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.).