Can you tell if a couple is in love by the way they treat each other in public? The romantic emphasis of Valentine’s Day causes some of us to say “yes.” We believe or want to believe that an affectionate couple is surely in love.
Unfortunately, that is not necessarily so.
A recent study followed 156 couples during a 13-year period. One of the study’s surprising findings was that the most affectionate couples ended up getting divorced.
What many of us call “love,” psychologists call “limerance.” Limerance is a state of deep infatuation. One psychologist said, “Limerance feels good but rarely lasts. It is the first stage of mad attraction whereby all the hormones are flowing and things feel so right.”
Limerance lasts, on average, six months. Most love starts out as limerance, the psychologist continued. But most limerance never evolves into love.
That conclusion prompted another observer to quip, “It is sad that so many of us are guided more by hormones when making the choice for our long-term partner.”
Still, many people equate those warm, fuzzy feelings with true love.
Of the 156 couples in the study, 64 percent remained married at the end of the 13-year period. Thirty-six percent had divorced.
Those who remained married applied a different understanding to love than did the divorced couples. In addition to the warm, fuzzy feelings, the happily married saw each other as possessing a responsive personality to the needs of each other. These couples also expressed negative feelings toward one another far less often than those who divorced. This was true in personal interaction as well as in public settings.
A third characteristic of the happily marrieds related to commitment. Happily married couples had a strong commitment to each other with little ambivalence about their relationship.
These findings affirm that true love does not just happen as popular culture would have one believe. There is a big difference between artificially created situations designed to entertain and the reality of everyday experience. Love takes work. Psychologist Erich Fromm called love “an act of will.” It is not just hormones and emotions.
Psychologists urge couples to “focus on the other person.” One psychologist wrote, “Rather than focus on what you are getting and how you are being treated, read your partner’s need. What does this person really need for his or her own well-being?”
The suggestion is not to lose one’s own self-identity. Self-care is important. One cannot love another if one cannot love oneself. After all, God loved each of us so much that Jesus died that each of us might have an eternal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. That means each of us has value.
But self is not one’s first love. One first loves God. Then one can love one’s partner.
The Bible speaks of this kind of self-giving love in 1 Corinthians 13. There the writer describes love as patient and kind. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
In saying what love is not, the writer says love is not jealous, does not brag, is not arrogant. He adds that love does not act in unbecoming ways, does not seek its own, is not provoked and does not take into account a wrong suffered.
This description is of love that focuses on the other, as psychologists now encourage. Isn’t it amazing how biblical guidance gets affirmed over and over again by various groups?
Problems will still arise. Between any two people there are basic differences, no matter how much they love each other. Identifying the differences and working through them is possible in an atmosphere of trust that grows out of love. Without trust, differences become barriers.
The happily married couples of the survey point the way to establishing an atmosphere of trust that grows out of love. It certainly includes seeking the welfare of the other, focusing on the positives in the other and not the negatives, and being unconditionally committed to the other as one’s spouse.
This kind of love is a lot more than warm, fuzzy feelings. It is that and a lot more. It takes work.
Love and marriage is not based on a 50–50 proposition. The foundation is a 100 percent–100 percent commitment from each partner to give and receive from the other. Where there is that kind of commitment, the Bible declares “Love never fails.”
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