David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Can You Love Me Forever Darling?
By Aaron Ben-Ze?v, Ph.D.
January 23, 2009
When I fall in love
It will be for ever
Or I will never fall in love.
(The Lettermen)
After all, my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love
Just because it perished?
(Edna St. Vincent Millay)
In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk. (Rita Rudner)
True love is often described as lasting forever and as constantly occupying the lover's mind. Thus people say, "true love never dies," "I will always love you for the rest of your life," and "I'll be yours through all the years, till the end of time." The ideal is that true love lasts forever: love is not real unless it is eternal and enduring. Genuine love is often considered to be something that even death cannot destroy. As Flora says about her married lover, "he will be my great and greatest love until I die, and much, much beyond."
The continuation of genuine love is also expressed in the fact that Romantic Ideology requires lovers to constantly think about each other. As Eva, a married woman, says about her married lover:
"I think of him all the time. I can do nothing without thinking of him. Before we meet, there is not a single moment he is not with me and there is not a single thought that is not about him. I have never experienced such intense and impatient longing in my life, and I neither sleep nor feel a sense of calm until I finally fall into his arms."
The assumption is not merely that genuine love is meant to last forever, but that it is meant to occupy our hearts and souls every minute of the day.
There is a price to pay for entering the gates of eternity: a substantial disregard for reality. In reality, events have a beginning and an end and their nature changes over time. In the Romantic Ideology, transient, everyday events are perceived to be so insignificant that they have no impact upon love. If in fact love is perceived as eternal no matter what we do, people may believe that once they enjoy true love, they have to do nothing to maintain it, and nothing we will do can harm it. This is obviously an illusion, and maintaining our love depends upon our behavior and many other factors.
Modern society has witnessed an increasing discrepancy between the desire for enduring romantic relationship and the probability of its fulfillment. Breakup, rather than marriage, is the norm in dating relationships. Also marriages are in a considerable problem in this regard: the likelihood that first marriages will end in divorce is around 50%; this estimate increases by approximately 10% for second marriages. Breakups are common despite their distressing consequences.
Some of the mentioned factors that can explain the above tendency include changes in economic conditions (e.g., increased affluence), societal circumstances (e.g., increased number of working women, personal freedom, social and geographical mobility and reduction in external barriers for dissolving marriages), and modified values (e.g., greater sexual freedom, increased privacy and autonomy, erosion in religious beliefs and greater acceptance of violating normative boundaries). Those factors are believed to have a significant impact upon our psychological satisfaction from current romantic relationships. Statistics on romantic breakups highlight the enigma posed by romantic love today: Surely we should know better than to believe in the eternity of love? And yet we persist.
Typical emotions are essentially states. An emotional event may be compared to a large rock being thrown into a pool of still water: for a short time, emotional chaos reigns before calm gradually returns. Nevertheless, long-term emotions (or in my terms "sentiments") do exist. Thus we speak about a man's long-standing love of his partner and a parents' long-standing grief for their son. However, these sentiments have dispositional nature though they are often punctuated by outbursts of short-term emotions. For example, loving one's partner for a long time consists of brief outbursts of passionate love and long periods in which love is mainly dispositional. The long-term love may not involve continuous intense feelings, but it influences the attitudes and behavior toward the beloved and other people.
Although it is extremely difficult to fulfill this ideal, and romantic love often recedes with time, there are people who are madly in love with each other for a very long time, sometimes till death parts them. In a recent study, a team from Stony Brook University have discovered through brain scans that a small number of couples can respond with as much passion after 20 years as most people exhibit only in the first flush of love. In about one in 10 of the mature couples exhibited the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as people commonly do in the early stages of a relationship.
The supposed eternal nature of romantic love implies the assumption that it cannot be replaceable. Nonreplaceability of romantic love is hard to accept. Whereas it is certain that we would not describe every love affair as genuine romantic love, there is no reason to suppose that one can only experience a single instance of genuine love in a lifetime. It is worth mentioning that Romeo's love for Juliet, which is often considered the ideal of romantic love, is not his first passion. While still pursuing his love for Rosaline, Romeo sees Juliet, instantly transfers his desire, and falls in love with her.
There is no reason to assume that one cannot find a new and more compatible partner. After all, Adam and Eve are the only couple who were truly made for each other. The replaceability of the beloved does not deny the existence of cases in which one has only one genuine love throughout one's life. The popular song arguing that "true love can never die" is not entirely wrong; however, a more precise, though less romantic, description would be "true love may never die."
The replaceable nature of love does not mean that democracy should be applied to love and that love is like linen-often changed, the sweeter. On the contrary, people who are rapidly replacing their partners are often inadequate in their ability to form loving relationships. Many of them are addicted to destructive love relationships, and despite huge efforts on their behalf, they cannot achieve the stability and warmth of healthy, loving relationships.
Adapted from In the Name of Love.
By Aaron Ben-Ze?v, Ph.D.
January 23, 2009
When I fall in love
It will be for ever
Or I will never fall in love.
(The Lettermen)
After all, my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love
Just because it perished?
(Edna St. Vincent Millay)
In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk. (Rita Rudner)
True love is often described as lasting forever and as constantly occupying the lover's mind. Thus people say, "true love never dies," "I will always love you for the rest of your life," and "I'll be yours through all the years, till the end of time." The ideal is that true love lasts forever: love is not real unless it is eternal and enduring. Genuine love is often considered to be something that even death cannot destroy. As Flora says about her married lover, "he will be my great and greatest love until I die, and much, much beyond."
The continuation of genuine love is also expressed in the fact that Romantic Ideology requires lovers to constantly think about each other. As Eva, a married woman, says about her married lover:
"I think of him all the time. I can do nothing without thinking of him. Before we meet, there is not a single moment he is not with me and there is not a single thought that is not about him. I have never experienced such intense and impatient longing in my life, and I neither sleep nor feel a sense of calm until I finally fall into his arms."
The assumption is not merely that genuine love is meant to last forever, but that it is meant to occupy our hearts and souls every minute of the day.
There is a price to pay for entering the gates of eternity: a substantial disregard for reality. In reality, events have a beginning and an end and their nature changes over time. In the Romantic Ideology, transient, everyday events are perceived to be so insignificant that they have no impact upon love. If in fact love is perceived as eternal no matter what we do, people may believe that once they enjoy true love, they have to do nothing to maintain it, and nothing we will do can harm it. This is obviously an illusion, and maintaining our love depends upon our behavior and many other factors.
Modern society has witnessed an increasing discrepancy between the desire for enduring romantic relationship and the probability of its fulfillment. Breakup, rather than marriage, is the norm in dating relationships. Also marriages are in a considerable problem in this regard: the likelihood that first marriages will end in divorce is around 50%; this estimate increases by approximately 10% for second marriages. Breakups are common despite their distressing consequences.
Some of the mentioned factors that can explain the above tendency include changes in economic conditions (e.g., increased affluence), societal circumstances (e.g., increased number of working women, personal freedom, social and geographical mobility and reduction in external barriers for dissolving marriages), and modified values (e.g., greater sexual freedom, increased privacy and autonomy, erosion in religious beliefs and greater acceptance of violating normative boundaries). Those factors are believed to have a significant impact upon our psychological satisfaction from current romantic relationships. Statistics on romantic breakups highlight the enigma posed by romantic love today: Surely we should know better than to believe in the eternity of love? And yet we persist.
Typical emotions are essentially states. An emotional event may be compared to a large rock being thrown into a pool of still water: for a short time, emotional chaos reigns before calm gradually returns. Nevertheless, long-term emotions (or in my terms "sentiments") do exist. Thus we speak about a man's long-standing love of his partner and a parents' long-standing grief for their son. However, these sentiments have dispositional nature though they are often punctuated by outbursts of short-term emotions. For example, loving one's partner for a long time consists of brief outbursts of passionate love and long periods in which love is mainly dispositional. The long-term love may not involve continuous intense feelings, but it influences the attitudes and behavior toward the beloved and other people.
Although it is extremely difficult to fulfill this ideal, and romantic love often recedes with time, there are people who are madly in love with each other for a very long time, sometimes till death parts them. In a recent study, a team from Stony Brook University have discovered through brain scans that a small number of couples can respond with as much passion after 20 years as most people exhibit only in the first flush of love. In about one in 10 of the mature couples exhibited the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as people commonly do in the early stages of a relationship.
The supposed eternal nature of romantic love implies the assumption that it cannot be replaceable. Nonreplaceability of romantic love is hard to accept. Whereas it is certain that we would not describe every love affair as genuine romantic love, there is no reason to suppose that one can only experience a single instance of genuine love in a lifetime. It is worth mentioning that Romeo's love for Juliet, which is often considered the ideal of romantic love, is not his first passion. While still pursuing his love for Rosaline, Romeo sees Juliet, instantly transfers his desire, and falls in love with her.
There is no reason to assume that one cannot find a new and more compatible partner. After all, Adam and Eve are the only couple who were truly made for each other. The replaceability of the beloved does not deny the existence of cases in which one has only one genuine love throughout one's life. The popular song arguing that "true love can never die" is not entirely wrong; however, a more precise, though less romantic, description would be "true love may never die."
The replaceable nature of love does not mean that democracy should be applied to love and that love is like linen-often changed, the sweeter. On the contrary, people who are rapidly replacing their partners are often inadequate in their ability to form loving relationships. Many of them are addicted to destructive love relationships, and despite huge efforts on their behalf, they cannot achieve the stability and warmth of healthy, loving relationships.
Adapted from In the Name of Love.
