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January 22, 2010

Strange But True!

Q. Are the French correct in saying that “love makes the time pass and time makes love pass”? Or can friendship and commitment sustain a relationship after the initial passion cools?

A. As passionate love matures, it becomes a steadier “companionate love,” says psychologist Elaine Hatfield in “A New Look at Love.” There may be adaptive wisdom here: Passionate love often produces children, whose survival is aided by the parents' waning obsession with one another. And if the inevitable odds against eternal passionate love were better understood, more people might choose to be satisfied with the quieter feelings of satisfaction and contentment,” adds social psychologist Ellen Berscheid in “Psychology: Ninth Edition,” by David G. Myers. Indeed, some societies regard passionate love as an irrational basis for marriage. Better, they say, is to choose (or have someone else choose for you) a partner with a compatible background and interests. In fact, argues cultural psychologist R. Levine, “Non-Western cultures, where people rate love less important for marriage, do have lower divorce rates.”


 
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