The Arc of Love

by Aaron Ben-Ze'ev

  Let’s consider another true story, this time about two sisters, Mildred and Janet. At the start of Mildred’s relationship with Bruce, the romantic intensity was lower than in her previous relationships, in which her more “athletic” partners were, in her words, “much more outwardly exciting or adventurous.” Despite that fact that she has “always appreciated masculine beauty” and continued to take “pleasure in seeing a handsome man,” she chose to marry a man who “was not the most romantic of my loves as a young woman.” Consequently, in the first year of marriage she had two brief extramarital affairs. When she cried as she told Bruce about her affairs, he generously comforted her. His wise and caring reaction to her brief adventures clarified for her that even if she had to relinquish tempestuous opportunities, she had gained so much more in her profound, loving relationship with him. Her flings became a small amount of poison that immunized and enhanced their relationship.

  Mildred’s younger sister, Janet, has a different tale, one of passionate, wild love that quickly ended in disaster. She gave up higher education and married a man whom others considered inferior to her. When asked about the quality of her relationship with this man, she answered, “We love each other and that is what really matters.” Janet was madly in love with her husband at the time of her marriage, but from the start their relationship revolved around dining out, heavy drinking, and violence. Eventually, Janet left her husband and entered Alcoholics Anonymous. Her husband died two years after the divorce, aged fifty-three.

  The two sisters held different basic attitudes: while Mildred tended to look ahead, Janet was more short-term in her thinking. In their marriages, Mildred made a good romantic compromise, while Janet made a bad one. Mildred gave up brief romantic intensity for enduring romantic profundity; Janet gave up romantic profundity for brief romantic intensity. No wonder Mildred’s relationship turned into a great love story, while Janet’s relationship ended in an ugly divorce. Mildred was wise enough to see the difference between long-term valuable characteristics and short-term superficial ones (though it took her two affairs to fully internalize the difference). Janet had to learn the difference the hard way.12 While good romantic compromises do not neglect short-term aspects, they focus on the essential aspects of long-term, profound love.

  Being the First, Second, and Last Lover

  You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters?

  BOB MARLEY

  The temporal order of being the first, the second, or the last is often of some romantic value. Many people want to be their beloved’s very first lover, others prefer to be the second, and most lovers want to be the last.

  Being the First and Only Lover

  First love is dangerous only when it is also the last.

  BRANISLAV NUŠIĆ

  The attitude of many lovers (though less so these days) toward virginity (that is, women’s virginity) is positive; violating virginity before marriage carries a negative connotation. Virginity does not merely refer to a temporal order but to the pure normative state of a woman, who gives her virginity only to the one who loves her enough to marry her.

  Leaving aside the religious aspect and focusing on the psychological one, it would be natural to assume that those who marry their first love are likely to regret missing better, or at least different, romantic options. Along these lines, research indicates that when negotiators’ first offers are immediately accepted, they are more likely to think that they could have done better, and therefore they are less likely to be satisfied with the agreement than are negotiators whose initial offers are not accepted immediately.13 This accords with the powerful impact of the romantic road not taken.

  Contrary to the above expectation, however, we have evidence that people who marry their first love are more likely to still be in love, to have never thought about breaking up, and to be certain that they will be with their partner forever.14 Among various possible explanations of these somewhat surprising results, the one most relevant to this book is the destructive nature of constant romantic comparisons.

  People who are married to their first lover are less concerned than others with comparing their beloved to other people. This is because their love is often profound, and they have invested serious time in developing their unique connection. Compatible with this assumption are findings suggesting that if a woman has a history of multiple sex partners, the likelihood of her having a secondary sex partner during a current relationship greatly increases.15 It seems that personality tendencies and sexual habits are the main factors here rather than the presence or absence of a strong interest in novel sexual encounters.

  A Secondhand Love

  Men who think that a woman’s past love affairs lessen her love for them are usually stupid and weak.

  MARILYN MONROE

  I never get jealous when I see my ex with someone else, because my mom always taught me to give my used toys to the less fortunate.

  UNKNOWN

  In its literary, temporal usage, a “secondhand” love is a relationship with someone who has been in a (committed) romantic relationship in the past. However, is there something wrong about not being the first? Given that these days, people begin their romantic relationships quite early in their lives, it is rare to find the one and only on your first romantic journey. In many cases, however, from a time-oriented point of view, being secondhand implies a sort of contamination. And here, not only do you not get a brand-new commodity, but, as is the case for many other used items, you assume that it is defective in some way.

  Being a secondhand love does not necessarily carry this humiliating connotation. Thus, a single woman said, “I do not want to marry someone for whom our relationship is his first, as he may feel that he has missed out on something and might therefore have extramarital affairs.” However, this single woman adds, “I don’t want to marry a divorced man with kids, as he has already experienced with someone else the excitement of the birth of his children and he might also have to cope with difficulties raising his own kids. I would have to find him extremely charismatic and highly attractive to compensate for my compromise in marrying such a person.”

  A married person’s lover might feel that her married lover feels a more profound love for the woman with whom he has a shared history, but she would still like to be unique for him. As a married woman said, “It’s so important to be special and unique. Then I can at least be first in some area. Then I can deal with my friend being with his wife, who is really his first choice. I know he doesn’t have any other relationships like ours, and I can’t imagine he ever will either. That is how I cope.”

  The issue of being a second love is more acute in the case of widows or widowers or others whose deep loving relationship has ended for nonromantic reasons. Those people can keep a unique place in their hearts for their late husband or ex-lover while loving another person. As one widow writes, “Second love is different, but it’s very good. I will always love and miss my late husband. It’s really hard to understand sometimes how I can go from tears for my late husband into smiling and thinking about my new guy. There’s an odd ‘divide.’ I love both of them, the one here and the one gone.” It seems that we are blessed with a heart that is flexible and big enough to accommodate several people at the same time.

  When “secondhand” refers only to a temporal aspect, it has a more positive sense than “second best,” as a temporal second might be first in quality. However, when “secondhand” involves being defective somehow, it is more negative than “second best,” as it can be much lower quality than being second.

  The Value of Being the Last

  You can dance every dance with the guy who gives you the eye. . . . But don’t forget who’s taking you home. . . . So darling save the last dance for me.

  THE DRIFTERS

  In this song, the man allows his partner to have her personal space by dancing “with the guy who gives you the eye,” providing she
remembers who will be taking her home and for whom she should save the last dance.

  First love has its own intense excitement, which can be remembered for a long time. However, last love can achieve greater profundity. It is easy to be exciting when you are the first lover, but such excitement might stem from being first and novel and not from romantic profundity. Being the last can involve profound satisfaction. Although you and your partner can have the attitude of “been there, done that,” which often expresses a measure of boredom or complacency, you are still in love. A married woman, who in her thirty years of marriage had two lovers, compares her attitude toward them: “The situation with my first lover was very exhilarating. We shared intensity that both of us did not feel with others. Although the second love affair may have been less exhilarating, it was not ‘lesser’ from an overall perspective, as in many aspects it was more. Above all, it was more profound, lacking the pain that my first lover gave me; the second lover gave me security and calmness that the first lover never did.”

  The negative view of second-best and secondhand love is associated with the all-or-nothing attitude of “I will be the very best and the very first, or there is no value whatsoever in this relationship.” This attitude, which dismisses the value of human flourishing, implies that previous relationships contaminate the purity of one’s heart. But things can work in just the opposite way: such relationships can educate our hearts, enabling us to discover the value of our current relationship as compared to previous ones.

  In our dynamic and restless society, when many loving relationships are very brief, the order in which relationships take place is of lesser significance. As a married woman said about the fact that her married lover had had many lovers before her, “The issue of not being the first or the second is less important as long as he loves me greatly. He may have had greater loves in his life, but who knows: I may be the last. I see myself as his dessert—the hot fudge over cool, sweet ice cream.” Thomas Fuller claimed, “A conservative believes nothing should be done for the first time.” In the case of love, some people believe that nothing should be done for the second time. Both views are wrong.

  There is nothing wrong with second-best love, secondhand love, or last love. Each of these loving relationships can be of great value. In our competitive, individualistic society, it is sometimes difficult to believe that there is enough love to go around for everyone. However, our hearts are flexible and big enough to enjoy love with various people, without ranking them in light of their temporal (or other) properties.

  Being a Good-Enough Partner

  You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

  MAE WEST

  In romantic compromise, you have settled for less than your dreamed-about romantic partner. The question is, how much “less” can your partner be and still be a sufficiently good partner? This is a complex issue, as someone who initially seems barely good enough can turn out to be the most suitable partner.

  “Enough” can be considered “as much as necessary.” Ideal love, however, seems to be about getting much more than that. In ideal love, enough is not enough, and you can’t get enough of your partner—the better she is, the more you want of her. Nevertheless, some people are not fortunate enough to have even a good-enough partner—they might merely have a “just-enough” partner or a “barely enough” partner. Consequently, many people settle for a romantic partner who is no good for them at all. As Carrie Bradshaw says in Sex and the City, “Some people are settling down, some people are settling, and some people refuse to settle for anything less than butterflies.” However, it is possible that with age and experience it is somewhat easier to accommodate ourselves to what we have and to be satisfied with it. Indeed, Confucius said that it was only when he reached seventy that “I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.”

  Herbert Simon combined the words “satisfy” and “suffice” and came up with “satisfice,” a term used to express an adequate solution rather than one that maximizes utility.16 A “satisficing” solution can be the best choice when we take into account the cost of looking for alternatives. In Simon’s view, since the human capacity for knowledge is so limited, we would do well to take a realistic approach to seeking optimal solutions, which are not necessarily those that maximize their possible gains.

  Simon’s considerations are relevant to the romantic realm, in which there are further complications concerning our inability to predict the partner’s attitude in the long term, as well as our response to that attitude. This makes finding a good-enough partner even more important.

  Relevant to the romantic realm is Harry Frankfurt’s rejection of the “doctrine of economic egalitarianism,” which states that it is desirable for everyone to have the same amount of income and wealth. In his view, termed the “doctrine of sufficiency,” what is morally important is that everyone should have enough. When following (economic) egalitarianism, people focus their attention on what others have, rather than on what is intrinsically valuable for them. For Frankfurt, being content is a matter of one’s attitude toward what she has and not toward what others have. Thus, Frankfurt claims, “suppose that a man deeply and happily loves a woman who is altogether worthy. We do not ordinarily criticize the man in such a case just because we think he might have done even better.” A nicer-looking, wiser, and wealthier woman might not be good for you if her attitudes don’t jibe enough with yours. It is not mainly the external, objective, measurable qualities that count in what is good for you, but the interactions between you and the other person. In Frankfurt’s view, having enough money should stop us from having an active interest in getting more. This notion frees us in the following ways: our attention and interests need not vividly engage in the benefits of having more, we do not need to consider having more as important, we do not need to resent our circumstances, there is no reason to be anxious or determined to improve them, we do not have to go out of our way or take any significant initiatives to make them better, and our contentment need not be dependent upon comparing ourselves to others.17

  It would be wise to adopt a similar attitude with respect to a good-enough romantic partner. It implies that we are content with our partner inasmuch as the person suits us and not necessarily because this person is the most perfect partner in the world. Accordingly, we do not have an active interest in seeking someone else, and we do not see our situation as needing urgent improvement. We are content with our lot, and in the current circumstances we do not need anyone else. It seems that the more satisfied we are with our own situation and activities, the more we tend to be happy with a good-enough partner, as we would not expect Mr. Right to fulfill all our needs—some of them we have fulfilled by ourselves. Thus, one survey found that women with PhDs are twice as likely to settle for Mr. Good-Enough as women with a high school education.18

  There are important differences between having what someone else has and having enough. In the former, one makes a superficial comparison to others who might be very different from you, and thus what they have is irrelevant. In the latter, it is one’s own attitude that is important, and the satisfaction gained comes primarily from within. Although we cannot avoid making comparisons with others, what counts most in romantic love is the flourishing of our own, unique connection.

  When we think of our partner as good enough, we realize what is most valuable for us. This does not mean that people should not aim at increasing the profundity of their romantic relationship, but that such improvement will mainly relate to developing the connection with our current, good-enough partner. As in the story of the pot of gold buried in the garden, sometimes the treasure can be found right at home.

  Concluding Remarks

  And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.

  FRANCESCA, in Robert James Waller’s The Bridges of Madison Count
y

  Romantic compromises are sometimes viewed as a pitfall of the romantic experience—distracting us from what should be an all-inclusive love that only gives and never takes. However, romantic compromises that involve giving up a romantic value for a deeper, nonromantic aspect of life are often good for love as well. Beyond that, it is sometimes the case that with time, these compromises end up being experienced not as negative, but as productive parts of the relationship, as they benefit the other partner and the connection. In compromises, people relinquish romantic tendencies to overvalue the partner’s nonrelational properties and to consider alternative partners. Good compromises are intrinsically valuable: they set the mind at rest by solving most of the pressing problems that are disturbing the relationship, and they leave room for striving, which is an aspect of flourishing that involves the capacity to achieve more. A romantic sacrifice, on the other hand, involves giving up time spent doing something you value personally, like work or a hobby, to make room for activities that deepen the romantic connection. In the case of profound love, these sacrifices are often made willingly and happily, as they benefit both partners and the relationship.

  In considering the order of priorities in romantic relationships, and how having had multiple partners might have an impact on a current relationship, it remains vital to prioritize the quality of the current partnership. Although staying with a first love often enables us to maintain a high-quality relationship, when we do so out of complacency, fear, or laziness, it can take the taste out of life. A relationship in which the partner pales in comparison to previous partners, so much so that one cannot concentrate on the current relationship, fails to work out not because of the ghost of those past relationships but because the current connection is not profound. Once we embrace the seemingly unfavorable circumstances of a relationship and show a willingness to devote ourselves to an imperfect but good-enough partner, then love can flourish. Profundity does not require any single set of circumstances; rather, it requires partners who are committed to each other and who, instead of constantly comparing their partner to past and potential lovers, try to be present for one another.