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The Psychology Of Romantic Love
~5.8 mins read
The Psychology of Romantic Love
By Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT
Most everyone wants to fall in love, especially codependents. To us, love is perhaps the highest ideal, and relationships give our lives meaning and purpose. They enliven and motivate us. A partner provides a companion when we have difficulty initiating action on our own. Being loved also validates our sense of self-esteem, overcomes shame-based doubts about our lovability, and soothes our fears of loneliness. But too often a beautiful romance turns sour. What was a wonderful dream becomes a painful nightmare. Ms. Perfect or Mr. Right becomes Ms. or Mr. Wrong. The unconscious is a mighty force. Reason doesn’t seem to stop us from falling in love, nor make it any easier to leave! Even when the relationship turns out to be toxic, once attached, ending the relationship is as hard as falling in love was easy!
The Chemistry of Romance and Falling in Love
Our brains are wired to fall in love — to feel the bliss and euphoria of romance, to enjoy pleasure, and to bond and procreate. Feel-good neurochemicals flood the brain at each stage of lust, attraction, and attachment. Particularly dopamine provides natural high and ecstatic feelings that can be as addictive as cocaine. Deeper feelings are assisted by oxytocin, the “cuddle hormone,” released during orgasm. It’s directly linked to bonding and increases trust and loyalty in romantic attachments.
The Psychology of Romantic Love — Whom We Find Attractive
Psychology plays a role, too. Our self-esteem, mental and emotional health, life experiences, and family relations all influence whom we’re attracted to. Experiences, both positive and negative, impact our choices and make someone appear more or less attractive. For example, we might find commonality attractive, but avoid someone who cheated on an ex if that has happened to us before. We’re attracted to subtle physical attributes, albeit unconsciously, that remind us of a family member. More mysterious, we can be attracted to someone who shares emotional and behavioral patterns with a member of our family even before they become apparent.
The Ideal Stage of Romance
It’s true that we’re blinded by love. Healthy idealization is normal and helps us fall in love. We admire our beloved, are willing to explore our partner’s interests, and accept his or her idiosyncrasies. Love also brings out parts of our personality that were dormant. We might feel manlier or more womanly, more empathic, generous, hopeful, and more willing to take risks and try new things. In this way, we feel more alive, because we have access to other aspects of our ordinary or constricted personality. Additionally, in early dating, we’re usually more honest than down the road when we become invested in the relationship and fear speaking our truth might precipitate a breakup.
Although, healthy idealization doesn’t blind us to serious warning signs of problems, if we’re depressed or have low self-esteem, we’re more likely to idealize a prospective partner and overlook signs of trouble, such as unreliability or addiction, or accept behavior that is disrespectful or abusive. The neurochemicals of romance can lift our depressed mood and fuel codependency and love addiction when we seek a relationship in order to put an end to our loneliness or emptiness. When we lack a support system or are unhappy, we might rush into a relationship and become attached quickly before really knowing our partner. This is also referred to as “love on the rebound” or a “transitional relationship” following a breakup or divorce. It’s far better to first recover from a breakup.
The Ordeal Stage of Romantic Love
After the initial ideal stage, usually starting after six months, we enter the ordeal stage as we learn more things about our partner that displease us. We discover habits and flaws we dislike and attitudes we believe to be ignorant or distasteful. In fact, some of the same traits that attracted us now annoy us. We liked that our mate was warm and friendly, but now feel ignored at social gatherings. We admired his bold and decisive, but learn he’s rude and close-minded. We were enchanted by her carefree spirit, but are now appalled by her unrealistic spending. We were captivated by his unfettered expressions of love and a promised future, but discover he’s loose with the truth.
Additionally, as the high wears off, we start to revert to our ordinary personality, and so has our partner. We don’t feel as expansive, loving, and unselfish. In the beginning, we may have gone out of our way to accommodate him or her, now we complain that our needs aren’t being met. We’ve changed, and we don’t feel as wonderful, but we want those blissful feelings back.
Two things happen next that can damage relationships. First, now that we’re attached and fear losing or upsetting our partner, we hold back feelings, wants, and needs. This puts up walls to intimacy, the secret sauce that keeps love alive. In its place we withdraw and breed resentments. Our feelings can come out sideways with sarcasm or passive-aggression. As romance and idealization fade, the second fatal mistake is to complain and try to turn our partner into who we first idealized him or her to be. We feel cheated and disillusioned that our partner is now behaving differently than in the beginning of the relationship. He or she, too, is reverting to their ordinary personality that may include less effort made to win you and accommodate your needs. Our partner will feel controlled and resentful and may pull away.
In some cases, we might discover serious problems — that our partner has an addiction, mental illness, or his abusive or dishonest. These are issues that require a serious commitment to change and often years of therapy to overcome. Many codependents, who get quickly involved for the reasons stated above, will sacrifice their own happiness and continue in a relationship for years trying to change, help, and fix their partner. The dysfunctional family dynamics of their childhood often get repeated in their marriages and relationships. They may unconsciously be contributing to the problem, because they’re reacting to an abusive or controlling parent. Change requires healing our past and overcoming shame and low self-esteem to feel entitled to love and appreciation.
Getting to the Real Deal
We might not want to continue a relationship that involves addiction or abuse or has other serious problems. (See Codependency for Dummies for a list of both minimal and optimal ingredients for successful relationships.) Lacking major obstacles, getting past the ordeal to the real deal requires self-esteem, courage, acceptance, and assertiveness skills. It necessitates the ability to honestly speak up about our needs and wants, to share feelings, compromise, and resolve conflict. Rather than try to change our partner, our efforts are better placed on learning to accept him or her. (This doesn’t mean accepting abuse.) This is the struggle for intimacy, and requires a commitment by both partners to get through the ordeal stage with mutual respect and a desire to make the relationship work.
Steps You Can Take to Make Love Last
We will attract someone who treats us the way we expect to be treated. As we value ourselves more, whom we are attracted to will also change, and we will naturally avoid someone who doesn’t treat us well or meet our needs.
Know yourself, your needs, wants, and limits.
Take time to get to know the person you’re dating. Learn who they really are and how you both resolve conflict.
Remember that sex releases oxytocin and increases bonding (though it can occur without it).
Be honest from the start. Don’t hide who you are, including your needs. Speak up when you dislike something.
Talk honestly about what you want and your expectations in a relationship. If the other person doesn’t want the same things, end it. (This may not be easy, but the relationship wouldn’t have worked or satisfied you.)
Research shows that relationship outcomes are predictable based on the partners’ self esteem. Read “Codependency: The Effect of Low Self-Esteem on Relationships.” Self-worth is essential to healthy relationships. It also enables you to receive love and be repulsed by abuse. Get How to Raise Your Self-Esteem.
Boundaries and intimacy are essential to relationships. Learn to be assertive to express your feelings, needs, and wants and set boundaries.
By Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT
Most everyone wants to fall in love, especially codependents. To us, love is perhaps the highest ideal, and relationships give our lives meaning and purpose. They enliven and motivate us. A partner provides a companion when we have difficulty initiating action on our own. Being loved also validates our sense of self-esteem, overcomes shame-based doubts about our lovability, and soothes our fears of loneliness. But too often a beautiful romance turns sour. What was a wonderful dream becomes a painful nightmare. Ms. Perfect or Mr. Right becomes Ms. or Mr. Wrong. The unconscious is a mighty force. Reason doesn’t seem to stop us from falling in love, nor make it any easier to leave! Even when the relationship turns out to be toxic, once attached, ending the relationship is as hard as falling in love was easy!
The Chemistry of Romance and Falling in Love
Our brains are wired to fall in love — to feel the bliss and euphoria of romance, to enjoy pleasure, and to bond and procreate. Feel-good neurochemicals flood the brain at each stage of lust, attraction, and attachment. Particularly dopamine provides natural high and ecstatic feelings that can be as addictive as cocaine. Deeper feelings are assisted by oxytocin, the “cuddle hormone,” released during orgasm. It’s directly linked to bonding and increases trust and loyalty in romantic attachments.
The Psychology of Romantic Love — Whom We Find Attractive
Psychology plays a role, too. Our self-esteem, mental and emotional health, life experiences, and family relations all influence whom we’re attracted to. Experiences, both positive and negative, impact our choices and make someone appear more or less attractive. For example, we might find commonality attractive, but avoid someone who cheated on an ex if that has happened to us before. We’re attracted to subtle physical attributes, albeit unconsciously, that remind us of a family member. More mysterious, we can be attracted to someone who shares emotional and behavioral patterns with a member of our family even before they become apparent.
The Ideal Stage of Romance
It’s true that we’re blinded by love. Healthy idealization is normal and helps us fall in love. We admire our beloved, are willing to explore our partner’s interests, and accept his or her idiosyncrasies. Love also brings out parts of our personality that were dormant. We might feel manlier or more womanly, more empathic, generous, hopeful, and more willing to take risks and try new things. In this way, we feel more alive, because we have access to other aspects of our ordinary or constricted personality. Additionally, in early dating, we’re usually more honest than down the road when we become invested in the relationship and fear speaking our truth might precipitate a breakup.
Although, healthy idealization doesn’t blind us to serious warning signs of problems, if we’re depressed or have low self-esteem, we’re more likely to idealize a prospective partner and overlook signs of trouble, such as unreliability or addiction, or accept behavior that is disrespectful or abusive. The neurochemicals of romance can lift our depressed mood and fuel codependency and love addiction when we seek a relationship in order to put an end to our loneliness or emptiness. When we lack a support system or are unhappy, we might rush into a relationship and become attached quickly before really knowing our partner. This is also referred to as “love on the rebound” or a “transitional relationship” following a breakup or divorce. It’s far better to first recover from a breakup.
The Ordeal Stage of Romantic Love
After the initial ideal stage, usually starting after six months, we enter the ordeal stage as we learn more things about our partner that displease us. We discover habits and flaws we dislike and attitudes we believe to be ignorant or distasteful. In fact, some of the same traits that attracted us now annoy us. We liked that our mate was warm and friendly, but now feel ignored at social gatherings. We admired his bold and decisive, but learn he’s rude and close-minded. We were enchanted by her carefree spirit, but are now appalled by her unrealistic spending. We were captivated by his unfettered expressions of love and a promised future, but discover he’s loose with the truth.
Additionally, as the high wears off, we start to revert to our ordinary personality, and so has our partner. We don’t feel as expansive, loving, and unselfish. In the beginning, we may have gone out of our way to accommodate him or her, now we complain that our needs aren’t being met. We’ve changed, and we don’t feel as wonderful, but we want those blissful feelings back.
Two things happen next that can damage relationships. First, now that we’re attached and fear losing or upsetting our partner, we hold back feelings, wants, and needs. This puts up walls to intimacy, the secret sauce that keeps love alive. In its place we withdraw and breed resentments. Our feelings can come out sideways with sarcasm or passive-aggression. As romance and idealization fade, the second fatal mistake is to complain and try to turn our partner into who we first idealized him or her to be. We feel cheated and disillusioned that our partner is now behaving differently than in the beginning of the relationship. He or she, too, is reverting to their ordinary personality that may include less effort made to win you and accommodate your needs. Our partner will feel controlled and resentful and may pull away.
In some cases, we might discover serious problems — that our partner has an addiction, mental illness, or his abusive or dishonest. These are issues that require a serious commitment to change and often years of therapy to overcome. Many codependents, who get quickly involved for the reasons stated above, will sacrifice their own happiness and continue in a relationship for years trying to change, help, and fix their partner. The dysfunctional family dynamics of their childhood often get repeated in their marriages and relationships. They may unconsciously be contributing to the problem, because they’re reacting to an abusive or controlling parent. Change requires healing our past and overcoming shame and low self-esteem to feel entitled to love and appreciation.
Getting to the Real Deal
We might not want to continue a relationship that involves addiction or abuse or has other serious problems. (See Codependency for Dummies for a list of both minimal and optimal ingredients for successful relationships.) Lacking major obstacles, getting past the ordeal to the real deal requires self-esteem, courage, acceptance, and assertiveness skills. It necessitates the ability to honestly speak up about our needs and wants, to share feelings, compromise, and resolve conflict. Rather than try to change our partner, our efforts are better placed on learning to accept him or her. (This doesn’t mean accepting abuse.) This is the struggle for intimacy, and requires a commitment by both partners to get through the ordeal stage with mutual respect and a desire to make the relationship work.
Steps You Can Take to Make Love Last
We will attract someone who treats us the way we expect to be treated. As we value ourselves more, whom we are attracted to will also change, and we will naturally avoid someone who doesn’t treat us well or meet our needs.
Know yourself, your needs, wants, and limits.
Take time to get to know the person you’re dating. Learn who they really are and how you both resolve conflict.
Remember that sex releases oxytocin and increases bonding (though it can occur without it).
Be honest from the start. Don’t hide who you are, including your needs. Speak up when you dislike something.
Talk honestly about what you want and your expectations in a relationship. If the other person doesn’t want the same things, end it. (This may not be easy, but the relationship wouldn’t have worked or satisfied you.)
Research shows that relationship outcomes are predictable based on the partners’ self esteem. Read “Codependency: The Effect of Low Self-Esteem on Relationships.” Self-worth is essential to healthy relationships. It also enables you to receive love and be repulsed by abuse. Get How to Raise Your Self-Esteem.
Boundaries and intimacy are essential to relationships. Learn to be assertive to express your feelings, needs, and wants and set boundaries.
profile/1937Screenshot_20220413-132311_Instagram.jpg
Caster
Real Signs Of True Love In A Relationship
~3.5 mins read
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True love is the true definition of a perfect romance. But it’s not easy to find. Do you see these 12 signs of true love in your own relationship? By Elizabeth Arthur
True love isn’t felt in a heartbeat or in a second glance.
True love takes time to take shape.
And contrary to popular belief, love at first sight isn’t really love at all.
In fact, love at first sight is nothing but an infatuation.
It’s a strong surge of romantic and sexual emotions that overwhelm you.
Before you wonder what true love is all about and what the signs of true love really are, you need to understand that it’s very important to take things slow in a relationship if you want to ensure its success.
[Read: 10 reasons why saying ‘I love you’ too soon sucks]
When you first start dating someone or fall for someone at first sight, what you experience isn’t love.
As much as you feel like you’re head over heels in love, you really aren’t.
You’re just experiencing the first stage of love, a small part in the stages of love known as the infatuation stage.
[Read: The 9 stages of love all couples go through]
What is true love then?
True love, ironically, can’t be defined.
It’s the kind of love many of us chase after, but few truly find or realize it until it’s too late. So what is true love really?
True love is the kind of love and affection you have for someone that isn’t bound by the laws of human behavior. Human behavior is simple to understand. When someone hurts you, you get angry with them. When someone gets lucky or gets a better job, you get jealous of them. And when someone shatters your ego or humiliates you, you want your revenge. This is human behavior, because these traits are engrained within us.
But when you experience true love with someone, your primal instincts and behavior change only towards this person. True love transcends typical human behavior. It makes you a better human being towards a special someone. [Read: A true story of unconditional love]
When does one experience true love?
True love takes time to bloom. What you experience in the first year or so of a relationship is infatuation and sexual attraction.
As the bursts of infatuation start to fade with the first few arguments and the first few misunderstandings, that’s when love starts to enter the picture. And this is where most couples start to drift away emotionally, or even end up breaking up because of incompatibilities.
If you’re in a relationship where both of you truly understand each other and feel compatible with each other, and most importantly, love each other, chances are, you’re experiencing true love already. [Read: 50 questions to test your
Experiencing true love in your life
Is true love a once in a lifetime experience? Not really. You can experience them many times over, and with many people at the same time. You can experience true love with your spouse or your lover, your children and any other person you’re attached to in your life.
But true love too, can fade with time. For most of us, our first love is the first time we would have experienced the purest form of true love. We aren’t afraid to let this special someone into our heart and we aren’t afraid to experience heartbreak because we still don’t know what heartbreak feels like. We’re fearless in love and we love passionately with all our heart. [Read: How to know if you’re in love in the infatuation stage]
But when the first romance dies, the true love we had for our first partner too eventually fades, even if it takes years and several new relationships to overcome. And as we enter more relationships, most of us split into two groups. One that believes in true romantic love and the other group that convinces itself that true love doesn’t exist. The kind of relationships you’ve had in your lifetime can play a big part in your understanding of, and expectations from, true love.
And if you’re wondering whether true love and romantic love are the same, it really isn’t, even though we almost always associate true love with romantic love. True love is love in its purest form, while romantic love needs sexual attraction to stay alive. [Read: 25 rules you need to know to have a perfect relationship]
True love can’t be forced
True love has to be experienced naturally and wholeheartedly. You can’t fake true love no matter how hard you try. If a couple fails to pass the test of compatibility in their infatuation stage, it’s pretty hard for both of them to ever experience true love.
True love isn’t felt in a heartbeat or in a second glance.
True love takes time to take shape.
And contrary to popular belief, love at first sight isn’t really love at all.
In fact, love at first sight is nothing but an infatuation.
It’s a strong surge of romantic and sexual emotions that overwhelm you.
Before you wonder what true love is all about and what the signs of true love really are, you need to understand that it’s very important to take things slow in a relationship if you want to ensure its success.
[Read: 10 reasons why saying ‘I love you’ too soon sucks]
When you first start dating someone or fall for someone at first sight, what you experience isn’t love.
As much as you feel like you’re head over heels in love, you really aren’t.
You’re just experiencing the first stage of love, a small part in the stages of love known as the infatuation stage.
[Read: The 9 stages of love all couples go through]
What is true love then?
True love, ironically, can’t be defined.
It’s the kind of love many of us chase after, but few truly find or realize it until it’s too late. So what is true love really?
True love is the kind of love and affection you have for someone that isn’t bound by the laws of human behavior. Human behavior is simple to understand. When someone hurts you, you get angry with them. When someone gets lucky or gets a better job, you get jealous of them. And when someone shatters your ego or humiliates you, you want your revenge. This is human behavior, because these traits are engrained within us.
But when you experience true love with someone, your primal instincts and behavior change only towards this person. True love transcends typical human behavior. It makes you a better human being towards a special someone. [Read: A true story of unconditional love]
When does one experience true love?
True love takes time to bloom. What you experience in the first year or so of a relationship is infatuation and sexual attraction.
As the bursts of infatuation start to fade with the first few arguments and the first few misunderstandings, that’s when love starts to enter the picture. And this is where most couples start to drift away emotionally, or even end up breaking up because of incompatibilities.
If you’re in a relationship where both of you truly understand each other and feel compatible with each other, and most importantly, love each other, chances are, you’re experiencing true love already. [Read: 50 questions to test your
Experiencing true love in your life
Is true love a once in a lifetime experience? Not really. You can experience them many times over, and with many people at the same time. You can experience true love with your spouse or your lover, your children and any other person you’re attached to in your life.
But true love too, can fade with time. For most of us, our first love is the first time we would have experienced the purest form of true love. We aren’t afraid to let this special someone into our heart and we aren’t afraid to experience heartbreak because we still don’t know what heartbreak feels like. We’re fearless in love and we love passionately with all our heart. [Read: How to know if you’re in love in the infatuation stage]
But when the first romance dies, the true love we had for our first partner too eventually fades, even if it takes years and several new relationships to overcome. And as we enter more relationships, most of us split into two groups. One that believes in true romantic love and the other group that convinces itself that true love doesn’t exist. The kind of relationships you’ve had in your lifetime can play a big part in your understanding of, and expectations from, true love.
And if you’re wondering whether true love and romantic love are the same, it really isn’t, even though we almost always associate true love with romantic love. True love is love in its purest form, while romantic love needs sexual attraction to stay alive. [Read: 25 rules you need to know to have a perfect relationship]
True love can’t be forced
True love has to be experienced naturally and wholeheartedly. You can’t fake true love no matter how hard you try. If a couple fails to pass the test of compatibility in their infatuation stage, it’s pretty hard for both of them to ever experience true love.
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