Sunday, March 16, 2025

Limerence at first sight

    This is an excerpt from Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness, by Frank Tallis. Also see incurable romantics.

    In literature, examples of love at first sight abound. When Romeo sees Juliet for the first time, he cries: "O! She doth teach the torches to burn bright ... Did my heart love till now?" When Werther sees Lotte, he declares: "My entire soul was transfixed by her figure, her tone, her manner ... I delighted in her dark eyes ... how my entire soul was drawn to her young lips and fresh, bright cheeks ..." Nearly a hundred years later, the very same impressions are repeated by Turgenev, when the young protagonist of First Love, Vladimir, stumbles across the coquette, Zinaida: "I forgot everything; my eyes devoured the graceful figure, the lovely neck, the beautiful arms, the slightly disheveled fair hair under the white kerchief - and the half closed, perceptive eye, the lashes, the soft cheek beneath them ..."

    Love at first sight is so intense, it usually leaves an afterimage image - like the patterns of luminosity that linger following a glance at the sun. Dante - who on seeing the young Beatrice considered her to be the daughter of a Homeric god - described Beatrice's likeness "remaining in me always", and Turgenev's Vladimir was haunted by Zinaida: "The image of the young girl floated before me." These "flashbulb" memories - pictures that seem to have been stamped into the visual cortex - are very similar to those reported by trauma victims. Psychologists believe that such memories are particularly well preserved, remaining very vivid, because they cannot be assimilated with the rest of experience by the brain. Put very simply, the traumatic experience is so overwhelming that the usual procedures that convert experience into memory break down. "Flashbulb" memories cannot be properly integrated into the existing network of ordinary memories. Thus, they exist in an unmodified form, retaining a powerful emotional charge and being much more likely to intrude into awareness. Sometimes, trauma victims report a phenomenon known as re-experiencing. The individual actually relives the trauma in the form of an hallucinatory "flashback". It is interesting that many individuals who report a powerful experience of love at first sight are also prone to hallucinatory visions of their beloved. The first memory of love refuses to settle in the unconscious; it constantly reawakens and invades the real world like a dream.

    One of the most remarkable and detailed accounts of love at first sight can be found in the autobiography of the composer Hector Berlioz. On II September 1827, he attended the French premiere of Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Odeon in Paris. The role of Ophelia was played by a young Irish actress, Henrietta Smithson, with whom he fell instantly in love.

    The consequences were devastating. Berlioz experienced numerous symptoms that would, under any other circumstances, stances, be taken as evidence of a quite severe mental illness:

... the shock was too great, and it was a long while before I recovered from it. I became possessed by an intense, overpowering powering sense of sadness, that in my then sickly, nervous state produced a mental condition adequately to describe which would take a great physiologist. I could not sleep, I lost my spirits, my favourite studies became distasteful to me, I could not work, and I spent my time wandering aimlessly about Paris and its environs. During that long period of suffering I can only recall four occasions on which I slept, and then it was heavy, death-like sleep produced by complete physical exhaustion. These were one night when I had thrown myself down on some sheaves in a field near Ville-Juif; one day in a meadow in the neighbourhood of Sceaux; once on the snow on the banks of the frozen Seine, near Neuilly; and lastly on a table in the Cafe du Cardinal at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue Richelieu, where I slept for five hours, to the terror of the garcons, who thought I was dead and were afraid to come near me.

    Berlioz began to rally after his initial bout of love sickness, and decided to impress Miss Smithson by putting on a concert of his works for full orchestra and choir at the Paris Conservatoire. Although he succeeded in organising the concert (which turned out to be a very substantial undertaking), the event escaped Henrietta's notice - a disappointing (if rather predictable) outcome. Berlioz then began writing to her, but he did not get a single reply. She found Berlioz's letters disturbing, and subsequently gave her maid strict orders to stop receiving them.

    Undeterred, the next stage of Berlioz's campaign was to attract Henrietta Smithson's attention by getting his name to appear next to hers on the same play-bill. He learned that she was to perform two acts from Romeo and Juliet at the Opera Comique, so he promptly approached the theatre manager and persuaded him to include one of his overtures in the programme. Whatever Berlioz hoped to gain by executing his cunning plan was wholly negated by his subsequent loss of self-control. When he arrived for an orchestral rehearsal, the troupe of actors were just finishing theirs. Romeo was carrying Smithson - as Juliet - off the stage, and from this rather odd vantage, Henrietta looked directly into Berlioz's eyes. This was, of course, the first time that she had ever seen him. Having already expended so much energy trying to impress her, one would have thought that he would strike a romantic or dignified pose - that he would exploit the moment to the full - but this was not to be. Instead, he emitted a loud cry before dashing out into the street, wildly wringing his hands. He was unable to return for an hour.

    Although this episode appears in Berlioz's autobiography, there is some doubt as to whether it really happened. He does not tell us which of his overtures was performed, and no reviews appeared in the usual journals. Subsequently, Berlioz scholars have suggested that these events more probably reflect the content of a dream - or hallucination. If so, then they constitute a remarkable example of how love at first sight can affect the mind - even more remarkable, perhaps, than if the described events were real.

    The next day, Smithson was due to leave for Holland. By this time, Berlioz (by accident, so he claimed) had taken lodgings opposite hers on the Rue Richelieu. He had been lying on his bed until three in the afternoon, and finally rose to look out of the window. The moment he chose coincided with Smithson's departure, and he was able to witness the object of his desire getting into a carriage, bound for Amsterdam. His reaction was characteristically overwrought:

No words can describe what I suffered; even Shakespeare has never painted the horrible gnawing at the heart, the sense of utter desolation, the worthlessness of life, the torture of one's throbbing pulses, and the wild confusion of one's mind, the disgust of life, and the impossibility of suicide ... my mind was paralysed as my passion grew. I could only - suffer.

    Berlioz was utterly devastated - so much so, that we must remind ourselves that he had still not spoken a single word to Henrietta Smithson. Nor, being French, had he understood stood a single word of her Shakespearian declarations on stage. Berlioz's strong feelings were predicated entirely on her beauty.

    For more than two years, Berlioz heard nothing of Henrietta. During that time, he won a musical prize, wrote the Symphonie Fantastique (the movements of which romantically dramatised his infatuation for Smithson), narrowly survived being shipwrecked, met Felix Mendelssohn in Rome, and traveled around Italy - all of which failed to exorcise Smithson's memory. Indeed, on his return to Paris, he was still so obsessed with her that he took a room in her old lodging house. It was there that he learned again of her whereabouts. A servant told him that she was not only back in Paris, but she had only just vacated Berlioz's room - the night before his arrival. Berlioz suspected the operation of strange forces: "... a believer in magnetic influences, secret affinities, and mysterious promptings would certainly find in all this powerful argument in favour of his system".

    Subsequently, through a chain of acquaintances, Berlioz managed to ensure Henrietta's presence at a concert of his music, which included the Symphonie Fantastique. Apparently, as the concert progressed, she realised that Berlioz was still passionately in love with her, and her heart melted. She consented to meet him, and within a matter of months they were married. Sadly, Berlioz's expectations of conjugal bliss were never realised. The fantasy did not correspond with reality. In a relatively short space of time, Henrietta and Hector were making each other very unhappy. They argued. Henrietta started to drink heavily. She put on weight. Soon, Berlioz had stopped finding her quite so attractive. He neglected her and, in response, she became jealous - not without good reason. Berlioz became interested in younger women, and in due course he and Henrietta separated. After her death, he was forced to reflect on what he called their "dead love".

    Berlioz was not so much a representative of the Romantic movement as the embodiment of romance itself. He lived his life like a romantic hero. Yet, in the end, he had to acknowledge that his passion was essentially shallow, a temporary madness. He lamented the fact that love - supposedly the greatest of all human emotions - could not triumph over even trivial adversities and hardship. In reality, domestic drudgery, financial problems and petty bickering proved too much for love - a deeply depressing thought for a man who had subscribed so wholeheartedly to the romantic ideal.

    Yet how could it have been otherwise? Berlioz hardly knew his wife before they were married.

    The narrative of the Symphonie Fantastique concerns a young artist who takes opium in a fit of amorous despair and enters a dreamscape, haunted by visions of his beautiful beloved. This was the woman whom Berlioz really fell in love with - a fantasy figure. It was inevitable that the woman he married - the real Henrietta Smithson - would be a disappointment.

    Although Berlioz is an extreme example, his fate is shared by many. Under the influence of romantic idealism, intimate relationships have acquired enormous significance. Indeed, it is a basic tenet of romanticism that life cannot be satisfactory without someone special to love. Unfortunately, that special person might not materialise. Thus we are caught between need and reality, and if reality fails to deliver, we are perfectly capable of twisting it into shapes of our own choosing. Ordinary folk are transformed into brave knights and beautiful maidens, and everyday life is transformed as well, becoming like a film or fairy tale. Inevitably, however, reality reasserts itself. The vivid colours fade, and we find ourselves again in a monochrome world of flawed humanity, kitchen sinks, electricity bills and mortgage repayments.

    When couples attend marital therapy, it is often the case that one party will ascribe his or her dissatisfaction to some kind of change in the other: "He's not like he was when we were dating"; "She's a different person now." Typically, such assertions are used to legitimise scalding criticism: "You're no fun any more"; "You used to take much better care of yourself"; "You've lost interest in sex" - but more often than not, the recipient of such criticism hasn't really changed at all. Rather, it is the critic's perception of them that has changed. Without love's magic, fairy-tale conventions are reversed, and even the most handsome prince can find himself croaking.

    Dante was fortunate. His pseudo-religious visions of Beatrice were never tested against human imperfection. It was Berlioz's misfortune to have a wish come true. Romantic idealism rarely survives such a disaster.

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Complexity of Romantic Love

    This is an excerpt from Romantic Love in Cultural Contexts, by Victor Karandashev.

    Romantic love is the complex phenomenon consisting of biological, psychological, and social-cultural components. The love includes physiological stimulation, perceptual mechanisms, and interpretative processes and is situated at the connection where the body, the cognitive, and the cultural converge. Personal experience and social regulation both play their important role. Romantic love is a combination of beliefs, ideals, attitudes, and expectations, which coexist in our conscious and unconscious minds.

    Discussions of romantic love in scholarly literature over recent decades (Berscheid 1985, 1988; Brehm 1988; Buss 1988; Caraway 1987; Davis 1985; Hatfield 1988; Hatfield and Rapson 1993; Knox 1970; Liebowitz 1983; Levinger 1988; Lindholm 1988; Money 1980; Murstein 1988; Orlinsky 1977; Shaver et al. 1988; Sternberg 1988; Tennov 1979) allowed researchers to identify the key attributes of romantic love and define it as a constellation of emotions, cognitive processes, and behaviors. These experiences of romantic love include the following set of components, the most frequently noted in the literature:

  1. A cognitive preoccupation with the object of love, including vivid imagination and intrusive thinking about the beloved (or fascination). In the case of unrequited love, imagination helps to imagine reciprocation.
  2. Idealization of the beloved that includes a tendency to emphasize the positive qualities and minimize, ignore, or rationalize the negative ones of a love object. It is a remarkable ability to emphasize what is truly admirable in the object of love and avoid dwelling on the negative, even to render the negative into a positive quality. As Rubin (1970) noted, romantic love is the idealization of the other within an erotic context.
  3. A desire for physical and emotional merger and union with the beloved one and the longing to maintain physical proximity, physical and psychological intimacy, including physical and sexual attraction to an object of love as a potential sex partner.
  4. Exclusive focus of emotion and motivation on one particular person and the unstated presupposition that love is directed toward someone whose real or idealized qualities distinguish him or her from all other people. Romantic love assumes inability to react to more than one person at a time
  5. Longing for reciprocity of feelings and a desire for being exclusive with a beloved one. This is related to the fear of rejection, unsettling shyness in the presence of the object of love, and the feeling of uncertainty. An aching of the “heart” in the case of uncertainty is strong, while buoyancy when reciprocation seems certain. Buoyancy as a feeling of “walking on air” is quite typical for being in reciprocated love.
  6. Acute sensitivity to any behavior that might be interpreted favorably and an ability to see hidden passion in the seeming neutral behavior of an object of love.
  7. Emotional attachment and dependency: A mood is dependent on reciprocity of feeling and actions, and physical and emotional proximity to the beloved. As Brehm (1988, p. 255) noted, “happiness is coming closer to the beloved; unhappiness is falling away from the beloved.”
  8. A strong empathy, caring, and concern for the beloved and wanting to satisfy his/her needs. It is not necessarily altruism in the broader sense since it may involve self-interest and personal need.
  9. Reordering of life priorities and hierarchies of values and motivations; maintenance of the relationship becomes of central importance often at the expense of other concerns, interests, responsibilities, and activities in life. Intensity of feeling that leaves other concerns in the background: “The only thing that matters is how you two feel when the rest of the world goes away.”
  10.  Intensification through adversity is a typical plot of love. All romantic novels are usually the stories of how love grows through adversity and how lovers come through it. Adversity of life increases the lover’s feelings up to a certain point. Sometimes, however, too much is too much, yet “the flower that blooms in adversity in the rarest and most beautiful of all.”

    The strong empirical support for many of these features of romantic love was obtained in the analysis of more than five hundred cases conducted by Tennov (1979, p. 173) in the USA. Harris (1995) in her field study conducted in Mangaia, Cook Islands, applied several of these key attributes of romantic love attempting to identify those among Mangaian lovers and argued the contention that romantic love is absent on Mangaia. More details of that study will be presented in the following chapters.

    The romantic love descriptors summarized above have the potential to bring coherence and meaning to many research findings and unite a body of empirical data into a certain framework. A definitional consensus from the love research allows studying love in cultural contexts with more precision in literary, anthropological, sociological, and psychological studies. Such a comprehensive, specific, and descriptive conceptual definition of romantic love is an important premise for a proper operational definition of romantic love for the study of love in cultural contexts for scholars of any discipline.

    Romantic vs realistic love is probably among the top controversies, which readers will encounter in the following chapters. Romantic love, being opposite of pragmatic (realistic) love, is greatly affected by the halo effect: “What is beautiful is good” (Dion et al. 1972). In particular, many passionate lovers reaching their great satisfaction in sex begin to believe that this will be the major constituent of their future relationships with a partner, so they are happily willing to continue relationships forever and even marry. This enchantment overshadows all other aspects of the partner’s personality and various realities of relationships: financial security, social status, living conditions, household chores, etc. I recall the old saying popular among young romantics in the Soviet Union: “c милым paй и в шaлaшe” (“a tent is a castle for those in love,” or “a tent is Paradise with the man you love”), which means that when you are with the one you love, you can be happy in any place, any living situation (even if less than ideal). Reality can often break such idealistic beliefs, even in the movies. Romantic love is vulnerable, and these idealized expectations can be broken by the reality of a partner’s behavior and relationships disenchanting a passionate lover. According to a motivation principle, the higher expectations lead to the higher dissatisfactions. This is why in the cultures with high value of romantic love, people are more often dissatisfied with their intimate relationships. The feelings of blue and suffering are as natural to romantic lovers as the feelings of joy from enchantment from an idealized image of partner and relationship. Romantic love is like an emotional rollercoaster, and the swings of mood from elation to suffering and back are the key characteristics of this type of love. It is not surprising since the suffering was a key descriptor of courtly love, as a precursor of romantic love, in eleventh- to twelfth-century writings. Thus, romantic lovers should be prepared not only for the joy of love, but also for its disappointments and psychological aches. As we recall many love songs, lovers actually are aware of these controversies, and still prefer to love. “To love, or not to love?”—this is a question that many ask themselves, but still continue to love; the expectations of joy from the idealized image of a partner and relationships probably outweigh the risk of suffering, which may come from the possible disenchantment from a partner, his/her behavior, and inadequate understanding of relationships. A romantic lover expects too much from a prospective partner. Some girls, for example, are looking for “a prince,” thus having heightened expectations. Some are lucky to find a good match to their dream; others maturate and become more pragmatic, adjusting their expectations to the reality, and find the best possible or good enough partner out of available candidates. Still, others are looking for “a prince” for the rest of their lives as a spinster.

    In particular, Johnson (1983) showed that people in the Western cultures usually grow up to believe in the irrational assumptions of the fairy tale script of romantic love built from literature, films, and other entertainments. He explored the cultural archetype of romantic love to uncover its psychological essence and meaning. He differentiated romantic love from sincere love—“Romantic love is not love but a complex of attitudes about love—involuntary feelings, ideals, and reactions” (p. 45).

    As Johnson (1983) explains, when we are in love, we become “entranced, mesmerized … with a mystical vision—but of something separate and distinct from [our] human selves” (p. 51). We perceive our romantic partners as idealized, godlike versions of who they are. And we feel euphoric with this vision instead of the other person. The paradox of romantic love is that “it never produces human relationships as long as it stays romantic” (p. 133) because we fall in love with our own fantastical creations instead of the other person for whom they really are.

    We implicitly assume that romance is such an essential component of a relationship that “if a direct, uncomplicated, simple relationship offers us happiness, we won’t accept it” (p. 134). However, romantic love, especially a passionate one, frequently fades, and many people do not really know how to build a sincere human relationship. They learned from fairy tales what love should be. They know that a relationship without romantic love is worthless and therefore continue to believe that their “true love” must then be out there waiting for them. When romantic love has arrived, people believe that fiery romantic love will be everlasting.

    Real love is realistic in a certain sense, and therefore, it is opposite to romantic love. The individuals make more realistic choices and decisions in love too. They see a partner with their good characteristics and shortcomings and weigh both. More realistic and modest expectations lead to lesser disenchantments and therefore to a higher likelihood of relationship satisfaction for realists and pragmatists. Modest expectations are not necessarily a bad thing. People who expect that marriage will always be joyous and that the earth will move whenever they have sex might often be disappointed.

    Can romantic love bring any benefits to people? Psychologically it is possible. Romantic love is better than just passionate love in terms of psychological benefits. Passionate love is possessive and assumes the attitude to a partner as an object of desire. Eros and erotic attitudes are the driving forces of a passionate lover. Therefore, the respect and esteem toward a partner is not necessary; the admiration of appearance and any other characteristics triggering sexual desire is enough. Historically, a woman was a typical object of desire in men’s dominating cultures. Sometimes women, being guided by passionate reasons, also manipulated men as objects. Passionate lovers often care little about satisfaction of a partner in the relationships, except in cases when their performance and corresponding partner’s satisfaction boost their self-esteem. “Was everything good, my darling?”—“Yes, my dear it was great!”

    Different from passionate love, the romantic love is based on mutual respect and elevation of a partner’s position. The partner is not merely an object of desire, but a person, who deserves the respect and attention to his/her mind and soul.  A romantic lover cares about partner’s personality, well-being, and real satisfaction. Agape and altruistic attitudes, in addition to Eros, are the driving forces of a romantic lover. Wanting to respect and admire their beloved one, a romantic lover elevates a partner through idealization. Such respect and admiration boosts self-esteem of a partner and brings him/her a happy satisfaction along with feeling of self-worth. Additionally, this idealization encourages a partner to be a better person than he/she currently is. Thus, the idealized image of how a romantic lover perceives a partner provides the latter a stimulus and the target for his/her self-development and self-improvement. Therefore, romantic love inspires a partner and provides him/her a self-developmental strategic perspective. Instead of the humanistic thesis “accept yourself as you are,” romantic love encourages a partner to develop him/herself and provide aspiration. As Russian writer Mikhail Prishvin (1873–1954) noted, 

The person you love in me, is, of course, better than me. But if you love me, I’ll try to be better than I am (Prishvin n.d.).

Limerence at first sight

     This is an excerpt from Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness , by Frank Tallis. Also see incurable romantics .      In literature, examp...