For Hearts to Comprehend
Perhaps there is a truism in the thought
that love which buffs the fever glint in eyes
is truly unaccountably wrought
and does not bear its guise when analyzed;
but probing the pulse with reverent reticence
of love and of the nature on it
is nowise sacrilegious but a license
my Muse has granted to evolve this sonnet.
Then Muses are an untrustworthy lot
who sanction the attempts of mortal man
to dwell upon a substance that is not,
but which exists for hearts to comprehend.
Whatever facets love is structured of,
one thing is certain only—love is love.
IRWIN FLESCHER
Nevertheless, there comes a time when a riddle may yield its guarded secrets. Psychological explorations hint at the nature of being in love. Scientific research into the nucleus of love may seem sacrilegious, invading the personal commitments of the human heart. Certainly, the quest is justified if the obtained knowledge can prevent self-defeating behavior in the love lives of people.
Social psychologist Zick Rubin, reporting on his unique research in Liking and Loving (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973) made supportive assumptions that three factors are associated with love: caring, intimacy and attachment. In other words, lovers are genuinely concerned about each other, tell each other things they would never say to anyone else, and want to be with each other more than with anyone else in the world.
Taking the various differences into account, Rubin devised two parallel self-reporting questionnaires: a Like Scale and a Love Scale. The scales were administered to a few hundred couples at the University of Michigan who had been going together for an extended time. Each partner was asked to rate the other on both scales. Analysis of the data revealed that while the Love scores of men for their partner and of women for their partner were almost identical, women tended to rate their partner higher on the Like Scale than the ratings of the men on the Like Scale for their partner. In a love relationship men appear to be better liked than women are. One might infer from the data that women have a greater need to admire and respect whom they love. It may well be, however, that women are more capable of a fuller range of expression than men are. Such findings highlight contemporary sex-role differences in our culture.
It is conceivable that assumptions underlying the measurement of love are too simplistic. Attachment, for example, implies that people in love are happy when they are together and miserable when apart. It follows that they have fewer emotional resources left for others. Earlier on, Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving (New York: Harper & Row, 1956) felt that such love is not love at all but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Fromm contended that love is an attitude and that if a person is genuinely in love with someone, he or she is also in love with all persons, the world and life.
Whatever its limitations, efforts to isolate love is a promising approach. In scientific research the quest to isolate a factor begins by separating it from that which it is not. Even Shakespeare (Sonnet 116) understood this in his advice on how to tell the genuine article: “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds.”
By all that is known, the gradual or sudden phenomenon of love between two people remains a mystery. Future investigations must differentiate love from non-love, indifference, affection, infatuation, desire and other feelings, in order to rule out what true love is not. Eventually, one should arrive at the pure essence—permitting social scientists to measure the intangible.
On the other hand, it is not certain that the extraction of all nonessential factors from love would prove fruitful. Oddly enough, when the last contaminant is removed there might be nothing left. The elusive key is more likely to be found in a set of interacting forces that in the right combination generate the magic of love. This is similar to the viewpoint of Rollo May in Love and Will (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1969) where he identified four significant needs: sex, friendship, devotion, and the longing to overcome separateness and develop a full relationship. May believed that every human experience of authentic love is a blending, in varying proportions, of these four.
What constitutes Love? Perhaps this question may never be answered satisfactorily. It may not be all that crucial to know. It is not so much a matter of determining what quantities of which ingredients go into the recipe for love. It is not as helpful to know what it is; rather, how it operates.
And here is where the innovative research and clinical findings of psychologist John Gottman have provided an important breakthrough in our understanding of the love relationship. Over the past few decades Gottman has developed scientific measures to determine what succeeds and what fails in making love work. By focusing on how love operates, Gottman decoded data amassed from videotaped interactions, biometric monitoring, and real-time reporting of personal reactions. He is known for his ability to predict which newlyweds will divorce with over 90 percent accuracy (Journal of Family Psychology, 1992). He has written extensively on his research findings. Gottman’s latest book, with coauthor Nan Silver, is What Makes Love Last? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012). In the final chapter he discloses a 120 item questionnaire on how to evaluate a person’s capability of sustaining true love. By revealing the essence of what love is by how it functions, Dr. Gottman has become the ultimate “Love Analyzer.”
The value of social science is in the ability to develop valid predictions of human behavior. This requires discovering what significant factors determine subsequent events. While newly uncovered insights and counseling can aid married couples avoid catastrophe, I believe the ongoing revelations may be even more helpful to pre-marital couples who might seek psychological help or think twice before tying the knot. The continued exploration of love’s fiery nature may help to diminish the currently high divorce rate. For a given relationship, when love ignites, a scientific seer will foretell how long it burns.
Irwin Flescher, PhD, is a psychologist in Roslyn, Long Island, New York.
Copyright © 2013
Any consideration of romantic love must surely include the sexual domain. However, there is general agreement that sex is not love, and that a love relationship encompasses much more than sexual drive and fulfillment. Love is a complex emotional need. Interpersonal attraction is central to loving. But if interpersonal attraction, broadly conceived, is a basic ingredient in loving, it is also central to the emotion of liking, as well.
One of the persistent concerns people share is the question of how to distinguish the advent of true love from the fraudulent. Perhaps the concept of real love can be understood more clearly if we focus for a moment upon the direct antithesis of love—hate. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that one individual has selected another, with good reason, as the object of his or her hatred. If one truly hates another without wavering, is that to be construed as true hate? Is it proof that the hatred was false or unreal if the emotional feeling dissipated after a while? Must hate be lasting to be genuine? Must love be lasting to be genuine? The point that I am making is that when someone speaks of true love, he or she is actually concerned with whether it will endure—if it lasts it is deemed authentic. Evidently, preoccupation with the true or genuine nature of love reflects anxiety and apprehension about the life of that emotional feeling of love, about the constancy of love.
Psychologists in the last half of the twentieth century have proposed various explanations towards understanding the enigma of the love relationship. If the duration of a love experience is no true indication of the validity of those feelings, perhaps the same could be said of marriage. In The Psychology of Romantic Love (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980) Nathaniel Branden concluded that it is an error to assume that a marriage is invalid if it does not last forever.
Dorothy Tennov in Love and Limerence (New York: Stein & Day, 1979) stressed the obsessional nature of romantic attachment. She noted that in such a relationship the attractive characteristics of the partner are exaggerated, while the unattractive characteristics go unnoticed. Apparently, behind those distorted perceptions are deep fears of rejection and of the loss of that love.
Romantic love that eventuates in marriage was seen by Joel Shor and Jean Sanville as an attempt to restore the shattered illusion in growing up, when our idealized parents were eventually seen as imperfect. In Illusion in Loving (Los Angeles: Double Helix Press, 1978) they maintained that disenchantment with marriage stems from taking with utmost seriousness the myths of the perfect mate and the promise of living happily ever after. When such high hopes do not lead to complete fulfillment they result in disappointment in the relationship.
Considering the highly personal nature of the love experience and the enormous personality differences in human beings, I must ask a question within a question. Is “What is love?” a valid question? Is love open to meaningful inquiry? Is love too elusive and mysterious to fathom? Let me pose the same problem poetically.
Over and Out
She met “he” and he met “she.”
The lovers wed and now were “we.”
But one spoke up in their final bout,
“It’s all over and I am out.”
The angry one recoiled and said,
“I know I’m right. I used my head.”
The other replied as they split apart,
“Oh no! You should have used your heart.”
What is love? Ask a hundred people this simple question and you will undoubtedly hear a hundred different answers. Among those replies would be repeated mention of such terms as being in love, loving, being loved, passionate love, romantic love and true love. Poets, lyricists, writers, theologians, psychologists and philosophers have extensively explored these concepts. But the nagging question persists like a haunting refrain: What is love?
The insights obtained in the practice of psychotherapy regarding the ability to experience love indicate a wide range of individual differences. Feelings of love run the gamut from persons so closed up as to be unable to experience this special emotion, to people who only develop such deep feelings after being in a sustained relationship a long time, to those who fall in love at first sight. Selecting the object of one’s affection varies from persons who can only love but once, to indecisive people who fall in and out of love with different partners with compulsive repetitiveness.
Today’s spiraling divorce rate is reason enough to dwell upon the theme of love. When two people marry, what degree of assurance or confidence do they have that the union will be lasting? This question is more tantalizing than the meaning of love itself. It is evident that even the validation of genuine love between partners is no guarantee that their love will endure, that the ardor of one or both of them will not dim. It is certainly true that romantic love must be integrated with the complex responsibilities of marriage once the honeymoon is over. It is at this point that distinctions develop between being in love and interacting in a loving way. This disparity prompted me to write the following poem.