Why We Love (3 page)

Fundamental aspects of romantic love have not changed nearly a thousand years later.

Mood Swings: From Ecstasy to Despair

“He drifts on blue water / under the clear moon, / picking white lilies on South Lake. / Every lotus blossom / speaks of love / until his heart will break.”
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For the eighth-century Chinese poet Li Po, romance was painful.

Feelings of love soar and dive. If the beloved showers the lover with attention, if he or she calls regularly, writes affectionate e-mails, or joins the lover for an afternoon or evening of food and frolic, then glows the world. But if the adored one seems indifferent, shows up late or not at all, fails to respond to e-mails, phone calls, or letters, or sends some other negative signal, the lover begins to feel despair. Listless, depressed, such wooers mope until they can account for the loved one’s actions, relieve their trampled hearts, and renew the chase.

Romantic passion can produce a variety of dizzying mood changes ranging from exhilaration when one’s love is returned to anxiety, despair, or even rage when one’s romantic ardor is ignored or rejected. As the Swiss writer Henri Frédéric Arniel put it, “The more a man loves, the more he suffers.” The Tamil peoples of South India even have a name for this malaise. They call this state of romantic suffering
mayakkam,
meaning intoxication, dizziness, and delusion.

It came as no surprise to me that 72 percent of the men and 77 percent of the women in my survey did not agree with the statement, “_______’s behavior has no effect on my emotional well-being” (Appendix, #41). And 68 percent of men and 56 percent of women supported the statement, “My emotional state depends on how _______ feels about me” (Appendix, #37).

Yearning for Emotional Union

“Come to me in my dreams, and then / By day I shall be well again. / For so the night will more than pay / the hopeless longing of the day.”
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Lovers crave emotional union with a beloved, as poet Matthew Arnold knew.
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Without this connection to a sweetheart, they feel acutely incomplete or hollow, as if an essential part of them is missing.

This overwhelming need for emotional union so characteristic of the lover is memorably expressed in
The Symposium,
Plato’s account of a dinner party held in Athens in 416
B.C.
On this festive evening some of the greatest minds of classical Greece convened to dine in the home of Agathon. As they reclined on their couches, one guest proposed that they amuse themselves with a topic of sportive discussion: each would take his turn describing and praising the god of love.

All agreed. The flute-girl was dismissed. Then one by one, they took their turns eulogizing the god of love. Some regarded this supernatural figure as the most “ancient,” the most “honored,” or the most “undiscriminating” of all the gods. Others maintained that the god of love was “young,” “sensitive,” “powerful,” or “good.” Not Socrates. He began his homage by recounting his dialogue with Diotima, a wise woman from Mantinea. Speaking of the god of love, she told Socrates, “He always lives in a state of need.”
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“A state of need.” Perhaps no single phrase in all of literature so clearly captures the essence of passionate romantic love: Need. In my survey, 86 percent of men and 84 percent of women agreed with the statement, “I deeply hope _____ is as attracted to me as I am to him/her” (Appendix, #30).

This craving to merge with the beloved pervades world literature. The sixth-century
A.D.
Roman poet Paulus Silentiarius wrote, “And there lay the lovers, lip-locked / delirious, infinitely thirsting, / each wanting to go completely inside the other.”
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Yvor Winters, the twentieth-century American poet, wrote, “May our heirs seal us in a single urn, / A single spirit never to return.”
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And Milton expressed this perfectly in
Paradise Lost
when Adam says to Eve, “We are one, / One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.”

Philosopher Robert Solomon believes this intense desire is the primary reason the lover says, “I love you.” This is not statement of fact but a request for confirmation. The lover yearns to hear those potent words, “I love you, too.”
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So deep is this need for emotional union with the beloved that psychologists believe the lover’s sense of self becomes blurred. As Freud said, “At its height, the state of being in love threatens to obliterate the boundaries between ego and object.”

Novelist Joyce Carol Oates vividly caught this feeling of blissful fusion, writing, “If they turn suddenly toward us we draw back / the skin shudders wetly, finely / will we be torn into two people?”

Looking for Clues

When lovers don’t know whether their love is cherished and returned, however, they become hypersensitive to the cues that the adored one sends. As Robert Graves wrote, “Listening for a knock, waiting for a sign.” In my survey, 79 percent of men and 83 percent of women reported that when they were strongly attracted to someone, they dissected their beloved’s actions, looking for clues about his or her feelings toward them (Appendix, #21). And 62 percent of men and 51 percent of women said that they sometimes searched for alternative meanings to their beloved’s words and gestures (Appendix, #28).

Changing Priorities

Many infatuated people also change their clothing styles, their mannerisms, their habits, sometimes even their values to win the beloved. A new interest in golf, tango lessons, antique collecting, a new hair style, Mozart instead of Country Western music, even moving to a new city or starting a new career: love-struck men and women adopt all manner of novel interests, beliefs, and lifestyles in order to please their dearest ones.

The twelfth-century champion of courtly love, Andreas Capellanus, summed up this impulse, penning the words, “Love can deny nothing to love.”
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While a love-besotted American man put it bluntly, “Anything that she liked, I liked.”
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He was one of many. Seventy-nine percent of American men and 70 percent of American women in our survey agreed with the statement, “I like to keep my schedule open so that if _____ is free, we can see each other”(Appendix, #47).

Lovers rearrange their lives to accommodate a beloved.

Emotional Dependence

Lovers also become dependent on the relationship, very dependent. As Shakespeare’s Antony declared to Cleopatra, “My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings.” An ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic poem described the same dependency, saying, “My heart would be a slave / should she enfold me.”
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The twelfth-century troubadour Arnaut Daniel wrote, “I am hers from head to foot.”
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But Keats was the most impassioned, writing, “Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, / And so live ever—or else swoon to death.”

Because lovers are so dependent on a beloved, they suffer terrible “separation anxiety” when they are out of touch. An anonymous Japanese poem, written in the tenth century, aches with this despair. “Early morning glows / in the faint shimmer / of first light. Choked with sadness, / I help you into your clothes.”
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Lovers are puppets dangling from the heartstrings of another.

Empathy

As a result, lovers often feel tremendous empathy for the beloved. In my survey, 64 percent of men and 76 percent of women agreed with the statement, “I feel happy when _____ is happy and sad when he/she is sad” (Appendix, #11).

Poet e. e. cummings wrote charmingly of this, saying, “she laughed his joy she cried his grief.” Many lovers are even willing to sacrifice themselves for their sweetheart. Perhaps Adam’s sacrifice for Eve is the most dramatic offering of any in Western literature. As Milton described it, upon discovering that Eve has eaten the forbidden apple, Adam chooses to eat the apple himself—which he knows will lead to his expulsion with her from the Garden of Eden and death. Adam says, “for with thee / Certain my resolution is to die.”
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Adversity Heightens Passion

Adversity often feeds the flame. I call this curious phenomenon “frustration-attraction” but it is better known as the “Romeo and Juliet effect.” Social or physical barriers kindle romantic passion.
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They enable one to discard the facts and focus on the terrific qualities of the other. Even arguments or temporary breakups can be stimulating.

One of the funniest literary examples of how adversity heightens romance is Chekhov’s one-act play,
The Bear.
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In this drama, an ill-tempered landowner, Grigory Stepanovich Smirnov, appears at the home of a young widow to collect money owed him by her dead husband. The woman refuses to pay a single kopek. She is in mourning, she explains, and curtly shouts at him, “I am in no mood to concern myself with monetary matters.” This sends Smirnov into a tirade against all women—calling them hypocrites, phonies, gossips, scandalmongers, haters, slanderers, liars, petty, fussy, ruthless, and illogical. “Brrrr!” he sputters, “I’m shaking with fury.” His rage triggers her anger and they begin to shout insults at each other. Soon he calls for a duel. Itching to put a hole in his head, the widow retrieves her dead husband’s pistols and they take their positions.

But as their rancor builds, so does mutual respect—and attraction. Suddenly Smirnov exclaims, “Now this is what a woman is! This I understand! A real woman! This is not a whiner, this is not a wimp, this is a fireball, a rocket, this is gunpowder! A shame to have to kill her, though!” A moment later he declares undying love and asks her to be his wife. As her servants rush into the drawing room to defend their mistress with axes, rakes, and pitchforks, they stumble on the lovers—swept up in a mad embrace.

This odd relationship between adversity and romantic ardor is seen in all the star-crossed lovers of the world’s great legends. Fueled by difficulties of one kind or another, they just love all the harder.

The most familiar Western story of this kind, of course, is Shakespeare’s tragic tale
Romeo and Juliet.
These young lovers of sixteenth-century Verona are caught in a bitter feud between two powerful families, the Montagues and the Capulets. Romeo is a Montague, Juliet a Capulet. Yet Romeo falls in love with Juliet the moment he sees her at a family party, exclaiming, “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! / Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! / For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
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Juliet, too, succumbs to Cupid’s arrow. As Romeo departs the banquet, she asks her nurse, “Go ask his name. If he be married, / My grave is like to be my wedding bed.”
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The play unfolds with a series of obstacles and confusions that only intensify their passion.

Sixty-five percent of the men and 73 percent of the women in my survey agreed with the statement, “I never give up loving __________, even when things are going poorly” (Appendix, #26). And 75 percent of men and 77 percent of women agreed with the statement, “When the relationship with __________ has a setback, I just try harder to get things going right” (Appendix, #6).

One of my unexpected survey results is almost certainly attributable to the role of adversity in love. Homosexual respondents, both gay men and lesbians, reported more emotional turmoil than did heterosexuals. These individuals were more bedeviled by insomnia, loss of appetite, and the yearning for emotional union with a beloved. I think this psychic distress occurs, at least in part, because of the social barriers that many homosexual lovers must surmount.

Those who answered my questionnaire while thinking about a former lover also seemed more emotionally fragile. They, too, had a harder time eating and sleeping. They were more shy and awkward around their former sweetheart. They suffered more “intrusive thinking” and more mood swings. And they more often reported having a racing heart when thinking about their old flame. I suspect that many of these respondents had been rejected by their beloved—and this adversity heightened their romantic zeal.

Like rowboats on a troubled sea, both men and women ride the swells of anguish and exhilaration that are romantic love. And barriers intensify these emotions. If your beloved is married to someone else, if he or she lives across an ocean, if you speak different languages, come from different ethnic groups, or just come from different parts of town, this obstacle can heighten romantic passion. Dickens said of this, “Love often attains its most luxuriant growth in separation and under circumstances of the utmost difficulty.” Alas, ’tis true.

Hope

“Say that I might live in hope,” King Pyrrhus pleads with Andromache in Racine’s drama of love and death. Why do lovers continue to hope, even when the dice of life come up relentlessly against them? Most still hope the relationship will spring back to life—even years after it has ended bitterly. Hope is another predominant trait of romantic love.

A charming sixteenth-century poem by Michael Drayton expresses this optimism. It begins, “Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part! / Nay, I have done, you get no more of me; / And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, / That thus so cleanly I myself can free. / Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows; / And when we meet at any time again, / Be it not seen in either of our brows, / That we one jot of former love retain.” With these words Drayton declares, with apparent confidence, that the affair is finally and easily finished. Yet at the very end of the poem, he suddenly changes his tune. Overcome by hope, he argues that “Love” can be still be saved: “Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over, / From death to life thou might’st him yet recover.”
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I think this tendency to hope became implanted in the human brain eons ago so our ancient forebears would doggedly pursue potential mates until the last flicker of possibility had expired.