

Fredrickson, a leading researcher of positive emotions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presents scientific evidence to argue that love is not what we think it is. It is not a long-lasting, continually present emotion that sustains a marriage; it is not the yearning and passion that characterizes young love; and it is not the blood-tie of kinship.

Rather, it is what she calls a "micro-moment of positivity resonance." She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person— any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in "It's a Wonderful World" when he sang, "I see friends shaking hands, sayin 'how do you do?' / They're really sayin', 'I love you.'"

Fredrickson's unconventional ideas are important to think about at this time of year. With Valentine's Day around the corner, many Americans are facing a grim reality: They are love-starved. Rates of loneliness are on the rise as social supports are disintegrating. In 1985, when the General Social Survey polled Americans on the number of confidants they have in their lives, the most common response was three. In 2004, when the survey was given again, the most common response was zero.

According to the University of Chicago's John Cacioppo , an expert on loneliness, and his co-author William Patrick, "at any given time, roughly 20 percent of individuals—that would be 60 million people in the U.S. alone—feel sufficiently isolated for it to be a major source of unhappiness in their lives." For older Americans, that number is closer to 35 percent . At the same time, rates of depression have been on the rise. In his 2011 book Flourish , the psychologist Martin Seligman notes that according to some estimates, depression is 10 times more prevalent now than it was five decades ago. Depression affects about 10 percent of the American population, according to the Centers for Disease Control .

A global poll taken last Valentine's Day showed that most married people—or those with a significant other—list their romantic partner as the greatest source of happiness in their lives. According to the same poll, nearly half of all single people are looking for a romantic partner, saying that finding a special person to love would contribute greatly to their happiness.

But to Fredrickson, these numbers reveal a "worldwide collapse of imagination," as she writes in her book. "Thinking of love purely as romance or commitment that you share with one special person—as it appears most on earth do—surely limits the health and happiness you derive" from love.

"My conception of love," she tells me, "gives hope to people who are single or divorced or widowed this Valentine's Day to find smaller ways to experience love."

You have to physically be with the person to experience the micro-moment. For example, if you and your significant other are not physically together—if you are reading this at work alone in your office—then you two are not in love. You may feel connected or bonded to your partner—you may long to be in his company—but your body is completely loveless.

To understand why, it's important to see how love works biologically. Like all emotions, love has a biochemical and physiological component. But unlike some of the other positive emotions, like joy or happiness, love cannot be kindled individually—it only exists in the physical connection between two people. Specifically, there are three players in the biological love system—mirror neurons, oxytocin, and vagal tone. Each involves connection and each contributes to those micro-moment of positivity resonance that Fredrickson calls love.

When you experience love, your brain mirrors the person's you are connecting with in a special way. Pioneering research by Princeton University's Uri Hasson shows what happens inside the brains of two people who connect in conversation. Because brains are scanned inside of noisy fMRI machines, where carrying on a conversation is nearly impossible, Hasson's team had his subjects mimic a natural conversation in an ingenious way. They recorded a young woman telling a lively, long, and circuitous story about her high school prom. Then, they played the recording for the participants in the study, who were listening to it as their brains were being scanned. Next, the researchers asked each participant to recreate the story so they, the researchers, could determine who was listening well and who was not. Good listeners, the logic goes, would probably be the ones who clicked in a natural conversation with the story-teller.

What they found was remarkable. In some cases, the brain patterns of the listener mirrored those of the storyteller after a short time gap. The listener needed time to process the story after all. In other cases, the brain activity was almost perfectly synchronized; there was no time lag at all between the speaker and the listener. But in some rare cases, if the listener was particularly tuned in to the story—if he was hanging on to every word of the story and really got it—his brain activity actually anticipated the story-teller's in some cortical areas.

The mutual understanding and shared emotions, especially in that third category of listener, generated a micro-moment of love, which "is a single act, performed by two brains," as Fredrickson writes in her book.

Oxytocin, the so-called love and cuddle hormone, facilitates these moments of shared intimacy and is part of the mammalian "calm-and-connect" system (as opposed to the more stressful "fight-or-flight" system that closes us off to others). The hormone, which is released in huge quantities during sex, and in lesser amounts during other moments of intimate connection, works by making people feel more trusting and open to connection. This is the hormone of attachment and bonding that spikes during micro-moments of love. Researchers have found, for instance, that when a parent acts affectionately with his or her infant—through micro-moments of love like making eye contact, smiling, hugging, and playing—oxytocin levels in both the parent and the child rise in sync.

The final player is the vagus nerve, which connects your brain to your heart and subtly but sophisticatedly allows you to meaningfully experience love. As Fredrickson explains in her book, "Your vagus nerve stimulates tiny facial muscles that better enable you to make eye contact and synchronize your facial expressions with another person. It even adjusts the miniscule muscles of your middle ear so you can better track her voice against any background noise."

The vagus nerve's potential for love can actually be measured by examining a person's heart rate in association with his breathing rate, what's called "vagal tone." Having a high vagal tone is good: People who have a high "vagal tone" can regulate their biological processes like their glucose levels better; they have more control over their emotions, behavior, and attention; they are socially adept and can kindle more positive connections with others; and, most importantly, they are more loving. In research from her lab, Fredrickson found that people with high vagal tone report more experiences of love in their days than those with a lower vagal tone.

Historically, vagal tone was considered stable from person to person. You either had a high one or you didn't; you either had a high potential for love or you didn't. Fredrickson's recent research has debunked that notion.

In a 2010 study from her lab, Fredrickson randomly assigned half of her participants to a "love" condition and half to a control condition. In the love condition, participants devoted about one hour of their weeks for several months to the ancient Buddhist practice of loving-kindness meditation. In loving-kindness meditation, you sit in silence for a period of time and cultivate feelings of tenderness, warmth, and compassion for another person by repeating a series of phrases to yourself wishing them love, peace, strength, and general well-being. Ultimately, the practice helps people step outside of themselves and become more aware of other people and their needs, desires, and struggles—something that can be difficult to do in our hyper individualistic culture.

Fredrickson measured the participants' vagal tone before and after the intervention. The results were so powerful that she was invited to present them before the Dalai Lama himself in 2010. Fredrickson and her team found that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, people could significantly increase their vagal tone by self-generating love through loving-kindness meditation. Since vagal tone mediates social connections and bonds, people whose vagal tones increased were suddenly capable of experiencing more micro-moments of love in their days. Beyond that, their growing capacity to love more will translate into health benefits given that high vagal tone is associated with lowered risk of inflammation, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and stroke.

Fredrickson likes to call love a nutrient. If you are getting enough of the nutrient, then the health benefits of love can dramatically alter your biochemistry in ways that perpetuate more micro-moments of love in your life, and which ultimately contribute to your health, well-being, and longevity.

Fredrickson's ideas about love are not exactly the stuff of romantic comedies. Describing love as a "micro-moment of positivity resonance" seems like a buzz-kill. But if love now seems less glamorous and mysterious then you thought it was, then good. Part of Fredrickson's project is to lower cultural expectations about love—expectations that are so misguidedly high today that they have inflated love into something that it isn't, and into something that no sane person could actually experience.

Jonathan Haidt, another psychologist, calls these unrealistic expectations "the love myth" in his 2006 book The Happiness Hypothesis:

True love is passionate love that never fades; if you are in true love, you should marry that person; if love ends, you should leave that person because it was not true love; and if you can find the right person, you will have true love forever. You might not believe this myth yourself, particularly if you are older than thirty; but many young people in Western nations are raised on it, and it acts as an ideal that they unconsciously carry with them even if they scoff at it... But if true love is defined as eternal passion, it is biologically impossible.

Love 2.0 is, by contrast, far humbler. Fredrickson tells me, "I love the idea that it lowers the bar of love. If you don't have a Valentine, that doesn't mean that you don't have love. It puts love much more in our reach everyday regardless of our relationship status."

Lonely people who are looking for love are making a mistake if they are sitting around and waiting for love in the form of the "love myth" to take hold of them. If they instead sought out love in little moments of connection that we all experience many times a day, perhaps their loneliness would begin to subside.

About the Author

Never-ending Love

“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.”

Given all that Paul has said about the power of true love to bear and endure all things (1 Cor. 13:7), it follows that “love never ends,” as Paul explains in today’s passage (v. 8). Other aspects of the Christian life will end, as we will see, but love is forever.

When Paul says that “love never ends,” he apparently has two things in view. First is the notion that love cannot be defeated. It endures precisely because it cannot be forced to retreat or fail to persevere. Second, because love cannot be defeated, love is eternal. True love endures for all time. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons that we must affirm the perseverance of the saints. Since true love lasts forever, all those who have been truly converted to Christ, all those who have been granted love for God and love for fellow believers (see 1 John 5:1), must persevere in faith and never lose their salvation. The never-ending character of true love demands this.

Recall that Paul stresses the importance of love in order to answer the problem of the Corinthians’ exalting themselves and certain spiritual gifts over others (see 1 Cor. 12; 14). Thus, in conjunction with the point that love never ends, the Apostle notes that prophecy, tongues, knowledge, and the other things that they prize will pass away. The gifts of the Spirit are vital for ministry in the current era, but one day they will cease to be. We should not prize them more highly than love because that fails to recognize their temporary character in light of eternity (13:8–9).

Paul indicates that the spiritual gifts will pass away “when the perfect comes” (v. 10). Although some have argued that this refers to the completion of the Apostolic revelation that is the New Testament, Paul almost certainly has in view the return of Christ to bring the new heaven and earth. However, this does not mean that all the spiritual gifts must continue until Jesus returns, as Pentecostal theologians have argued. Supernatural sign gifts such as tongues and prophecy are given in the new covenant to authenticate the new revelation brought by the Apostles and new covenant prophets. The two gifts are closely linked in 1 Corinthians 14, and tongues appear in the book of Acts as a testimony to the coming of the Spirit and the revelation that the kingdom of God includes people from all nations. Once the Apostles pass away, the sign gifts—tongues, prophecy, the gift of miracles, and so forth—end because there no longer remains a need to demonstrate the Apostles’ authority.

Although we will have a more complete knowledge of God and His ways once Jesus returns, we should not disparage what we have now. Augustine of Hippo observes, “Our knowledge in this life remains imperfect, but it is reliable within its limits.” Let us be grateful to God for what He has told us about Himself now, and let us seek to live by His Word as we love other people.

For Further Study

Love hopes and endures.

1 Corinthians 13:7

The Greatest Christian Virtue

1 Corinthians 13:11–13

1 Corinthians 13

Relationships

Can Love Last a Lifetime?

From infatuation to a lifelong symphony..

Posted June 1, 2010

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Can romantic love last or, by its very nature, does it have a best before date? One writer recently suggested that love is only "designed" to last for about four years, or until the offspring of a romance can survive without two guardian parents. Other research has suggested that love inevitably fades after about 15 months. But mostly we seem to have collectively decided that the natural life of a love relationship is even shorter than this. After all, if love is a fever, then it has to die down eventually - right? Even our language suggests that romantic love is brief. If you "fall" in love, then I guess at some point you stand up and dust yourself off.

This perspective on love becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As one of my clients recently told me, "I almost didn't agree to come for couple therapy . After all, my girl friends all say that there is no solution to my unhappiness and I just have to accept the way love is. After you have been married for a few years there just isn't much of that romance and being-in-love left. You just have to give that up and accept that this is all there is." My client then added, "But I came because I was dying inside. I was angry all the time - after a while screaming into the silence is just too hard." She was telling me about the high price of a distressed relationship and a resigned approach to love.

Another part of this skeptical approach to long term love is the ubiquitous assumption that sexual desire and passion withers once the marriage contract is signed. And it is true that changes, like those involved in becoming parents for example, can dampen eroticism for a while. But is the first flush of infatuation, and the temporary intoxication that comes with a new and highly emotional experience really the best we can expect from a love relationship?

An obvious response to this question is - maybe. If we don't understand love, if it really is a mystery, then there is probably nothing for it but to suffer its comings and goings, and find a way to shrug our shoulders and not expect too much. But my response is that this cynical attitude to love is simply out of date. For the first time in human history, we understand what love is and how to shape it. This changes all the odds in the search for "real love" - the love that lasts.

We have always known in our hearts that love can last for the lucky few. And science has begun to confirm this. Recently, researcher Arthur Arons at Stony Brook University used brain scans to show that a small number of couples still respond with as much physiological arousal - lets call it passion - after 20 years together as most folks experience only in the heat of first infatuation. Chemistry can last!!

We know from recent surveys that desire and passion are much more enduring than we have supposed. These surveys also tell us that the people who have the most frequent and most satisfying sex are those in long term loving relationships. Logically, this is not surprising; in most things practice makes perfect. Sex is like tango; when you dance with someone over a long time, you can co-ordinate your moves and create more synchrony.

So what do we need to make this lasting love and passion an attainable goal for more and more of us? Once upon a time, you could not expect to live past 55. My grandfather died at 40 of pneumonia, a disease that is now easily cured because of the advancement of science. In the same way, I believe that the new science of love that has evolved in the last decade, is making the concept of love as a passing fever, obsolete.

We have already learned so much about the bonds of love as a result of this revolutionary new development of seeing love - an emotion - through the microscope of science and systematic reasoned exploration. Hundreds of studies tell us, for example, that love is an exquisitely logical survival code and that the ability to reach out, clearly state your emotional needs and respond to your lover's emotional need for comfort, reassurance and connection, are the key ingredients in love. We make mistakes because we don't understand our needs; we don't have a map of the territory. We so often send distorted messages, offer advice or problem solving when our partner needs our emotional presence, or we try to hide our emotions when science tells us that our loved one has picked them up from our facial expression almost before our own brain has decided to try and hide them.

But once we know the territory, once we understand the bonds of love, then we can actively shape these bonds in a way that is new for human lovers. We can have love that lasts a lifetime. Love that makes us stronger, feel less fear and pain .

www.drsuejohnson.com

Sue Johnson was Director of the Ottawa (Canada) Couple and Family Institute and the International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy and the author of Hold Me Tight .

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The Psychology Of Loves That Last A Lifetime

Senior Writer, The Huffington Post

The trifecta of a romantic relationship -- intense love, sexual desire and long-term attachment -- can seem elusive, but it may not be as uncommon or unattainable in marriages as we've been conditioned to think.

"We are born to love," writes anthropologist and author of Why We Love , Helen Fisher . "That feeling of elation that we call romantic love is deeply embedded in our brains. But can it last?"

The science tells us that romantic love can last -- and more than we often give it credit for. As a culture, we tend to be pretty cynical about the prospect of romantic love (as opposed to the 'other' loves -- lust and long-term attachment) enduring over time and through obstacles, and for good reason. Roughly 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, with 2.4 million U.S. couples splitting in 2012. And among those that stay together, marital dissatisfaction is common.

In long-term partnerships that do succeed, romantic love tends to fade into companionship and a love more akin to friendship than to that of a couple in love.

But no matter how cynical we are about the prospect of life-long love, it still seems to be what most Americans are after. Romantic love is increasingly viewed as an essential component of a marriage, with 91 percent of women and 86 percent of American men reporting that they would not marry someone who had every quality they wanted in a partner but with whom they were not in love.

This type of love is good for both our marriages and our health. Romantic love -- free from the craving and obsession of the early stages of falling in love -- can and does frequently exist in long-term marriages , research has found, and it's correlated with marital satisfaction, and individual well-being and self-esteem.

Although science has given us some insight on the nature of love and romantic relationships, this fundamental domain of human existence remains something of a mystery. Love, particularly the long-lasting kind, has been called one of the "most studied and least understood areas in psychology."

There may be more questions than answers at this point, but we do know that both being in love and being married are good for your physical and mental health. And psychologists who study love, marriage and relationships have pinpointed a number of factors that contribute to long-lasting romantic love.

Here are six science-backed secrets of couples that keep intense romantic love alive for decades and entire lifetimes.

Life-long romance IS possible.

Despite high rates of divorce, infidelity and marital dissatisfaction, it's not all hopeless -- far from it, in fact. A 2012 study of couples who had been married for a decade, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science , found that 40 percent of them said they were "very intensely in love." The same study found that among couples who were married 30 years or more, 40 percent of women and 35 percent of men said they were very intensely in love.

But don't be convinced solely by what these couples reported -- research in neuroscience has also proven that intense romantic love can last a lifetime.

A 2011 study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience looked the brain regions activated in individuals in long-term romantic partnerships (who had been married an average of 21 years), and compared them with individuals who had recently fallen in love. The results revealed similar brain activity in both groups, with high activity in the reward and motivation centers of the brain, predominantly in the high-dopamine ventral tegmental area (VTA). The findings suggest that couples can not only love each for long periods of time -- they can stay in love with each other.

Sustaining romantic love over the course of many years, then, has a positive function in the brain, which understands and continues to pursue romantic love as a behavior that reaps cognitive rewards, according to positive psychology researcher Adoree Durayappah.

"The key to understanding how to sustain long-term romantic love is to understand it a bit scientifically," Durayappah wrote in Psychology Today . "Our brains view long-term passionate love as a goal-directed behavior to attain rewards. Rewards can include the reduction of anxiety and stress, feelings of security, a state of calmness, and a union with another."

They maintain a sense of "love blindness."

When we first fall in love with someone, we tend to worship the ground they walk on and see them as the most attractive, smartest and accomplished person in the room. And while we might eventually take our partner off of this pedestal after months and years of being together, maintaining a sense of "love blindness" is actually critical to long-lasting passionate love.

A University of Geneva review of nearly 500 studies on compatibility couldn't pinpoint any combination of two personality traits in a relationship that predicted long-term romantic love -- except for one. One's ability to idealize and maintain positive illusions about their partner -- seeing them as good-looking, intelligent, funny and caring, or generally as a "catch" -- remained happy with each other on nearly all measures over time.

They're always trying new things together.

Boredom can be a major obstacle to lasting romantic or companionate love, and successful couples find ways to keep things interesting.

Psychological research has suggested that couples who experience the most intense love are the ones who not only experience a strong physical and emotional attraction to one another, but also who enjoy participating in new or challenging “self-expanding” activities together, Psychology Today reported .

"Novel and arousing activities are, well, arousing, which people can misattribute as attraction to their partner, reigniting that initial spark," writes Amie Gordan in the Berkeley Science Review .

They avoid neediness by preserving their independence.

Neediness is the enemy of long-lasting desire (an important component of romantic love), according to psychologist and Mating in Captivity author Esther Perel. In a popular TED Talk , Perel asks, "Why does sexual desire tend to fade over time, even in loving relationships?"

Neediness and caretaking in long-term partnerships -- which can easily result from looking to the partnership for safety, security and stability -- damper the erotic spark, Perel explains. But if couples can maintain independence and witness each other participating in individual activities at which they're skilled, they can continue to see their partner in an ever-new light.

"When I see my partner on their own doing thing in which they are enveloped, I look at this person and I momentarily get a shift of perception," Perel says . "[We] stay open to the mysteries that are standing right next to each other... What is most interesting is that there is no neediness in desire. There is no caretaking in desire."

So if you're looking to keep that spark going, give your partner the space to do what they're good at -- and make sure to take the opportunity to observe them in their element, when they are "radiant and confident," says Perel.

Their passion for life carries over into their relationship.

Psychologists have found that a strong passion for life can help to sustain passion in a life-long romantic relationship. The 2012 Stony Brook University study examining personality qualities that predicted long-term passionate love found that individuals who exhibit excitement for all that life has to offer are more likely to find success in their romantic partnerships.

"People who approach their daily lives with zest and strong emotion seem to carry these intense feelings over to their love life as well," Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D., wrote in Psychology Today . "If you want your relationship to have passion, put that emotional energy to work in your hobbies, interests, and even your political activities."

They see their relationship as a journey together towards self-fulfillment.

Whereas individuals used to be more likely to look to marriage for safety and security, the societal standard has shifted such that more men and women enter into marriage looking for self-actualization and personal fulfillment . Such a marriage can be more satisfying for both partners, but requires each partner to invest more time and energy into the partnership for it to be successful.

"The average marriage today is weaker than the average marriage of yore, in terms of both satisfaction and divorce rate, but the best marriages today are much stronger, in terms of both satisfaction and personal well-being, than the best marriages of yore," Eli J. Finkel, a professor of social psychology at Northwestern University wrote in a New York Times op-ed, describing this shift from companionate to self-expressive marriages .

Rather than looking to marriage to serve our basic needs for survival and companionship, we're now seeing marriage as a vehicle for self-fulfillment. This new directive can help to facilitate long-term romantic love, so long as each partner is willing and able to put more of their resources into the relationship.

"As the expectations of marriage have ascended Maslow’s hierarchy, the potential psychological payoffs have increased," Finkel noted , "but achieving those results has become more demanding."

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William Shakespeare

Sonnet cxvi: let me not to the marriage of true minds.

Shakespeare's sonnet 116 was first published in 1609. Its structure and form are a typical example of the Shakespearean sonnet.

The poet begins by stating he should not stand in the way of true love. Love cannot be true if it changes for any reason. Love is supposed to be constant, through any difficulties. In the sixth line, a nautical reference is made, alluding that love is much like the north star to sailors. Love should not fade with time; instead, true love lasts forever. When it says "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom," Shakespeare is saying that love is timeless, and only death can do it part.

The last two lines employ a paradoxical conceit. If there is no such thing as true love, the poet says that neither has he ever written, nor has anyone ever experienced true love. However, because the poem has been written, it means the poet, ultimately, is right about true love.

“The movement of 116, like its tone, is careful, controlled, laborious…it defines and redefines its subject in each quatrain, and this subject becomes increasingly, and vulnerable”. It’s split into three quatrains and a couplet. The sonnet starts out as motionless and distant, remote, independent then moves to be “less remote, more tangible and earthbound” and the couplet brings a sense of “coming back down to earth”. Ideal love is deteriorating throughout the sonnet and continues to do so through the couplet.

Sonnet 116 is one of Shakespeare's most famous love sonnets, but some scholars have argued the theme has been misunderstood. Hilton Landry believes the appreciation of 116 as a celebration of true love is mistaken, in part because its context in the sequence of adjacent sonnets is not properly considered. Landry acknowledges the sonnet “has the grandeur of generality or a “universal significance,” but cautions that “however timeless and universal its implications may be, we must never forget that Sonnet 116 has a restricted or particular range of meaning simply because it does not stand alone.” Carol Thomas Neely writes that, “Sonnet 116 is part of a sequence which is separate from all the other sonnets of Shakespeare because of their sense of detachment. They aren’t about the action of love and the object of that love is removed in this sequence which consists of Sonnets 94, 116, and 129” This group of three sonnets doesn’t fit the mold of the rest of Shakespeare’s sonnets, therefore. They defy the typical concept and give a different perspective of what love is and how it is portrayed or experienced. “Though 116 resolves no issues, the poet in this part of the sequence acknowledges and accepts the fallibility of his love more fully than he could acknowledge that of the young man’s earlier” Other critics of Sonnet 116 have argued that one cannot rely on the context of the sonnet to understand its tone. They argue “there is no indisputably authoritative sequence to them, we cannot make use of context as positive evidence for one kind of tone or another.” Shakespeare doesn’t attempt to come to any significant conclusion within this particular sonnet because no resolution is needed.

The sonnet begins with the poet's apparent acknowledgment of the compelling quality of the emotional union of "true minds". As Helen Vendler has observed, “This famous almost ‘impersonal’ sonnet on the marriage of true minds has usually been read as a definition of true love.” This is not a unique theme of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Carol Neely observes that “Like [sonnet] 94, it defines and redefines its subject in each quatrain and this subject becomes increasingly concrete, attractive and vulnerable.” Shakespeare tends to use negation to define love according to Lukas Erne, “The first and the third [quatrains], it is true, define love negatively: 'love is not...'; Love's not...'. The two quatrains are further tied together by the reappearance of the verbs 'to bend' and 'to alter'.” Love is defined in vague terms in the first quatrain.

Garry Murphy observes that the meaning shifts with the distribution of emphasis. He suggests that in the first line the stress should properly be on "me": “Let ME not to the marriage of true minds...”; the sonnet then becomes “not just a gentle metaphoric definition but an agitated protest born out of fear of loss and merely conveyed by means of definition.” C.R. B. Combellack disputes the emphasis placed on the “ME” due to the “absence from the sonnet of another person to stand in contrast. No one else is addressed, described, named, or mentioned.” Murphy also claims that “The unstopped first and second lines suggest urgency in speech, not leisurely meditation.” He writes that the short words when delivered would have the effect of “rapid delivery” rather than “slow rumination”. Combellack question this analysis by asking whether “urgency is not more likely to be expressed in short bursts of speech?” He argues that the words in the sonnet are not intended to be read quickly and that this is simply Murphy’s subjective opinion of the quatrain. Murphy believes the best support of the “sonnet itself being an exclamation” comes from the “O no” which he claims a person would not say without some agitation. Combellack observes that “O no” could be used rather calmly in a statement such as “O no, thank you, but my coffee limit is two cups.” If anything, Combellack suggests, the use of the “O” softens the statement and it would require the use of different grammar to suggest that the sonnet should be understood as rapid speech.

The poetic language leaves the sort of love described somewhat indeterminate; “The 'marriage of true minds' like the 'power to hurt' is troublesomely vague open to a variety of interpretations.” Interpretations include the potential for religious imagery and the love being for God, “Lines one and two echo the Anglican marriage service from the Book of Common Prayer.” The concept of the marriage of true minds is thought to be a highly Christian; according to Erne, “The mental picture thus called up in our minds of the bride and bridegroom standing up front in a church is even reinforced by the insistence on the word alter/altar in the following line.”

The second quatrain explains how love is unchanging according to Neely, “Love is a star, remote, immovable, self-contained, and perhaps, like the 'lords and owners of their faces,' improbably and even somewhat unpleasantly cold and distant.” The second quatrain continues Shakespeare's attempt to define love, but in a more direct way. Shakespeare mentions “it” in the second quatrain according to Douglas Trevor, “The constancy of love in sonnet 116, the “it” of line five of the poem, is also – for the poet – the poetry, the object of love itself.” Not only is there a direct address to love itself, the style Shakespeare’s contemplation becomes more direct. Erne states, “Lines five to eight stand in contrast to their adjacent quatrains, and they have their special importance by saying what love is rather than what it is not.” This represents a change in Shakespeare's view that love is completely undefinable. This concept of unchanging love is focused in the statement, “'[love] is an ever-fixed mark'. This has generally been understood as a sea mark or a beacon.” This concept may also convey in a theological sense. During the Reformation there was dispute about Catholic doctrines, “One of the points of disagreement was precisely that the Reformers rejected the existence of an ever-fixed, or in theological idiom, 'idelible' mark which three of the sacraments, according to Catholic teaching, imprint on the soul.” This interpretation makes God the focus of the sonnet as opposed to the typical concept of love.

The compass is also considered an important symbol in the first part of the poem. John Doebler identifies a compass as a symbol that drives the poem, “The first quatrain of this sonnet makes implied use of the compass emblem, a commonplace symbol for constancy during the period in which Shakespeare's sonnets were composed.” Doebler identifies certain images in the poem with a compass, “In the Renaissance the compass is usually associated with the making of a circle, the ancient symbol of eternity, but in sonnet 116 the emphasis is more upon the contrasting symbolism of the legs of the compass.” The two feet of the compass represent the differences between permanent aspects of love and temporary ones. These differences are explained as, “The physical lovers are caught in a changing world of time, but they are stabilized by spiritual love, which exists in a constant world of eternal ideals.” The sonnet uses imagery like this create a more clear concept of love in the speaker's mind.

In the third quatrain, “The remover who bends turns out to be the grim reaper, Time, with his bending sickle. What alters are Time’s brief hours and weeks…” and “Only the Day of Judgment (invoked from the sacramental liturgy of marriage) is the proper measure of love’s time”” The young man holds the value of beauty over that of love. When he comes to face the fact that the love he felt has changed and become less intense and, in fact, less felt, he changes his mind about this person he’d loved before because what he had felt in his heart wasn’t true. That the object of his affection’s beauty fell to “Time’s Sickle” would not make his feelings change. This fact is supported by Helen Vendler as she wrote, “The second refutational passage, in the third quatrain, proposes indirectly a valuable alternative law, one approved by the poet-speaker, which we may label “the law of inverse constancy”: the more inconstant are time’s alterations (one an hour, one a week), the more constant is love’s endurance, even to the edge of doom” Vendler believes that if the love the young man felt was real it would still be there after the object of that love’s beauty had long faded away, but he “has announced the waning of his own attachment to the speaker, dissolving the “marriage of true minds”” Shakespeare is arguing that if love is true it will stand against all tests of time and adversity, no manner of insignificant details such as the person’s beauty fading could alter or dissolve “the marriage of two minds”.

The couplet of Sonnet 116 Shakespeare went about explaining in the inverse. He says the opposite of what it would be natural to say about love. For instance, instead of writing something to the effect of ‘I have written and men have loved,’ according to Nelson, Shakespeare chose to write, “I never writ, nor no man ever loved.” Nelson argues that “The existence of the poem itself gives good evidence that the poet has written. It is harder to see, however, how the mere existence of the poem could show that men have loved. In part, whether men have loved depends upon just what love is…Since the poem is concerned with the nature of love, there is a sense in which what the poem says about love, if true, in part determines whether or not men have loved.” Nelson quotes Ingram and Redpath who are in agreement with his statement when they paraphrase the couplet in an extended form: "If this is a judgment (or a heresy), and this can be proved against me, and by citing my own case in evidence, then I've never written anything, and no man's love has ever been real love."” Vendler states “Therefore, if he himself is in error on the subject of what true love is, then no man has ever loved; certainly the young man (it is implied) has not loved, if he has not loved after the steady fashion urged by the speaker, without alteration, removals, or impediments” Each of these authorities agree in the essence of the Sonnet and its portrayal of what love really is and what it can withstand, for example, the test of time and the fading of physical attraction of the object of our love. The couplet is, therefore, that men have indeed loved both in true and honest affection (this being the most important part of the argument) as well as falsely in the illusions of beauty before just as Shakespeare has written before this sonnet.

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When thou shalt be disposed to set… And place my merit in the eye of s… Upon thy side, against myself I’l… And prove thee virtuous, though th… With mine own weakness being best…

COME unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Court’sied when you have, and kiss… The wild waves whist,— Foot it featly here and there;

Full many a glorious morning have… Flatter the mountain-tops with sov… Kissing with golden face the meado… Gilding pale streams with heavenly… Anon permit the basest clouds to r…

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fas… In one of thine, from that which t… And that fresh blood which youngly… Thou mayst call thine when thou fr… Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and i…

’TIS better to be vile than vile… When not to be receives reproach o… And the just pleasure lost, which… Not by our feeling, but by others’… For why should others’ false adult…

Be wise as thou art cruel; do not… My tongue-tied patience with too m… Lest sorrow lend me words and word… The manner of my pity-wanting pain… If I might teach thee wit, better…

Betwixt mine eye and heart a leagu… And each doth good turns now unto… When that mine eye is famished for… Or heart in love with sighs himsel… With my love’s picture then my eye…

A woman’s face with Nature’s own… Hast thou, the master-mistress of… A woman’s gentle heart, but not ac… With shifting change, as is false… An eye more bright than theirs, le…

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s g… And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those sprin… On chalic’d flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin

King Henry to Westmoreland What’s he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No my fai… If we are mark’d to die, we are en… To do our country loss; and if to…

Lo! in the orient when the graciou… Lifts up his burning head, each un… Doth homage to his new—appearing s… Serving with looks his sacred maje… And having climb’d the steep—up he…

O HOW much more doth beauty beau… By that sweet ornament which truth… The Rose looks fair, but fairer w… For that sweet odour which doth in… The Canker-blooms have full as de…

IT was a lover and his lass, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey… That o’er the green corn-field did… In the spring time, the only pr… When birds do sing, hey ding a din…

Those pretty wrongs that liberty c… When I am sometime absent from th… Thy beauty and thy years full well… For still temptation follows where… Gentle thou art, and therefore to…

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Ryan Gosling Rachel McAdams in "The Notebook"

Falling in love is perhaps nature’s greatest high. Just seeing your beloved can make your heart race, your legs weak and your face flushed. Touch him, and well…

Movies try to convince us we’ll feel this way forever, but the intense romance has an expiration date for everyone. Expect the passion to last two to three years at most, says Dr. Fred Nour, a neurologist in Mission Viejo, California, and author of the book “True Love: How to Use Science to Understand Love.”

It’s all about the chemicals in your brain — a potent mix set up by nature to get you to procreate, give birth to a healthy child and take care of him until he’s mature. Despite greeting cards and Valentines, your heart has nothing to do with love. Everything related to love happens in the brain, Nour said. That includes romance — programmed to be fairly short-lived for all of us.

“Romance will never last for a lifetime,” Nour told TODAY. “You have to accept falling in love is just a phase that’s going to go away... If you accept that, you'll have fewer divorces and more happy people.”

Here are the four phases of love:

1. Mate selection

That’s when you’re choosing the person you want to be with. Much of it is unconscious, with instinct guiding you through the process, Nour said. See that one person you’re drawn to in a room full of people? On a basic biological level, you’re attracted to him because your body senses your genes mixed with his genes would produce very healthy children.

2. Romance and falling in love

“This is the phase that everybody talks about, all the movies, all the romance novels, because it’s fun, exciting and thrilling,” Nour said. “In this phase, we don’t see reality — love is blind. We see people as we want them to be, not as they are.”

Brain chemicals called monoamines create that familiar heady rush when you’re with your loved one, or just think of him. Enjoy it because these intense feelings will go away in a few short years, Nour said.

This phase has an important purpose: It prepares you for true love down the road. If you don’t truly fall in love with your partner, you won’t be primed for that last phase, Nour said.

3. Falling out of romantic love

Everyone goes through this stage, even the most adoring, passionate couples you know. In a culture that focuses almost solely on romantic love, it can be very alarming when you realize the rush is gone, the passion has vanished, and your spouse no longer makes your pulse race.

Think of this time as a chance to see your partner for what he really is and decide if you made the right choice.

“Nature made (this phase) for a reason: when you lose the chemicals that give you the euphoria, you start to see reality,” Nour said. “This is a re-evaluation phase. If you feel that, overall, you made a pretty good choice… hang in there.”

People who chase romance and divorce the moment they fall out of love will never experience true love, he said. But if you truly realize you made a mistake, this may be the time to break up and start all over with a new partner. If you don’t fall out of love, you can’t fall in love with somebody else because the human brain is programmed to love one person at a time.

4. True love

If you decide your partner is still the right person for you after the passion ends, you’re on your way to finding true love . It happens gradually and slowly: You'll usually start to feel it one or two years after the previous phase. Your feelings will just continue to grow deeper over the years.

Driven by chemicals called nonapeptides, this stage ensures a deep bond between you and your partner — nature’s way of keeping you together to take care of your kids until they’re grown up, Nour said.

The result is a happier, stronger and longer lasting relationship. This is the ultimate love.

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Second Opinion

How to Make Love Last Forever

Keeping your primary relationship healthy, positive, supportive and together isn’t easy. But it can be done.

“We expect a lot from our relationships, and the fact is, long-term marriages or relationships are difficult to sustain, given the pressures most of us live with,” says Sue Maisch, L.S.W., a family and child counselor in Glenwood Springs, Colo. “To make it work, couples need the maturity to realize a long-lasting relationship will entail sacrifice, commitment and hard work, but that the payoff of a deeper love and stable, loving home life is well worth the effort.”

Here are suggestions on how to strengthen the connection with your partner.

Practice forgiveness

Resentment, anger and blame are normal reactions when your loved one does something hurtful. Without forgiveness, however, little hurts as well as betrayals can tear a relationship apart.

“People who don’t forgive often have problems maintaining positive feelings toward their partners,” says Ms. Maisch. “But partners who move toward forgiveness are better able to maintain their connection because they make a conscious decision not to dwell on the mistakes their partner has made.”

Be realistic

Every long-term relationship will have its share of disappointments. But learning to look beyond a particular bad patch to see your partner objectively and lovingly can pull you through.

“Remembering and nourishing memories of happy times you’ve had together can help you get past irritation and those times when you’re wondering if you want to stay in the relationship,” says Ms. Maisch.

Develop rituals

The way you and your partner say good-bye or hello, or how you celebrate birthdays or anniversaries year after year can help build a strong connection that can keep you emotionally committed during times of conflict.

For example, taking time to kiss your partner good-bye every morning when you leave for work -- no matter how late or distracted you are -- tells him or her that in the grand scheme of things your relationship is a high priority.

Listen actively

“Jumping in and interrupting when your partner is trying to tell you something can make him or her frustrated or discouraged,” says Ms. Maisch. “It’s crucial to listen more than you speak when you’re having a serious discussion.”

Secrets and lies weaken the foundation of any relationship. Ignoring problems (another form of keeping secrets) doesn’t make them go away. What is important is respectful, open communication regarding your feelings and dreams.

Even the truest of friends and most compatible partners argue. To keep your disagreements from damaging your relationship, set up some respectful ground rules during a calm moment.

These might include no name-calling or criticizing, making sure each person gets to have a say, really listening to each other and taking a break from the discussion if it gets too heated, as long as you promise to revisit the issues within a day or two.

Get help if you’re stuck

If you and your partner keep having the same arguments with no progress in sight, seek help from a therapist or marriage counselor.

“Above all don’t wait until your connection has been seriously damaged before you get help,” says Ms. Maisch. “Get counseling before one or both of you become entrenched in negative emotions.”

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DOI: 10.1080/17482798.2016.1157501
Corpus ID: 147287465

True love lasts forever: the influence of a popular teenage movie on Belgian girls’ romantic beliefs

Karolien Driesmans , Laura Vandenbosch , S. Eggermont
Published 16 March 2016
Journal of Children and Media

29 Citations

Parasocial romantic relationships, romantic beliefs, and relationship outcomes in usa adolescents: rehearsing love or setting oneself up to fail, the perceived influence of media and technology on adolescent romantic relationships, the effects of corrective strategies on romantic belief endorsement, friends in books: the influence of character attributes and the reading experience on parasocial relationships and romances, a longitudinal investigation of television viewing in adolescence and sexual perfectionism and satisfaction in adulthood, first fictional crush: effects of parasocial attachments on female adolescent relationships.

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Romantic memes and beliefs: influence on relationship satisfaction, romantic myths and cyber dating violence victimization in spanish adolescents: a moderated mediation model, modern movies and violence: influence of movies on youth, 59 references, from love at first sight to soul mate: the influence of romantic ideals in popular films on young people's beliefs about relationships.

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