The fallacy of romantic love

We had several marriages in the family in the last year or so. Grown children, grandchildren, all in love, all getting married. It's charming and even touching to watch. They promise to love and honor one another. They clearly feel passionately about one another. They announce that they will love each other forever.

From that last sentence, you might easily think that love has something do with getting married and with staying married. We're in an age of romance. We like the idea of passionate feelings sweeping inhibitions away. We like the fantasy that such feelings can endure "forever". People "fall in love" and get married on the basis of such passion and frequently expect to stay married on that basis. The success rate for that belief system is not very high. We have begun to recognize that romantic love is not a good basis or predictor for a lasting marriage. In fact, we might find ourselves singing "What's love got to do with it?"

Part of our difficulty, as usual, lies in the multiple meanings of the word "love". Romantic love is a feeling, and like all feelings, waxes and wanes with time. Usually it includes a fantasy of a perfect union, a closeness unmatched since before our birth. It thrives on mutual admiration and on the capacity to ignore or discount flaws in the other person. Being thought lovable, even being thought perfect and wonderful, was (and is) a pretty intoxicating experience. In particular, when the participants had previously fairly low self-esteem, being in a "romantic" relationship in which they were seen as flawless and perfect had a disproportionately huge effect on their ego. That kind of love, romantic love, can be addictive in the extreme. When romantic love is combined with sexual passion it is one of the most exciting and gratifying experiences one can have.

However, romantic love is not only a feeling that passes and changes as feelings always do, it is based on a fantasy of perfection and mutual adoration that can't be sustained in the real world. It doesn't take long until the image of perfection begins to show signs of damage. When marriages are based on total mutual admiration, they eventually (and usually sooner rather than later) fail. Small wonder that when reality re-enters the picture and the illusion of personal perfection is lost, the person may find him/herself looking for a fix elsewhere. The result is frequently infidelity or perhaps divorce and serial monogamy. The search for the fantasied ideal romantic partner can go on episodically forever.

People in a romantically loving relationship don't necessarily really love each other as individuals, flawed and human. They love the admiration they receive, and they are passionately grateful to the other person for loving them and for the huge ego-boost that such admiration causes. When one or the other person begins to focus on the flaws in their partner, the fantasy of being perfect in their eyes is destroyed, and the disappointment and accompanying anger is sometimes surprising and sudden. All relationships based solely on romantic love are doomed to failure. There is nothing wrong with romantic love. It is simply a terrible basis for an enduring, long-term relationship.

There are other kinds of love than "romantic". It's a shame we use the same word for both unhealthy ("romantic") relationships and the most positive and healthy relationship two people can have. The confusion causes many wrecked lives and much misery. Healthy forms of love have been described many times and in a variety of ways, which I won't bother repeating here. It suffices to say that when we use the word "love" in a healthy relationship, it includes the willingness and even desire to put the other person's welfare in a place of equal importance to one's own. Healthy loving relationships are intimate, trusting and affectionate. Healthy love involves a commitment, not a temporary feeling, and because commitments can be permanent, can remain constant. Loving feelings come, go and return in a healthy relationship but the committed relationship remains constant.

In our romantic age, "falling in love" seems to be a prerequisite for marriage. However, it wasn't that long ago (in my grandparents' youth) when couples married first and developed a lasting relationship later. Many or most of those marriages lasted the lifetime of the partners. "Arranged marriages" didn't require romantic love. They were working partnerships in a difficult world that helped both partners survive on a higher level than they could have achieved alone. The workload was divided between them. In many cases the partners developed a strong, respectful and genuinely loving relationship over time. In other cases, the partners sought the romantic love to which they felt entitled in other relationships outside the marriage.

Among other things, successful marriages are business partnerships. As in all partnerships, workloads must be balanced and rebalanced. Mutual trust and respect is required and have to be earned as well as given. Happily married partners have open-eyed, realistic love AND like for each other, and such liking is harder to find than romantic love by a long shot. Liking one's partner, as I am considering it here, is something that necessarily develops over time. When couples have a romantic love to start their relationship, perhaps the fantasy can buy them the time it takes to fall in "like" with their partner, and then the relationship has a chance at enduring. However, romantic love is a weak reed to lean on; it has an expiration date somewhere in the near future.