Why We Love (29 page)

Most men and women around the world marry in their twenties.
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Romantic love now serves its timeless purpose of weeding out unsuitable mates, focussing one’s attention on a “special” other, forming a socially visible pair-bond with this beloved, and remaining sexually faithful to “him” or “her” at least long enough to conceive a child together. In some couples, this passion then destroys this relationship as a spouse falls in love with someone else and forms a new pair-bond (unconsciously) to produce more varied young. In other couples, romantic love serves to glue spouses to each other and thereby support their mutual offspring for many years.

These long-term unions are known as “companionate marriages” or “peer marriages,” marriages between equals in which both partners work and share intimacy and household duties.
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Because women are re-emerging in the paid labor force, sociologists predict that peer marriages will become the most common marriage form of the twenty-first century.
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And because the population is aging, divorce rates may remain reasonably steady for years to come.
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Finding the right mixture of autonomy and closeness probably will be a central issue for many in these companionate unions.

Why do seniors fall in love? Romance among older people probably also had adaptive functions in ancestral times. This passion gave aging men and women energy, sexual afternoons that kept the body supple, a reason to remain vital members of the community, and a partner who provided physical and emotional support. Romance among the elderly still serves these timeless purposes.

Until recently older men everywhere in the world sought younger women, however. So most people expect aging women to have less luck in love. But this male taste has been changing—in part due to the expense of rearing babies. Today a working-class American family spends at least $213,000 on their child before it reaches age eighteen; a middle-class family spends more—before they pay for college.
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So older men are becoming wary of women who wish to bear them young.
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Gays and lesbians in all cultures also feel romantic passion. As you may recall from chapter one, my questionnaire on romantic love showed that homosexuals experience
more
of the “sweaty palm syndrome” than did other respondents. I feel sure these men and women carry in their brains exactly the same human wiring and chemistry for romantic love as everybody else. During development in the womb or during childhood, however, they acquired a different focus for their passion.

The Drive to Love

Hail the rise of romantic love—with all of its dreams and sorrows. This passion has become untethered in our modern world. And millions today are in search of it. America has some 46 million single women and 38 million single men over the age of eighteen.
32
Twenty-five percent of them have joined a dating service in a quest for true love; many more scour the personal ads in newspapers and magazines.
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In 2002, matchmaking online and off in America became a $917 million business.
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But of all the ways to find romance, one of the most remarkable to me is polyamory, the taking of “many loves.” Polyamorous men and women form partnerships with more than one individual at a time. They believe one person cannot suit all one’s needs; yet none wish to uproot a long-term, steady, satisfying marriage. So spouses agree to be honest with each other, set some rules for discretion, and start a romance on the side. This way, they reason, each can enjoy feelings of attachment to one partner and romance with someone else.
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Appropriately, their most prominent magazine is entitled
Loving More.

Polyamory is utopian—and impractical. As you know, romantic love is interwoven in a host of other motivation/emotion circuits in the brain—including the other primary mating drives, lust and male-female attachment. I mentioned earlier that although these three brain systems regularly interact, they can operate independently. Indeed, you can feel deep attachment for a long-term partner,
while
you feel romantic love for someone else,
while
you feel the sex drive when you read a book, see a film, or conjure up a sexual image in your mind. This wiring probably evolved, in part, to enable ancestral men and women to maintain a long-term pair-bond
while
they took advantage of extra (often clandestine) mating opportunities. Poly-amorous men and women aim to do this openly.

But humankind does not share love gracefully. As an Australian Aborigine put it, “We are a jealous people.” Not surprisingly, poly-amorous couples spend many hours every week sorting out their feelings of possessiveness and jealousy.

The independence of these three mating drives causes all of us turmoil at some point in our lives. High rates of adultery and divorce, the prevalence of stalking and spousal battering, and the worldwide omnipresence of love-related homicide, suicide, and clinical depression are all the fallout of our drive to love and love again.

Yet for all the tears and tantrums of romantic disappointment, most of us recover and return to courting. Romantic love has given humankind tremendous joy. It has also contributed much to society in general. The concepts of the husband, the wife, the father, and the nuclear family; our customs for wooing and marriage; the plots of our great operas, novels, plays, films, songs, and poems; our paintings and our sculptures; many of our traditions; even some of our holidays: billions of cultural artifacts stem, in part, from this ancient drive to love.

Yet we still know so little about this madness of the gods. For example, some brain process, still unidentified, must produce the sense of fusion with the beloved that the lover feels. Scientists are beginning to pinpoint the brain regions that become active when one feels fusion with a “higher power,” such as God.
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Perhaps this brain region is also involved in love. We don’t know what creates the lover’s craving for sexual exclusivity either. This, too, must be accompanied by some brain anatomy and functions.

Research on the brain circuitry of romantic love also raises wider questions. Should doctors medicate stalkers and spouse abusers with drugs that change brain function? Should lawyers, judges, and legislators regard those who commit crimes of passion as chemically disabled? Should divorce laws accommodate our human tendency to leave unhappy unions? The more we learn about the biology of romance (and lust and attachment), the more I believe we will come to appreciate the role of culture and experience in directing human behavior—and the more we will need to address these and many other complex issues of ethics and responsibility.

But of one thing I am convinced: no matter how well scientists map the brain and uncover the biology of romantic love, they will never destroy the mystery or ecstasy of this passion. I say this from my own experience.

People ask me how my knowledge of romantic love has affected my personal life. Well, I feel more informed. And, for reasons I can’t explain, more secure. I know more about
why
I feel the various ways I feel. I can anticipate some of the behavior of those around me. And I have some tools to deal with myself and others. But my understanding of this subject has not changed
how
I feel at all. You can know every single note of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, yet still reel with excitement every time you hear it. And you can know exactly how Rembrandt mixed and applied his paint, yet look at one of his portraits and feel overwhelming empathy for all humanity. Regardless of what one knows about this subject, we all feel the magic.

Humanity is coming full circle, forward to patterns of romance and marriage our forebears expressed a million years ago. Childhood infatuations, a series of teenage romances, marriage in one’s twenties, sometimes another love affair or wedding in midlife, and romance into one’s golden years. Romantic love is deeply threaded into our human spirit. If humanity survives on this planet another million million years, this primordial mating force will still prevail.

Appendix

“Being in Love”: A Questionnaire

Introduction

This questionnaire is about “being in love,” the feelings of being infatuated, being passionate, or being strongly romantically attracted to someone.

If you are not currently “in love” with someone, but felt very passionately about someone in the past, please answer the questions
with that person in mind.

You do not need to have ever been in a relationship with the person whom you feel or felt passionately about.

It does not matter if this person is the same sex or opposite sex.

There are no “right” answers to the following questions.

Please circle
ONLY ONE
response to each question.

Your answers will be totally anonymous.

So
please
be honest in your responses.

Preliminary Questions: Answer all that apply to you.

Birthdate: _____________

Sex: Male 1 Female 2

S1. Have you ever been in love?

Yes 1 No 2

S2. Are you currently “in love” or are you answering this questionnaire about your feelings for someone in your past?

A current infatuation 1

A past infatuation 2

S3. When you are in love with someone, about what percent of an average day does this person come into your thoughts?

____________ percent

S4. When you are in love, do you sometimes feel as if your feelings are out of your control?

I feel in control of my feelings 1

I feel out of control of my feelings 2

S5. If you are currently in love, how long have you been in love?

______#years ______#months ______#days

S6. Have you declared your love to him/her?

Yes 1

No 2

S7. Has this person indicated that he/she is in love with you?

Yes, he/she told me so 1

Yes, but only indirectly 2

No 3

S8. Do/did you think the person you are/were in love with is/was just as passionate about you as you are/were about him/her?

More passionate 1

Just as passionate 2

Less passionate 3

Don’t know my love’s feelings 4

S9. Are you currently infatuated with more than one person?

Yes 1 No 2

S10. Are you married or “living with” a partner?

Married 1

Living with a partner 2

Neither 3

S11. If married, how long have you been married?

______# years ______# months ______# days

S12. If “living with” a partner, how long have you been living with this person?

_____ # years ______# months ________# days

S13 If you are/were married or living with a partner at the time of the infatuation, are/were you infatuated with your mate or with someone else?

With your mate 1

With someone else 2

Being in Love: Main Interview

Please think about the person to whom you are or were passionately romantically attracted and circle ONLY ONE answer to each question

1. When I am in love I have a hard time sleeping because I am thinking about______.

2. When someone tells me something funny, I want to share it with______.

3.______has some faults but they don’t really bother me.