The Psychology of Romantic Love Flashcards
The Essence of Romantic Love
Romantic love (marriage, long term) between a man and a woman can generate the most profound ecstasy. When frustrated, in can also bring the most unutterable suffering.
Romantic love answers profound human needs. But what is the nature of these needs?
Romantic love is not a fantasy. Ecstasy is yet another NORMAL factor in our emotional life. In romantic love, there is a unique depth of absorption and fascination with the being and personality of the partner. You experience a powerful sense of being visible. It is one of the main sources of excitement and nourishment of romance.
Romantic Love defined
Romantic Love- a passionate, spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other’s person. It is not romantic if the relationship is not INTENSE in nature. It is not Romantic love if there is no spiritual affinity, if there are no mutual values or outlook, no sense of being soul mates, if no deep emotional involvement is taking place, if there is no mutual admiration (for example, if there is contempt), and **if there is no strong sexual attraction.
Love is a predominant theme in our lives
There are different kinds of love that can unite one human being with another.
Romantic love is Selfish and Self-Centered
Romantic love is individualistic. It is motivated by the desire to have personal happiness. It is egotistical. It is secular. During this reading, we will come to appreciate how intimately related the themes of individualism and romantic love are. We will learn of healthy selfishness and learn how indispensable to our life and wellbeing, rational or intelligent or enlightened selfishness is. Self-respect for self-interest is a necessity for the survival and CERTAINTY of romantic love.
A Private Universe
The music that inspires the souls of lovers exists within themselves and their private universe that they occupy. The courage to hear that music and to honor it is a prerequisite of romantic love. Two selves, two personalities, two senses of life, two islands of consciousness, have intermingled to develop a separate world they inhabit that did not exist before their relationship began. A universe of silent understandings, of eloquent glances- a universe of shared subjectivity. It fulfills our need for the support provided by a private world.
The History of Romantic Love
- The Relevance of History: Recurring Themes (There are always exceptions. From here on, we are dealing with the dominant and prevailing cultural trends)
- -Certain themes exist on romantic love throughout our human history that can block our progress with love. If you have the notion caught in your mind you can act on it subconsciously and not allow love to be fulfilled in your life. Here is the socio psychological history of romantic love in our human history, to date (from beginning to the present).
The Tribal Mentality: The Unimportance of the Individual - -Economics, not love, was the motivating force for union in primitive societies. The family was a UNIT established for the purpose of optimizing the chances of physical survival. Love was defined in terms of the practical needs associated with hunting, fighting, raising crops, child-rearing, and so forth. In the pre-industrial society, there was a lot of dependence on physical strength and skills. Women needed protection, especially during periods of pregnancy and childbearing (this was made as a justification for the inequality of the sexes and women’s subordination to man)
Critics of Romantic Love
America has had many critics of romantic love throughout the 20th century. The notation of building a long-term relationship- marriage- based on emotions, which fluctuate, was, at best, grossly naïve, and at worst, pathological or socially irresponsible. They state that romance is based on short excitements, and that it is meant from far away, where you will not grow accustomed to each other. They stated that love is self-centered and that you marry someone because they fulfill your happiness one minute, and then the feeling goes so you get divorced. Other critics said that romantic love reflects a “spoiled-child psychology.”
Marriage for Love or Economic/Socio Benefit
There was a book published in 1965 called, “The Significant Americans,” where they studied sexual behavior of affluent. They survey two types of married people, Utilitarian marriage, upheld by social, financial, and family considerations, and then they follow the, “Intrinsic marriage,” where the two involved are passionate and sexually involved. They said that the couple who were in love always wanted to be together! Some people called in sick and “too dependent.” The couple that married for love WERE found to be genuinely happy, by the end of the study
Humans are Traditional in Romantic Love
“Open relationship” marriages have recorded little exciting success.-Serial monogamy is a realistic option. It is the ideal to remain together, forever. However, human beings grow and change so much over a lifetime that it can be more realistic to stay together for as long as the relationship lasts, and then if either one of the people in the relationship change to the point where their needs change (and the current partner cannot satisfy these new needs), they should break up and find people that suit their new selves. Non-Monogamy does not work for our species, neither does non marriage. Branden says that it seems that people truly desire sexual exclusivity when they get to their forties or early fifties. The reasons involve the desire for a firm commitment, the stability and security that result from total dedication to one person, plus, a certain boredom or disenchantment with the pursuit of sexual variety for its own sake. When you are in love with someone so passionately, you do not wish for them to share their soul and selves with someone else in the context of sex or bonding. Even in a committed relationship, we can find other people attractive. Whether we choose to act on the desire or not is up to us but you do not need to end the relationship if one party cheats. Long term relationships are more likely to happen in the 2nd part of your life. They have a lot of sexual experience and so they will not be concerned with sleeping around and exploring, as they did when they were younger.
What Romantic Love is Not
-**There is nothing beautiful or noble about self annihilation (this would be an old school premise). You must truly be yourself.
Human kind has yet to Experience Freedom in Being
Throughout human history, the tribal mentality (passed down to us from our indigenous ancestors), or the sacrifice of the individual, for the better of the whole, is responsible for all of the prejudice and lack of freedom that we have experienced as a human race.
Modern view of Physics
“Wholeness, organization, dynamics”- these general conceptions may be stated as characteristics of modern, as opposed to the mechanical, world-view of physics.
Human Being Are Alive
The attempt to reduce human beings to automatons was NEVER defensible because it ignored too much evidence.
We are Born Alone, This Makes All Forms of Love, Possible!
There is a theme of aloneness or separation anxiety that recurs throughout the human experience (when the infant learns of its autonomy, when a mother is left with an empty nest, etc.). Perhaps, during these times when we are forced to be with one’s self, individuation in this case, we must continually ask ourselves, “Who am I?” We must define our answer ourselves through the acts of thinking, and feeling, and of doing- learning to take more and more responsibility for our existence and well-being. It may represent a lifelong task. (We will think more on this WHY he is feeling so lonely, later). Consciousness by its nature is immutably private. In the last analysis, we are islands of consciousness, it is the root of our aloneness (solve this. As we know, life cannot be inherently negative, although he is making a remarkably beautiful point). I’m not the only one who experiences such things, people relate to me on every subject. For some people, this fact is terrifying, and they will most fiercely resist knowing it and passionately deny this fact of their being. The forms their denial take are easily recognizable, and endless: refusing to think and following uncritically the beliefs of others. Pretending to be helpless. Pretending to be confused or stupid. Not wanting to pass individual judgement about things or live responsibly. If we do not understand our aloneness, we cannot understand love. We cannot understand our most enrapturing experiences of union and fusion. We would not understand those extraordinary moments of serenity and bliss when we feel ourselves to be one with all that exists. And, you could not understand the ecstasy of romantic love (WOW! Everything I’ve been feeling in my alcoholism….). ***(ALERT) The tragic irony of people’s lives (this point can hardly be stressed enough) is that the very attempt to deny or hide your aloneness results in denying love. AWWWWWWWWWWWW love is about comforting each other’s aloneness and need for connecting…not feeling separate. AWWWWWWW! -Strong Needs, such as the need for connection, the need for intimacy, etc., creates powerful bonds, it has amazing potential.
General Love
Love, is our emotional response to that which we value highly. As such, it is the experience of joy in the existence of the loved object, joy in proximity, and joy in interaction or involvement. You delight in the being whom one loves, you experience pleasure in their presence. You find gratification and fulfillment in contact with that being. We experience the loved being as a source of fulfillment for profoundly important needs, they MAKE your life happy, for instance. We look at this person and we get a rising sense of joy within us. It is more than merely a joy, it is a value judgement that we have made and an action tendency. Love is the highest, most intense, expression of the value assessment “for me,” “beneficial to my life. “In the person we love, we see, in an extraordinarily high measure, many of the traits and characteristics that we feel are most appropriate to life (as we understand it and experience it) and therefore most desirable for our own well-being and happiness. (Review) Every emotion contains an inherent action tendency- the carrying out of a particular action related to that emotion. -**Men and women need to get along as friends.
Life is Alive with Context!
Storytime: Nathaniel tells a story of how his love of nature first began . It began when he was admiring a familiar house plant of his. Then, for the first time, he experienced a sense of connection and enjoyment with the plant for the fact that it was alive. This is a brilliant story to expand our awareness (the story sounds like a Buddhist story) of the fact that life is active, it is like a movie. There is MUCh going on .
