What makes passion endure?
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During America's most popular TV event, the Superbowl, one much-anticipated advertisement featuring supermodel Adriana Lima painted a pretty sad state of affairs with regards to love.
In an ad for Kia cars, a married couple sleeps side by side and we are given a glimpse into their dreams. While the woman dreams of being swept away by a long-haired hunk on a horse, her husband is speeding down a racetrack in a car while Lima and a horde of bikini-clad women cheer him on. Although the dream eventually ends with the couple meeting exchanging weak smiles and going for a drive in the Kia (this is family television after all), the peak moments are clearly the fantasies. The deadened couple compensates for lack of love with wild dreams and a Kia car purchase.
Is this the inevitable end point of a long-term relationship?
Think again! A recent study by Daniel O’Leary and colleagues at Stony Brook University suggests that a large percentage of couples stay intensely in love even after a decade of marriage. The findings may also reveal the secrets to keeping intense love alive.
O’Leary and his team surveyed a nationally representative sample of 274 couples married ten years or more on the state of their love life. When they first collected the data, the researchers were dumbfounded by the large percentage of people who claimed to still be intensely in love. The couples answered the question "how in love are you with your partner?" on a scale of 1 to 7 from "not at all in love" to "very intensely in love." To the researchers’ surprise, the most frequent response was "very intensely in love" for both men and women. Forty six percent of women and 49 percent of men reported being "very intensely in love," according to the report, which was published in this month’s Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science.
What are the secrets of intense love over the long term? Not surprisingly, the list was topped by physically affectionate behaviors such as hugging and kissing. The survey couldn’t determine cause and effect, but oxytocin, sometimes called the “cuddle hormone,” goes coursing through our bodies when we receive hugs or make love. We then feel closer to our partner and long-term bonding ensues. Decades of psychological research shows that social connection is a fundamental human need and essential for our physical and mental well-being. Affection is such an important element of love that the couples in the study who did not report any physical affection also reported a loveless relationship.
The researchers found that frequency of sex was also strongly associated with intensity in love, but that, interestingly, it was not always a requirement: 25 percent of those who had not had sex in the last month still reported being intensely in love.
Physical affection is so powerful that, even if a relationship doesn't always seem perfect (and what relationship always does?), it may help make up for the negatives. Certain couples, for example, reported low marital satisfaction due, presumably, to some of the common challenges couples face (e.g. differences in parenting styles, financial stress, divisions of responsibility). However, if their levels of physical affection remained high, the couple still reported intense love.
Thinking positively about one’s partner is another common element of couples intensely in love, according to the findings. When people see each other every day, they can sometimes take each other for granted and stop noticing the characteristics they used to appreciate about their mate. However, a little awareness and gratitude may go a long way in countering this tendency. When we get to know someone well, we naturally learn about both their strengths and their weaknesses but it is really up to us whether we choose to focus one side or the other. By focusing on what we appreciate and admire in our partner and being grateful for the value and gifts that our partner brings into our lives, we cannot but think positively and may feel more intense love as a consequence.
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7 Comments
Add CommentFrom my own experience and what I have witnessed in others, (yes I know, the dreaded "my experience" fallacy,) it appears that after the honey moon is over there are several years of declining interest- and then eventually the love (and the passion to a lesser degree) begins to soar again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you can get past the awkward years- there could be good things in store for your romance!
"Yet the survey suggests that taking care of your own happiness may also be important. Personal happiness was associated with intensity of love, especially for women. In other words, one may think that tending to one’s own well-being through a night out with friends or time at the gym is selfish, but taking responsibility for one’s own happiness has the potential to drastically improve the quality of our relationship."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToo many people enter marriage thinking marriage is going to make them happy instead of focusing on what happiness they can bring to the marriage.
"It is often difficult to find happiness within ourselves. And it is not possible to find it elsewhere." - AU
My wife's Aunt Arla and her husband Dwight had been married for forty-some years when the onset of Parkinson's first became apparent in Arla. For the next fifteen years Dwight watched his lovely bride turn slowly, incrementally into a living statue before his eyes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStill, he fed her and bathed her and brushed her hair and carried her up and down the stairs and read to her and cared for her in every way, long past the time when most folks turn those responsibilities over to assisted living or even hospice. He shared with his bride everything he had, everything he was.
True love involves the kind of giving that expects nothing in return.
Passion is shallow and easy and over all too quickly.
Love is hard work, deep and enduring. Love is way worth the trouble.
It is a cultural assumption to say that long term love and long term marriage are one and the same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe divorce rate in India is around 1%, and most of their marriages are arranged.
In an opposite scenario, there have been (many) documented cases of long term love, without marriage, and sometimes even without living together on a day to day basis.
And last but not least, this article's definition of love as "...Sharing affection, thinking positively and with gratitude about our partner’s qualities, engaging in shared activities and being happy independently of the relationship..." really falls short of the goal of love. You can say that about any good friend, so we are not talking about romantic love.
Try harder.
Funny how you mention even after 10 years couples were still in love. I had a 9 yr. marriage and an 11 yr. marriage. The 9 yr. one was a lot better. My son is marrying an Indian girl whom I adore and your statistics about 1% divorce rate in India made my morning. Growing up my son saw about 90% of his friends' parents marriages end up in divorce also. I guess my boy is a hopeless romantic; not as if that's a bad thing. He's seen from the age of 8 what divorce does to people but I guess like myself, growing up seeing pretty much nothing but unhappy married couples, he has to experiment for himself. Too bad we tend not to learn from other peoples' mistakes. Now at 63,I live alone with my cat, but I have a great platonic relationship with my best female friend for whom I have the utmost respect and can't help but enjoy her company. I guess that's what getting older is all about; finally finding someone you can relate to. The naivete has long gone and the real maturity has sunk in. I raise a glass to those few who can make it to the END.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI liked the description of the Kia ad.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think true love is a flame that needs fuel all the time kissing, hugging and cuddling are things that the more you do it the more you want it. I think this article is dead on. Any relationship that we friends, lovers and the love of our life we need to more than just say it you need to do it. When my dad says I love you and then hugs me it means so much more than just the words. When I look into my girlfriends eyes I see it because we cuddle all the time and we know we can never get enough of it. If you don't have touch as a part of your every day relationships you are missing out on a much deeper feeling.
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