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Authors: Ph.D Harville Hendrix

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ROMANTIC LOVE
We two form a multitude.
—OVID
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I KNOW FROM my own experience with Helen, and from listening to others, that lovers believe their time together is special and separate from the experiences of all the other people of the world. It is a time they savor and return to in their memories again and again. When I ask couples to describe these idyllic first days to me, they describe a world transformed. People seemed friendlier, colors were brighter, food tasted better—everything around them shimmered with a pristine newness, just as it did when they were young.
But the biggest change was in the way they felt about themselves. Suddenly they had more energy and a healthier outlook on life. They felt wittier, more playful, more optimistic. When they looked in the mirror, they had a new fondness for the face that looked back at them—maybe they were worthy
of their lovers’ affection, after all. Some people felt so good about themselves that for a time they were even able to give up their substitute forms of gratification. They no longer needed to indulge themselves with sweets or drugs or alcohol, or tranquilize themselves with TV, or spice up their lives with recreational sex. Working overtime lost its appeal, and scrabbling after money and power seemed rather pointless. Life had meaning and substance, and it was standing right there beside them.
At the peak of their love relationships, these intense good feelings radiated outward, and people felt more loving and accepting of everyone. Some were even blessed with a heightened spiritual awareness, a feeling of inner unity and a sense of being connected with nature that they hadn’t experienced since childhood. For a brief time, they saw the world not through the fractured lens of their split-off state but through the smooth, polished lens of their original nature.
1
Lynn and Peter, the couple I introduced to you at the end of the previous chapter, told me that, when they were very much in love, they spent a day sightseeing in New York City. After dinner they impulsively took the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building so they could see the sun set from the observation deck. They held hands and looked down on the thousands of people milling below them with a feeling of compassion—how tragic that these people were not sharing their moment of ecstasy.
This timeless sentiment is beautifully expressed in a letter from Sophia Peabody to Nathaniel Hawthorne, dated December 31, 1839:
2
Best Beloved,—
… What a year has this been to us! My definition of Beauty is, that it is love, and therefore includes both truth and good. But those only who love as we do can feel the significance and force of this.
My ideas will not flow in these crooked strokes. God be with you. I am very well, and have walked far in Danvers this cold morning. I am full of the glory of the day. God bless you this night of the old year. It has proved the year of our nativity. Has not the old earth passed away from us?—are not all things new?
Your Sophie
WHAT CAUSES THE rush of good feeling that we call romantic love? Psychopharmacologists have learned that lovers are literally high on drugs—natural hormones and chemicals that flood their bodies with a sense of well-being.
3
During the attraction phase of a relationship, the brain releases dopamine and norepinephrine, two of the body’s many neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters help contribute to a rosy outlook on life, a rapid pulse, increased energy, and a sense of heightened perception. During this phase, when lovers want to be together every moment of the day, the brain increases its production of endorphins and enkephalins, natural narcotics, enhancing a person’s sense of security and comfort. Dr. Michael R. Liebowitz, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, takes this idea one step further and suggests that the mystical experience of oneness that lovers undergo may be caused by an increase in the production of the neurotransmitter serotonin.
But, as intriguing as it is to look at love from a pharmacological point of view, scientists can’t explain what causes the release of these potent chemicals, or what causes them to diminish. All they can do is document the fact that romantic love is an intense physical experience with measurable biological components. To gain additional insight, we need to return to the field of psychology, and to the view that romantic love is a creation of the unconscious mind.
4
IN THE PREVIOUS chapter, I offered an explanation of romantic love. The reason we have such good feelings at the beginning of a relationship, I asserted, is that a part of the brain believes that finally we have been given a chance to be nurtured and to regain our original wholeness. If we look in the right places, we can find plenty of evidence that this is indeed what happens. One place to look is in the universal language of lovers. By listening to popular songs, reading love poems, plays, and novels, and listening to hundreds of couples describe their relationships, I have come to the conclusion that all the words exchanged between lovers since time began can be reduced to four basic sentences—the rest is elaboration. And these four sentences offer a rare glimpse into the unconscious realm of romantic love.
The first of these sentences occurs early in a relationship, maybe during the first or second encounter, and it goes something like this: “I know we’ve just met, but somehow I feel as though I already know you.” This isn’t just a line lovers hand each other. For some unaccountable reason, they feel at ease with each other. They feel a comfortable resonance, almost as if they had known each other for years.
I call this the “phenomenon of recognition.”
Somewhat later, lovers get around to the second significant exchange of information. “This is peculiar,” they say to each other, “but even though we’ve only been seeing each other for a short time, I can’t remember when I didn’t know you.” Even though they met only a few days or weeks ago, it seems as though they’ve always been together; their relationship has no temporal boundaries.
I call this the “phenomenon of timelessness.”
When a relationship has had time to ripen, lovers look in each other’s eyes and proclaim the third meaningful sentence: “When I’m with you, I no longer feel alone; I feel whole, complete.” One of my clients, Patrick, expressed the feeling in these
words: “Before I knew Diane, I felt as though I had been spending all of my life wandering around in a big house with empty rooms. When we met, it was like opening a door and finding someone home.” Being together seemed to put an end to his relentless search for completion. He felt fulfilled, filled up.
I call this the “phenomenon of reunification.”
Finally, at some point, lovers utter a fourth and final declaration of love. They tell each other: “I love you so much, I can’t live without you.” They have become so involved with each other that they can’t imagine a separate existence.
I call this the “phenomenon of necessity.”
Whether lovers actually say words like these or merely experience the feelings behind them, they underscore what I have been saying so far about romantic love and the nature of the unconscious.
The first sentence—in which lovers report an eerie sense of recognition—loses some of its mystery when we recall that the reason people “choose” their lovers is that the lovers resemble their caretakers. No wonder they have a sense of déjà vu, a feeling of familiarity. On an unconscious level, they feel connected once again with their caretakers, only this time they believe their deepest, most fundamental, most infantile yearnings are going to be satisfied. Someone is going to take care of them; they are no longer going to be alone.
The second statement, “I can’t remember when I didn’t know you,” is a testimony to the fact that romantic love is an old-brain phenomenon. When people fall in love, their old brain fuses the image of their partners with the image of their caretakers, and they enter the realm of the eternal now. To the unconscious, being in an intimate love relationship is very much like being an infant in the arms of your mother. There is the same illusion of safety and security, the same total absorption.
In fact, if we could observe a pair of lovers at this critical juncture of their relationship, we would make an interesting observation: the two of them are taking part in an instinctual
bonding process that mimics the way mothers bond with their newborn infants. They coo, prattle, and call each other diminutive names that they would be embarrassed to repeat in public. They stroke, pet, and delight in every square inch of each other’s bodies—“What a cute little navel!” “Such soft skin!”—just the way a mother adores her baby. Meanwhile, they add to the illusion that they are each other’s surrogate parents by saying, “I’m going to love you the way nobody ever has,” which the unconscious mind interprets to mean “more than Mommy and Daddy.” Needless to say, the old brain revels in all of this delightfully regressive behavior. The lovers believe they are going to be healed—not by hard work or painful self-realization—but by the simple act of merging with someone the old brain has confused with their caretakers.
What about the third sentence—that feeling of wholeness and oneness that envelops lovers? When lovers tell each other, “When I’m with you, I feel whole, complete,” they are acknowledging that they have unwittingly chosen someone who manifests the very parts of their being that were cut off in childhood; they have rediscovered their lost self. A person who grew up repressing his or her feelings will choose someone who is unusually expressive. A person who was not allowed to be at ease with his or her sexuality will choose someone who is sensual and free. When people with complementary traits fall in love, they feel as if they’ve suddenly been released from repression. Like Plato’s truncated, androgynous beings, each of them had been half a person; now they are whole.
And what about that last sentence—the feeling that lovers have that they will die if they part? What can this tell us about the nature of romantic love? First, it documents the fact that lovers unknowingly transfer responsibility for their very survival from their parents to their partners. This same marvelous being who has awakened eros is now going to protect them from thanatos, the ever-present fear of death. By attending to their unmet childhood needs, their partners are going to
become allies in their struggle for survival. On a deeper level, this sentence reveals the fear that, if the lovers were to part, they would lose their rediscovered sense of wholeness. They would once again be fractured, half-whole creatures, separated from the fullness of existence. Loneliness and anxiety would well up inside them, and they would no longer feel connected to the world around them. Ultimately, to lose each other would be to lose their new sense of self.
FOR A WHILE, however, these fears are held at bay, and to the lovers it seems as though romantic love is actually going to heal them and make them whole. Companionship alone is a soothing balm. Because they are spending so much time together, they no longer feel lonely or isolated. And as their level of trust increases, they deepen their level of intimacy. They may even talk about some of the pain and sorrow of their childhood, and if they do they are rewarded for their openness by their lovers’ heartfelt sympathy: “Oh, I feel so sad that you had to go through that.” “How awful that you had to suffer so much.” They feel as if no one, not even their own parents, has cared so deeply about their inner world. As they share these intimacies, they may even experience moments of true empathic communion and become absorbed in each other’s world. During these rare moments, they aren’t judging each other, or interpreting what their lovers are saying, or even comparing their various experiences. They are doing much more: for a short time, they are letting go of their lifelong self-absorption and sharing in the reality of another human being.
But romantic love brings more than kind words and empathic moments to heal their wounds. With a sixth sense that is often lamentably lacking in later stages of a relationship, lovers seem to divine exactly what their partners are lacking. If the partner
needs more nurturing, they gladly play the role of Mommy or Daddy. If the partner wants more freedom, they grant him or her independence. If the partner needs more security, they become protective and reassuring. They shower each other with spontaneous acts of caring that seem to erase their earlier, childhood deprivations. Being in love is like suddenly becoming the favored child in an idealized family.
FOR A WHILE, lovers cling to the illusion of romantic love. However, this requires a good deal of unconscious playacting. One bit of make-believe in which virtually all lovers engage is trying to appear to be more emotionally healthy than they really are. After all, if you don’t appear to have many needs of your own, your partner is free to assume that your goal in life is to nurture, not to be nurtured, and this makes you very desirable indeed. One woman, Louise, described to me the efforts she went to to appear to be the perfect mate for her future husband, Steve. A few weeks after they met, Louise invited Steve over to her house for dinner. “I wanted to display my domestic talent,” she said. “He saw me as a career woman, and I wanted him to see I could cook, too.” To make her life seem as simple and uncomplicated as possible, she arranged to have her eleven-year-old son from a previous marriage stay the night with a friend—no reason to reveal all of life’s complexities at this stage of the game. Then she thoroughly cleaned the house, planned the menu around the only two things she could cook really well—quiche and Roquefort salad—and arranged fresh flowers in all the rooms. When Steve walked into the house, dinner was ready, her makeup was fresh, and classical music was on the stereo. Steve, in turn, came as his most charming, helpful self, and when dinner was over he insisted on washing the dishes and fixing the broken porch light. That night they declared
their love for each other, and for several months they were both able to orchestrate their lives so that they had few, if any, needs of their own.
This degree of make-believe is quite common; most of us go to a lot of trouble in the early stages of a relationship to appear to be ideal mates. In some cases, however, the deception is more extreme.
One of my clients, a woman I’ll call Jessica, had a history of becoming involved with unreliable men. She had two failed marriages and a string of painful relationships. The relationship that finally convinced Jessica she needed therapy was with Brad, a man who at first seemed totally devoted to her. Once he had gained her trust, she told him all about her previous difficulties with men. Brad was sympathetic and assured her that he would never leave her. “If anyone leaves, it will be you,” he said. “I will always be here.” He seemed for all the world like a stable, trustworthy mate.
The two of them were together constantly for about six months, and Jessica began to relax into the security of the relationship. Then, one day, she came home from work to find a note from Brad pinned to the door. In the note he explained that he had been offered a higher-paying job in another town and couldn’t turn it down. He had wanted to tell her about it in person, but he had been afraid she’d be too upset. He hoped that she would understand.
When Jessica recovered from shock, she called Brad’s best friend and demanded that he tell her what he knew. As she listened to him talk, a shockingly different portrait of Brad began to emerge. Apparantly he never stayed in one place very long. In the previous fifteen years, he had moved six times and been married three times. All this was news to Jessica. Sensing her need for security, Brad had done his best to appear to be a reliable lover. This is a psychological process known as “projective identification.” He had unconsciously identified himself with Jessica’s vision of the ideal man. My suspicion is that at first his
subterfuge was well intentioned. He probably didn’t begin the relationship with the purpose of gaining her trust and affection and then leaving her; he just couldn’t keep up the charade.
When Brad left her, Jessica had every reason to fly into a rage, but instead she fabricated an illusion that he was planning to send for her as soon as he saved up some money. She stayed by the phone for hours in case he called, and waited anxiously for a letter. But she never heard from him again. “And I’m glad I didn’t,” she told me one day, “because I would have taken him back—no matter what he had done. That’s how badly I needed him.”
Jessica was demonstrating a classic case of denial; she was refusing to believe that Brad was in fact an immature, unreliable man. Her memory of the role he had obligingly played for her was more real to her than the truth of his actual behavior.

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