The Arc of Love

How Our Romantic Lives Change over Time

Aaron Ben-Ze'ev

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780226633909
• eBook ISBN: 9780226634067
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Mind & Body in Philosophy

Is love best when it is fresh? For many, the answer is a resounding "yes." The intense experiences that characterize new love are impossible to replicate, leading to wistful reflection and even a repeated pursuit of such ecstatic beginnings.

Aaron Ben-Ze'ev takes these experiences seriously, but he's also here to remind us of the benefits of profound love—an emotion that can only develop with time. In The Arc of Love, he provides an in-depth, philosophical account of the experiences that arise in early, intense love—sexual passion, novelty, change—as well as the benefits of cultivating long-term, profound love—stability, development, calmness. Ben-Ze'ev analyzes the core of emotions many experience in early love and the challenges they encounter, and he offers pointers for weathering these challenges. Deploying the rigorous analysis of a philosopher, but writing clearly and in an often humorous style with an eye to lived experience, he takes on topics like compromise, commitment, polyamory, choosing a partner, online dating, and when to say "I love you." Ultimately, Ben-Ze'ev assures us, while love is indeed best when fresh, if we tend to it carefully, it can become more delicious and nourishing even as time marches on. 

1

The Possibility of Long-Term Romantic Love

There is only one serious question. And that is: . . . how to make love stay?

TOM ROBBINS

The first stop on our journey toward the heart of love will consider long-term romantic love.1 The endurance of romantic love has been debated from time immemorial. Despite this fact, however, we still do not have a handle on how love survives time.

In the field of philosophy, the discussion has centered on the question of whether love is conditional, that is, whether it is dependent on anything. Aristotle, for instance, believed that it is; according to him, love can end if the beloved changes for the worse. Other philosophers, notably Plato and Emmanuel Levinas, considered love to be unconditional; in their view, love can last for a lifetime. In the field of psychology, one also finds conflicting views concerning the possibility of long-term romantic love. In this introductory chapter, I discuss some central issues that have bearing on these questions, such as the role of change and familiarity in love, the basic human drive to yearn for the possible, and the conflict between love and life.

Will You Love Me Tomorrow?

Tonight you’re mine, completely . . . but will you love me tomorrow?

CAROLE KING

Carole King asks the burning question of the romantic lover: Will you love me tomorrow? In other words, Will the feeling that I am your beloved last only until the morning sun rises, or will it last for many years? To this question, we might add our own: Must romantic love endure over time in order to be considered profound? Can brief romantic affairs be fully satisfied?

As a young boy, I devoured Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856) and Amos Oz’s My Michael (1968). These romantic tragedies served as cautionary tales, warning of the consequences to passion withering and love dying. Take the undoing of Emma Bovary, who tries to relieve the banality of her life through a series of adulterous affairs. Ultimately rejected by her lovers and deep in debt, Emma swallows arsenic. Like her, Hannah Gonen (Michael’s wife) is drenched in dreams but stunted by her marriage to an unimaginative man. As time goes on, her marriage deteriorates into sadness and depression, and her dreams—along with her sanity—are quashed.

Emma and Hannah appear to be victims of a myth, a dangerous romantic ideology enshrined in both our recordings and our rituals: true love overcomes all obstacles (“There ain’t no mountain high enough to keep me from getting to you”); and love lasts forever (“till death us do part”). This seductive notion assumes both the uniqueness of the beloved and a kind of fusion. Soulmates are meant only for each other: lovers form a single entity, and each of the partners is irreplaceable. The lover’s attention is focused on nothing but the beloved (“When a man loves a woman, can’t keep his mind on nothing else”). Ideal love is total, uncompromising, and unconditional. Hell might be freezing over, but true love will endure.2

While such romantic ideology retains its allure, the idea that passion can last a lifetime has lost its luster in modern times. We have all witnessed an increasing gap between the desire for an enduring romantic relationship and the probability of its fulfillment. Breakups, not long-term relationships, are the norm. In many societies, about half of all marriages end in divorce, and many of the remaining half have at some point seriously considered divorce. Love is a trade-off, the prevailing wisdom goes—we can either soar briefly to the highest heights of passion, or we can be content with a meaningful friendship for many years. Is it then fruitless to despair, as do Emma and Hannah, because having both is impossible?

And yet . . . popular culture celebrates long-term love. Moreover, most people, including the current generation of adolescents, continue to believe in the possibility of such love. A survey of young adults (ages 18–29) in the United States revealed that the vast majority holds highly optimistic views about marriage, with 86 percent expecting to have a marriage that lasts a lifetime.3 However, such love is under attack in contemporary society, where novelty rules, and change is the absolute order of the day. Thus, we are confronted with a paradox: the ideal of love demands that it be endless, lasting until “the sun shines no more,” while our lives are littered with crumbling relationships.

Confusing Findings

Nothing in mating remains static. Evolution did not design humans for lifelong matrimonial bliss.

DAVID BUSS

Been with my wife for more than 25 years. We had 2 children together. I love her today more than I ever have. The thought of growing old with her brings me comfort. Yes, love can survive and flourish!

CHRIS CURTIS

A large body of research indicates that sexual desire decreases dramatically over time within relationships. Thus, one’s sexual response to a familiar partner will be progressively less intense than such response to a novel partner. Unsurprisingly, then, the frequency of sexual activity with one’s partner tends to decline steadily as the relationship lengthens. After one year of marriage, couples tend to be half as sexually active together as they were during their first month of marriage, with sex declining more gradually thereafter. A similar pattern of decline has also been found among cohabiting heterosexual couples and among gay and lesbian couples. Hence, enduring romantic love seems to be uncommon, usually evolving into companionate love in which sexual desire grows weaker as time passes.4

Yet research also suggests that many long-term couples remain deeply in love. Daniel O’Leary and colleagues asked 274 married individuals: “How in love are you with your partner?” Forty percent of those married for more than a decade reported being “very intensely in love.” Even more dramatically, among those in marriages of thirty years or more, 40 percent of wives and 35 percent of husbands reported very intense love for their partner.5

Confusing results, indeed. How can we make sense of them? As it turns out, recent neuroscientific research may have identified the mechanism behind these findings. Bianca Acevedo and colleagues showed ten women and seven men who had been married for an average of twenty-one years and reported being intensely in love with their spouses the facial images of their partners while scanning their brains with fMRI. The scans revealed a significant activation in key reward centers of the brain—much like the pattern found in people experiencing fresh love, but vastly different from those in companionate relationships.6

Other research has reported cases in which familiarity promotes attraction and others in which it undermines attraction.7 Christine Proulx and colleagues approached the question from a different perspective. They found two major trajectories of marital quality: (1) marriages with an initial high, stable level of marital quality, which are likely to maintain this level in the long term, and (2) marriages that begin with a low level of marital quality, which typically remain at this level or lower. The authors noted that the first trajectory group is quite large.8

So, is romantic love by nature short-lived, or not? The jury is still out. In this book, I hope to convince the reader that enduring romantic love is truly possible. While the opposing evidence will certainly still stand, I aim to demonstrate that it does not apply to all cases.

Change and Familiarity

The more I see you, the more I want you. Somehow this feeling just grows and grows. With every sigh, I become more mad about you.

CHRIS MONTEZ

Weirdly, I want the unpleasant situation between me and my husband to change. But then again, I would not have an excuse for a hot lover. Just being honest . . .

A MARRIED WOMAN

People usually experience emotions when they perceive positive or negative significant changes in their personal situation—or in that of those related to them. This seems to work against the possibility of enduring romantic love. From an evolutionary point of view, it is advantageous to focus our attention on change rather than on static stimuli. Change indicates that our situation is unstable, and awareness of this may mean the difference between life and death. When we become accustomed to the change, mental activity decreases, as there is no need to waste our time and energy on something to which we have already adapted.

A change cannot persist for an extended period; after a while, we consider the change as normal, and it no longer stimulates us. Like burglar alarms going off when an intruder appears, emotions signal that something needs attention. When no attention is required, the signaling system can be switched off. We respond to the unusual by attending to it.9 Spinoza stressed this point. In his view, survival is central to any organism. When we undergo marked change, we pass to a greater or lesser perfection, and these changes are expressed in emotions. As we change for the better, we are happy; for the worse, unhappy.10

A famous anecdote comes to mind here. Calvin Coolidge, the then-president of the United States, was touring a farm with his wife. They were taken in separate directions. When Mrs. Coolidge passed the chicken pens, she paused to ask the man in charge if the rooster copulated more than once each day. “Dozens of times,” was the reply. “Please tell that to the president,” Mrs. Coolidge requested. When the president passed the pens and was told about the rooster, he asked: “Same hen every time?” “Oh no, Mr. President, a different one each time.” The president nodded slowly, then said, “Please tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.” Amusing as it is, this story has a serious side as well. It spawned the scholarly term “the Coolidge Effect” for the phenomenon in which males (and to lesser extent females) in mammalian species exhibit renewed sexual interest when introduced to new sexual partners.

The central role of change in generating emotions is not obvious, however, and some scholars disagree with it.11 In order for it to be true, they assume, commonly recognized emotional experiences such as long-term love, grief, regret, and hate could no longer be considered “emotions.” I will show that some kind of change is also part of enduring emotions.

In addition to the crucial role of change in producing emotions, similarity and familiarity have been found to be prompts for emotion. Thus, romantic partners show strong similarity in age and in political and religious attitudes; moderate similarity in education, general intelligence, and values; and little or no similarity in personality characteristics. Only in short-term relationships, where commitment is low, do people prefer dissimilar partners. In long-term relationships, which are characterized by high commitment and joint activities, greater similarity predicts romantic liking.12

Neither repetition nor change alone, however, has been found to produce emotional intensity spikes. It is a particular change—one that happens to a familiar, stable framework—that tends to incite such an intensity increase. In this context, it is worth distinguishing between relational (or localized) novelty and absolute (or global) novelty. Relational novelty has to do with difference within a familiar framework, whereas in absolute novelty, the framework itself changes. A significant emotional change does not necessarily mean that something is absolutely novel, though. On the contrary, since absolute novelty, by definition, feels alien to us, it may not take on emotional significance. When it does, negative emotions often follow.

Let’s think for a moment about first impressions. Such impressions tend toward the extreme: the new person is often viewed as either strikingly beautiful or strikingly ugly. After a while, our impressions begin to moderate, and the very same beautiful individual may be perceived as less beautiful and the ugly one as less ugly. The nineteenth-century English novelist Ouida said it well: “Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.” Extreme impressions, which are associated with intense emotional reactions, enable the formation of a quick response toward an unfamiliar figure. When we get to know someone, our extreme response can safely fall away. In fact, moderate perceptions smooth communication. Notably, in contrast to the positive effects of increased levels of attractiveness on new relationships, no significant association has been found between levels of attractiveness and the subsequent quality of marital relationship.13

To sum up, while change tends to generate intense, short-term emotion, familiarity tends to produce a more moderate attitude, which can be long-lasting indeed.

Yearning for the Possible

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

SYDNEY SMITH

People care not only—or even mainly—about the present, but also about the possible. One of humanity’s greatest advantages over other animals is our greater capacity to imagine circumstances that differ from our present situation. Imagination is so fundamental to human life that it is impossible to think of living without it. We are hardwired to imagine the possible, so it is humanly impossible to ignore it.

Imagination immeasurably expands our horizons. But the capacity to imagine, which unchains us from the p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1  The Possibility of Long-Term Romantic Love
• 2  Emotional Experiences
• 3  Romantic Experiences
• 4  Fostering Enduring Romantic Love
• 5  The Role of Time in Love
• 6  The Romantic Connection
• 7  Romantic Compromises
• 8  Choosing a Romantic Partner
• 9  Romantic Relationships
• 10  Sexual Relationships
• 11  Love in Later Life
• 12  Greater Diversity and Flexibility
• 13  A Balanced Diet Is the New Romantic Feast
• 14  Afterword: Fresh Eggs, Aging Wine, and Profound Love
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index