The Arc of Love

by Aaron Ben-Ze'ev

  The technology associated with online relationships, and in particular the various mobile applications, make it easier, more convenient, and safer to increase flexibility and reduce exclusivity. The romantic environment in cyberspace suits perfectly our accelerated society while making this society even more sexually efficient. Because of the hectic schedule of many people these days, they are too busy even to make superficial sexual contacts on a face-to-face basis. They let their mobile applications do the work.

  Modern technology continues to improve the methods available for both initiating and maintaining sexual and romantic relations. In addition to the many websites offering potential partners, there are various mobile applications making the initiation of a relationship easier. The popular application Tinder makes the selection process extremely simple (selection is based mainly on external appearance) and very easy (one sweeps the smartphone screen to the right to say “like” or to the left to say “pass”). Motivations for using this application vary; users are looking not merely for casual sex, but also for love, communication, validation of their self-worth, thrills or excitement, and to be trendy. Hence, “Tinder should not be seen as merely a fun, hookup app without any strings attached,” but also as a new way “to initiate committed romantic relationships.”22

  Modern technology also helps to maintain remote relationships. It doesn’t only offer options for meeting willing people; it provides a more comfortable and efficient way to pursue several romantic relationships at the same time. The practice of whetting your appetite online while eating at home is a significant element in the process of violating marriage’s monopoly on sex for married people. As cybersex is seen as a lesser sin—since it can be considered merely a process of talking that involves no actual physical encounter—some offline partners will tolerate or even support it. Letting your partner know about, and even watch, your sexual activity with another person is significant in the sense that the committed couple knowingly accepts that sexual exclusivity is not an absolute category that should never be violated. Sexual exclusivity is thus seen as a continuum, and, in some circumstances, certain points along that continuum can permissibly be violated.

  In order to reduce the risk of ruining their primary offline relationship, some married people might accept their partner having an intense online sexual affair, but not agree to a profound online romantic affair. Others might further limit the sexual affair to a one-night cyberstand. All such limitations intend to minimize the harm done to the primary relationship. It seems, however, that a more substantial change in our emotional makeup is required for coping with these sexual opportunities while still maintaining some stability in the primary relationship.

  The internet and mobile applications present a serious threat to monogamous relationships in general and marriage in particular, since they facilitate not merely pleasurable sexual activities, but deep romantic relationships as well. A one-night cyberstand is more available and easier to keep a secret. On the other hand, the conditions for nourishing a deep, loving relationship have also been improved. Both the internet and mobile applications provide an enjoyable and efficient means by which various people get to know each other intimately without the distractions of external factors, such as appearance, age, geographical distance, race, nationality, religion, or marital status. This is bound to increase the number of international, intercultural, and interreligious marriages, ultimately modifying global social norms—in the main, making them more flexible and often more superficial.

  The Alternative Romantic Environment

  I fell in love with the way you touched me without using your hands.

  UNKNOWN

  Cyberspace provides an alternative environment to one’s actual setting. It enables participants to explore exciting romantic alternatives without necessarily violating significant personal commitments. It offers an outlet for developing alternative emotional ties without completely ruining the primary offline relationship. When people confuse cyberspace with the actual world, the issue of commitment becomes problematic and emotional, and moral difficulties emerge.

  The seductiveness of cyberspace and the effortlessness of becoming involved in online affairs also entail risks: people are easily carried away, and the risk of addiction is high. Like other types of addiction, cyberspace does not merely satisfy needs but creates new needs that often cannot be met. This can lower the probability of being satisfied with one’s romantic lot.

  The smart money is on offline and online romantic relationships both sticking around. The increased lure of the internet and mobile applications lower the likelihood that those with access to it will restrict themselves solely to offline relationships. However, since online relationships lack some basic romantic activities, such as touching and actual sex, satisfying offline relationships will continue to be considered an upgraded and more fulfilling relationship. Learning to integrate cyberspace with actual space in the romantic domain is a major task for our society. Indeed, many marriages now begin online. In comparison to marriages that began through traditional offline venues, those that began online were found to be slightly less likely to result in a marital breakup and were associated with slightly higher marital satisfaction among those respondents who remained married. This suggests that the internet may be altering the dynamics and outcomes of marriage itself.23

  Today, dreams are no longer the major tool for imagining a better situation. Cyberspace has taken up that role and run with it. In cyberspace, two lovers feel as if they are directly connected—as if their bodies do not interfere, allowing their hearts to be in direct communication. People often describe their online relationship as “dreaming while awake” and delight in these dreams. However, a life of mere dreams is dangerous because of the disconnect from reality. Online romantic relationships are valuable when they complement, rather than replace, offline relationships. Dreams, like cyberspace, are valuable when they are interspersed with reality.

  Future changes will probably modify present social forms such as marriage and cohabitation, as well as current romantic practices relating to courtship, casual sex, committed romantic relationships, and romantic exclusivity. Hakim argues that as the pill made premarital sex among young people a lot easier, the internet facilitates playfairs among older married people. Recent history teaches us that we can expect a further relaxation of social and moral norms.24

  Friendship in Our Cyber Society

  Social networks such as Facebook have become a central space for initiating and maintaining new romantic, including sexual, relationships. The new technological means of communication are shaping romantic relationships. The possibility of having so many friends further undermines the value and possibility of romantic exclusivity and often decreases romantic profundity.

  In his article “Faux Friendship,” William Deresiewicz discusses the current broad notion of friendship as it is viewed on Facebook, where we can have thousands of “friends,” arguing that once we become friends with everyone, we forget how to be friends with anyone. As he sees it, friendships have traditionally been rare, precious, and hard-won; a “true friend” stood against the self-interested “flatterer” or “false friend.” With the disintegration of the modern family, friends might become the family we choose. Yet the current concept of friendship has changed from a (profound) relationship into an (intense) feeling—from something people share to something each of us hugs privately to ourselves in the loneliness of our electronic enclaves. In these enclaves, we have stopped thinking of others as individuals; we have turned them into an indiscriminate mass—a kind of audience or faceless public. Deresiewicz argues that we are too busy to spare our friends more time than it takes to send a text message. Hence, the more people we know, the lonelier we get.25

  Deresiewicz further deplores how many of us have become willing, even eager, to conduct our private lives in public. The value of friendship lies precisely in the uniqueness of the relationship—and social networks such as Facebook lack this ex
clusivity. While Deresiewicz admits that Facebook serves to connect people, particularly long-lost friends, he believes that it does so at the cost of reducing identity to information about mundane details. Friendship is built by investing time in joint activities and listening to our friends’ stories, hopes, beliefs, pleasures, and worries. How can you do that when you have 500 or 5,000 friends? Intimate friendship takes patience, devotion, sensitivity, subtlety, and skill. As Deresiewicz puts it starkly, we have given our hearts to machines, and it now seems that we are turning into machines.

  What does science say about these claims? Does the internet indeed increase loneliness? It seems that the internet can help many people build and maintain their social lives. This is particularly true for older people, people with different physical limitations, and people who belong to groups that suffer from a negative social stigma. The long-term effects of Facebook on friendship and loneliness remain unclear, although most of the communication on Facebook appears shallow, as friends are accumulated in much the same way as stamps.26 We need to use the internet as a supplement for offline experiences, not as a replacement for offline lives.

  Concluding Remarks

  Young men do not know what they do, but they do it for the whole night.

  MADONNA

  The casual sexual relationship of friends with benefits maintains the major aspects of a romantic relationship—friendship and sexual desire—despite the absence of profound love. Nevertheless, this kind of relationship, the popularity of which is increasing, can lead to long-term romantic relationships in which friendship is essential. Sex is also of considerable importance in intimate relationships, and hence sometimes takes place even when one partner does not really want it. One option in these circumstances is to allow the partner to find sexual satisfaction outside of the relationship; another option is to participate in one-sided sex, such as pity sex or peace-inducing sex.

  Sexual generosity, in the sense of allowing your partner to have another sexual partner, can be problematic if it damages the primary relationship. Instances of makeup and breakup sex are highly emotionally driven and often experienced as very positive. Considering the contexts in which these encounters occur, it is understandable that they would inspire renewed passion and excitement between lovers. However, this is an artificially positive experience, which should not be considered a replacement for achieving pleasurable sexual encounters in more typical romantic circumstances, with the underlying support of profound love.

  Sex seems essentially different from eating because of the intrinsic value of human beings. Junk food and junk sex, however, have a lot in common. The benefits of junk sex, as an experience of intense love, are largely superficial and do not contribute to long-term profundity. Additionally, while enjoyable, it can easily become addictive. As it has a tendency to reduce flourishing, junk sex can be a misleading temptation that is often better resisted when a more profound experience is available. Sexuality is significant in promoting enduring romantic relationships. How can brief and infrequent experiences such as orgasms be crucial for enduring flourishing romantic relations? The answer relates to sexual experiences, such as after-sex affectionate activities and sexual afterglow, which last longer than orgasms, and genuinely express the partner’s loving heart. They connect the momentary peak of the orgasm with a longer process that enhances enduring love.

  The ease of establishing online relationships and the reduced investment that they require may make some of them superficial, alongside the superficial nature of our society that emphasizes the value of immediate satisfaction. However, online relationships can also be used to establish romantic profundity.

  Cybersex provides more flexible boundaries than real-life sex. As a forum for communication, there is demand for greater social interaction, and the lines of intimacy are blurrier from behind the screen. This can be useful for maintaining long-distance relationships but poses a serious threat to general exclusivity in that there are virtually unlimited partners available on the web. It is easier and simpler to navigate the romantic realm of cyberspace than the physical romantic domain. We can expect that as technology develops, the norms of our romantic relationships will also morph to include cyberspace as a realm in which viable romantic love can be achieved. Online social networks have increased the number of people we are in touch with, but cannot sustain the profundity of a traditional friendship. Hence, it is unclear whether they reduce loneliness.

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  Love in Later Life

  One is never too old to yearn.

  ITALIAN PROVERB

  Mature calmness is exciting. I am so thrilled by the calmness and acceptance of my older lovers who focus on the moment without calculating future prospect.

  A MAN IN HIS THIRTIES WHO LOVES DATING WOMEN IN THEIR FIFTIES

  At this bend in the road toward profound love, the issue of time takes center stage as we examine mature love in old age and in times of illness. The belief has been that, along with a decay in physical and mental capacities, happiness and romantic love decline with age. We now know better. Older people, it turns out, are often happier and more satisfied with their lives and their marriages than younger people are. Perhaps when we realize that our years are numbered, we change our perspective and focus on positive present experiences, which are more likely to consist of peacefulness and serenity rather than excitement and joy. Sonja Lyubomirsky summarizes these findings, reporting that for most people the best years are in the second half of life.1 Needless to say, there is a great deal of diversity here as well, and some older people become depressed and afraid of death. This chapter also discusses other phenomena characteristic of love in old age, specifically love after the death of a spouse and love when one spouse suffers from dementia.

  Maturity and Love

  It strikes me that we are “behaving” (actually we are not behaving) like teenagers. Can’t we at least try to behave as if we were mature adults?

  A MARRIED MAN TO HIS MARRIED LOVER

  Maturity seems to run counter to novelty and excitement. No wonder young people are considered more emotional than older people. This of course does not mean that exciting positive as well as negative experiences do not occur at all ages. Intense emotions are typically elicited in the midst of unfinished business and hence are mainly concerned with the future; maturity is focused on the present and requires satisfaction with your current lot. Intense emotions are generated by change, while maturity involves growing accustomed to changes and perceiving them as less significant. Although at all ages we enjoy both familiarity and novelty, the relative weight of familiarity increases in maturity. As we’ve discussed, the happiness associated with intense love is excitement; the happiness associated with profound mature love is peacefulness (calmness) and serenity. Similar findings indicate that the transition from youth to older age includes a shift in close social relations, involving a change of emphasis from quantity to quality. It has been suggested that the main developmental task for younger couples is managing conflicts, while for older couples it is maintaining mutual support.2

  People who behave in an immature manner are exceedingly attractive: they are very lively, joyful, and youthful, living in the moment as if there is no tomorrow. However, like children, they are often inconsistent and unstable, making you wonder whether they will love you tomorrow after meeting another exciting person enabling them to fully embrace romantic life from another perspective.

  Romantic compromises express a kind of maturity. As in maturity, compromises reflect an acceptance of our limitations and current situation. However, unlike maturity, the acceptance in compromises is mainly a behavioral acceptance rather than an attitudinal one. So long as the situation is still regarded as a compromise, deep down the individual does not actually accept it. The moment people wholeheartedly accept a compromise, it stops being a compromise. Like habituation, maturity and compromise often reduce desire and thus can be deadly to romantic relationships. Maturity lessens both positive and negativ
e emotional experiences, while compromises can reduce positive experiences and increase negative ones. In maturity and compromises, expectations are reduced, though not eliminated, and the desired object is often replaced by the possible and the reasonable. Mature love is often not what passionate romantic love is all about. Hence, many people say that they never want to become mature, because settling for what is possible while ignoring the desirable can be a sign of a decline in enthusiasm and spontaneity. However, this is precisely what people do when they compromise.

  We want children to mature and learn to value long-term considerations, while we want older adults to worry less about long-term threats and to give greater expression to their emotions. We do not want to lose our positive child-like aspects. We want to be optimistic and sincere and to love passionately. We want to adore each other despite our obvious flaws. We want to understand each other well, but at the same time we would like our views of each other to be somewhat rosy so that we can harbor some positive illusions. We want to maintain the buoyancy, naturalness, and ardor that we associate with children, while being mature adults who stand by each other through the pain that inevitably arises during long-term romantic relationships. We want to overcome problems, not so much by changing each other but by adapting to each other.

  Love in Old Age

  This is the first time that I am getting old. I have no experience in being old.

  NAOMI POLANI

  Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.