D. H. LAWRENCE
Theoretical models of romantic love fill the pages of many books. Some popular models include the “fusion model,” in which the two lovers are merged together, and the “self-love model,” where the main emphasis is on the lover rather than the beloved. But our journey is toward everyday romantic love. So, we’ll narrow our focus to two models that seem most relevant for understanding long-term profound love: the “care model” and the “dialogue model.” If we modify the extreme versions of the fusion and self-love models and understand them metaphorically, we can identify them in the care and the dialogue models. Let’s see what this means.
The Care Model
I love my house too much to leave my husband.
A MARRIED WOMAN
The care model, which may win the award for the most popular model of love, focuses on the beloved’s needs.20 Without question, caring is central in romantic love. It goes beyond a positive attitude toward, and the wish to be with, the beloved, seeking to enhance the beloved’s well-being. Erich Fromm describes love as “the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.”21 In this view, genuine love has less to do with the lover’s own needs and more to do with a strong concern for the other, accompanied by actual deeds.
The care model is most relevant in loving relationships that involve significant inequality, such as parental love, love of God, or love for someone who is unwell. In such cases, there is nothing wrong with one-sided caring. However, among equals, as in the ideal form of romantic love, one-sided caring (and love) is problematic. This model seems to involve too passive an understanding of love and fails to capture the importance of the interactions between the two lovers that underlie romantic profundity. Caring is an important component in other models of romantic love as well, but in those models, caring is not necessarily the essence of love, and in any case, it is not sufficient for maintaining long-term profound romantic love.
In some extreme versions of this model, reciprocity and the lover’s own needs are irrelevant. Thus, Levinas denies the value of reciprocity in love and considers the other to constitute the center and the ultimate preoccupation of the lover’s meaningful world. Hence, “the relationship with the other is not symmetrical. . . . At the outset I hardly care what the other is with respect to me, that is his own business; for me, he is above all the one I am responsible for.” Love, for Levinas, “is originally without reciprocity, which would risk compromising its gratuitousness or grace or unconditional charity.” According to this view, one should even be prepared to sacrifice one’s life for the beloved.22
In considering the fit of the care model for romantic love, we are not so interested in whether caring is part of love: that is almost always the case. The issue is whether romantic love should be solely defined by reference to caring, or whether other features, such as reciprocity, positive responsivity, joint intrinsic activities, and personal flourishing, are just as important. If this is true, then the care model falls short of fully explaining long-term romantic love.
The Dialogue Model
No man is truly married until he understands every word his wife is NOT saying.
UNKNOWN
This model, whose origins can be traced back to Aristotle, has more recently been advanced by Martin Buber and Angelika Krebs.23 It considers the shared connection between the partners as the bedrock of love and views shared emotional states and joint activities as the foundational features of the connection. The connection amplifies the flourishing of the lovers as well as the flourishing of their relationship. Krebs further argues that love is not about each partner having the other as his or her object. Rather, love is about what happens between the partners. Thus it is “dialogical.” Lovers share what is important in their lives. For Krebs, loving somebody involves being (often enough) deeply satisfied with the experiences and activities you share with her. In loving somebody, you enlarge yourself through closely interacting with and responding to the other person. We do not thrive in isolation: we are social creatures. In shared activities, the participants are integrated into a (psychological) whole, which is more than the sum total of two individual actions. In such activities, both participants contribute (though not necessarily in the same way or to the same extent), and their contributions fit together to actualize the common good.24
Unlike the care model, the dialogue model emphasizes the autonomy of lovers and their essential equality in establishing the romantic connection. Sharing can occur when one lover is not autonomous and the relationship is not one of equality. However, such sharing is not deep enough to sustain the development of long-term profound love. The romantic connection expresses the qualities of the romantic partnership that are different and more than the combined value of the lovers’ individual characteristics. Robert Nozick argues that romantic love “is wanting to form a we with that particular person. In a we, the two people are not bound physically like Siamese twins.”25
There is indeed considerable evidence indicating the importance of dialogue in romantic love. In this sense, when it comes to romantic relationships, silence is not golden; couple dialogue and shared activities are the main pillars of a thriving romantic relationship. Thus, research found that shared activities, which are satisfying and stress-free and increased closeness, predicted greater relationship quality concurrently and longitudinally.26 A substantial body of research has shown that relationship quality tends to be higher among more religious persons and among couples in which partners share common religious affiliations, practices, and beliefs. One study found that couples’ in-home family devotional activities and shared religious beliefs are positively linked with reports of relationship quality. As the popular aphorism goes, “Couples who pray together stay together.”27 Moreover, the quality of the shared activities is important as well. It is not enough that you are have more shared activities—the time spent should be quality time. Thus, smartphone use undermines enjoyment, and reduces benefits of face-to-face social interactions.28
Comparing the Two Models
It is an extra dividend when you like the girl you’ve fallen in love with.
CLARK GABLE
It seems that the dialogue model best explains lasting profound love—it is more dynamic and comprehensive than the care model. The care model is useful when considering a central feature of romantic love and some types of nonromantic love, such as parental love.
I compare the two models while examining the following key issues: (a) the possibility of long-term profound love, (b) the possibility of unrequited love, and (c) the issue of where love is.
Long-term profound love. Caring is necessary for long-term profound love—people are less likely to stay together in a lifelong romantic relationship if there is no mutual caring. However, caring is not sufficient for maintaining and enhancing such love. The depth of the romantic connection, expressed in shared emotional experiences and joint intrinsic activities, is essential for long-term profound love. This connection lies at the core of the dialogue, rather than the care, model. Whereas there can be romantic caring without a genuine shared dialogue, romantic dialogue assumes a kind of caring. As dialogical love has more aspects that might facilitate the development of long-term profound romantic love, it seems to be more suitable for explaining such love.
Unrequited love. Romantic love craves reciprocity. For everyone, mutual attraction is a most highly valued characteristic in a potential mate. Lack of reciprocity—that is, the knowledge that you are not loved by your beloved—usually leads to a decrease in the degree of love and ultimately to humiliation and breakup. Even more commonly, we find an unequal romantic involvement between partners, for example, when your partner does not love you as much as you love her. The care model can easily explain unrequited love and unequal romantic involvement, as caring is often unrequited and has various degrees. The dialogue model has a harder time explaining unbalanced love, since genuine dialogue assumes reciprocity and a kind of equality. The dialogue model c
an still claim the presence of dialogue and reciprocity in at least profound love. Relationships lacking reciprocity are of lower romantic value and are not profound. It takes time to develop profound love, and not all couples are successful in doing so.
Where love is. The centuries-long argument about which organ is responsible for romantic experiences is over: today, we know that it is the brain, not the heart. Nevertheless, the heart is still perceived in popular culture as the center of emotional phenomena in general, and love in particular. An interesting twist in this dispute concerns some versions of the dialogical model that take the shared connection to be not only the focus of love, but its location as well. Does this view make sense?
The view assuming that love is a property of the lover seems to be intuitively true, as love is similar in this regard to other mental attitudes. We attribute to the lover not merely emotions, but other related attitudes, such as feelings and moods. This view, which is compatible with the care model, suggests that caring is indeed a property of the lover.
Proponents of the dialogue model tend to transfer the importance of the romantic connection to the issue of location of love, claiming that love is a property of, and, in some formulations, even resides in, the connection between the two lovers.29 This claim is problematic. After all, feelings such as pain or enjoyment, which are essential to love, are not a property of the connection between the two lovers. Love is a psychological property of a lover. Accordingly, we would expect that some features of love, such as feelings, evaluations, and action tendencies, are properties of the lover, whereas other features, such as compatibility, resonance, and harmony, are properties of the connection.
Concluding Remarks
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend and dogs are a man’s best friend. Now you know which sex has more sense.
ZSA ZSA GABOR
In falling and staying in love, both physical attractiveness and praiseworthiness of traits and achievements are important and should be kept in balance. Some level of attraction is necessary, but attraction is not sufficient for the long term if it is not accompanied by positive evaluations of characteristics and accomplishments. Most people would be happy to be regarded as both beautiful and sexy. However, if we must choose, it seems that since beautiful is broader and deeper than sexy, this will be the choice of many, but not all, people. Realizing that sexiness stems from our behaviors enables improving your sexiness in a way that we cannot improve our beauty. Romantic attraction is typically expressed in intense sexual desire and the wish to be with the partner; positive evaluations of traits underlie profound friendship. Both are part of profound love. The intensity-profundity distinction is key to understanding the possibility of enduring love. Romantic intensity decreases over time, while romantic profundity goes in exactly the opposite direction.
The heart-head conflict is as old as the hills, and traditionally the head has been given veto power when decision-making time comes around. Of course, the heart is often given the first vote. The playwright Samuel Beckett had an opinion on the matter: “Dance first. Think later. It is the natural order.” This makes sense; after all, the heart responds immediately, while the head takes its own sweet time to work things through. A more difficult question is whether or not the head should be ranking our romantic priorities. Unsurprisingly, the answer depends upon who is asking. We might say, however, that it seems that in matters concerning the loving heart, it is this very heart that ought to be in the driver’s seat for making profound decisions.
The two major models of romantic love—the care and the dialogue models—refer to two major aspects in enduring and profound loving relationships. In the care model, we promote our partner’s well-being through attentiveness to her needs. In the dialogue model, we focus on our mutual interactions, allowing individual autonomy and mutuality to take center stage.
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Fostering Enduring Romantic Love
It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.
CONFUCIUS
I promised my new married lover that I would not fall for another woman before our next meeting in a few months.
A MARRIED MAN
Our previous stop gave us a chance to look at the major features and models of romantic love. At this point in our journey, we can turn down the road to discuss the different ways long-term romantic love is supported. I begin by presenting three important distinctions: preventing versus promoting types of behavior, extrinsic (instrumental) versus intrinsic activities, and external change versus intrinsic development. After this, I discuss the ideas of synchrony, positive responsiveness, romantic resonance, and romantic consistency, all of which underlie the romantic connection.
Preventing and Promoting Behavior
If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.
ANTON CHEKHOV
Tory Higgins distinguishes between promotion-focused behavior, which concerns strong ideals related to attaining accomplishments or fulfilling hopes, and prevention-focused behavior, which concerns felt obligations related to protection, safety, and responsibility. This distinction highlights the difference between behaviors relating to nurturing and those relating to security. In the prevention mode, interactions between people occur only when something is going wrong—when some “shoulds” are violated. The promotion mode is characterized by ongoing activities related to the creation of optimal conditions for fulfilling strong ideals. In the prevention mode, there is hardly any sense of development; in the promotion mode, there is a sense of development toward fulfilling shared ideals.1
Emotional bonding always involves a delicate balancing act between promoting/nurturing and preventing/controlling. We see it clearly in parenting, where there is an obvious need for control, but it is present in romantic love as well. The promotion mode in love focuses on ongoing, nurturing behavior that gradually develops our potential and expands our selves in the direction of fulfilling more of our ideals and hopes. Promoting activities are a matter of degree; they are complex and involve a never-ending process of nurturing our partner and our togetherness. The preventing mode, for its part, focuses on eliminating our personal non-normative romantic behavior.
Romantic relationships involve both ideals and boundaries, and so they require both types of activities. We need to promote various aspects of our loving experiences, and at the same time, we need to remove other aspects. It seems, however, that promoting activities are more significant in improving the quality of romantic relations over time. Spending time together is not sufficient for maintaining and improving a relationship; the type of activity matters as well. Thus, shared activities would boost relationship quality if the shared activities are successful in creating closeness and intimacy. Moreover, the underlying motivation for engaging in shared activities may determine the degree to which shared activities are experienced more positively.2
The Negative Bias
Marry a man your own age; as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.
PHYLLIS DILLER
People spend more time engaging in preventing modes of behavior than they do engaging in promoting modes. This reflects the greater dominance of negative than positive experiences in our emotional environment.
We often see emotions as either “positive” or “negative.” As it turns out, negative emotions are more noticeable than positive ones. This fact, which has been called the “negative bias,” is found everywhere in life, including in close relationships. Negative emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. Accordingly, we are more motivated to avoid bad events than to pursue good ones. In short, from the point of view of our minds, bad is stronger than good.3
This negative bias works well for us as a species. We have a better chance of surviving if we notice the lion running after us than the flowers along our path. The likelihood th
at we’ll outlive the attack further increases if we notice how fast the lion is running and in exactly what direction. This is called “differentiation,” and it is the reason that negative emotions are more “differentiated” than positive emotions.
Another reason that negative emotions are more noticeable than positive ones has to do with their temporal character: we spend much more time thinking about negative events than about positive ones. People ruminate about events inducing strong negative emotions five times more often than they do about events inducing strong positive ones. It is no wonder, then, that we recall negative experiences much more readily than positive ones.
At the risk of pushing an image to its limit, potential harm grabs the lion’s share of our resources. Potential good, in comparison, is rather undemanding. In a sense, one hardly needs to “cope” with good fortune. Moreover, there are more ways in which a situation can be unpleasant than ways in which it can be pleasant, and there are more ways to destroy something than ways to build it. Furthermore, negative emotions are often experienced when a goal is blocked; this requires the construction of new plans to attain the blocked goal or to compensate for the lost one. In contrast, positive emotions are usually experienced when a goal is achieved. Accordingly, negative emotions require more cognitive resources to be allocated for dealing with the given situation.4
What does all this emotional differentiation mean for us? Is noticing negative qualities more important in the romantic realm as well? The answer seems to be yes. Negative qualities can kill a relationship—and in extreme cases, especially those concerning women, can actually kill a person. In a startling claim, John Gottman says that for a relationship to succeed, positive and good interactions must outnumber negative and bad ones by at least five to one. If the ratio falls below that level, the relationship is likely to fail. Although the negativity bias is a universal phenomenon, often explained in evolutionary terms as a safeguard survival, when it comes to finding a romantic partner the bias is stronger among women. Why might this be the case? Arguably, it is because a bad partner can prove more harmful to a woman than to a man.5 Indeed, Peter Jonason and colleagues found that when evaluating potential mates, people weigh negative traits more than positive traits. They claim that although positive traits—dealmakers—reflect characteristics that can improve suitability, the presence of negative traits—dealbreakers—could represent greater suitability costs, causing people to be highly sensitive to mating cost information. Over time, however, natural selection probably shaped mate preference mechanisms that are sensitive to both strategies.6
The Arc of Love Page 7
