The Most Important Predictor of Staying in Love

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We often comment optimistically that “hope springs eternal,” but feel less certain that “love is forever.” Because for many people who have experienced love the hard way, it isn’t. When it begins to feel like the bloom is off the rose, whether you are the partner having “lost that loving feeling” or not, the experience of falling out of love begs the question as to whether a partner was ever in love to begin with.

Situations often cited to explain the phenomenon of falling out of love include when one or both partners mistake lust for love, when one or both are on the relational rebound, or when two people seem compatible and decide to try to “make it work,” in the absence of true loving feelings.

In cases involving harmful behavior, couples are more readily able to identify the factors that ruined a relationship. Adultery, violence, or other significant factors present a more clear-cut case prompting relationship dissolution. But let’s examine the issue from the other (more upbeat) perspective: What causes a couple to stay in love? Research reveals the secret.

When Love Lasts a Lifetime

Michelle L. Duda and Raymond M. Bergner (2017) explored the factors that sustain love within a relationship.[1] They studied couples that remained in love, as opposed to couples that fell out of love, looking for specific relationship dynamics or characteristics that distinguished the two groups. Acknowledging the high rate of divorce as well as partners seeking marital counseling, they note that while falling in love is a common phenomenon, remaining in love is rarer. This statistic is a significant societal problem considering that divorce often creates emotional trauma, suffering, financial strain, child custody issues, and usually some type of litigation.

Fortunately, there are ways to stay in love. Duda and Bergner note that remaining in love appears to involve maintaining some critical dimensions of romantic love. The list they provide includes sustaining commitment to a partner’s best interests, honoring exclusivity, maintaining intimacy and trust, and pursuing relational enjoyment. Living out these dimensions includes consciously avoiding violations in any of these areas, which means avoiding any type of sexual or emotional infidelity, destructive forms of conflict, failure to discuss relationship issues, and failure to support a partner who is in need.

The Person You Fell in Love With

One of the most dramatic findings Duda and Bergner discovered in their research was a single factor that appears to make the difference about who stayed in love and who didn’t: changes in the perception of a partner’s character. In other words, whether someone currently perceives his or her partner as the person he or she originally believed them to be, because that was the person they fell in love with. If a spouse or partner believes his or her significant other is still that person, possessing all the original personal qualities and characteristics, they are more likely to stay in love, even if the partner sometimes behaves badly.

Duda and Bergner note that if someone believes his or her partner is still the same person, he or she will excuse bad behavior by saying something like “I know deep down he’s not like that” or “I keep waiting for her to return to that wonderful person I fell in love with.” They note that exceptions occur when faced with an enormously impactful negative incident of behavior, such as infidelity, or an unacceptable amount of increasingly negative behavior—instances that cause partners to conclude that the other partner really was not the person they believed them to be, given the degradation of character, leading to falling out of love.

Staying in love appears to require sufficient time to fall in love. A slow and steady courtship before marriage affords the opportunity to get to know someone on the front end, to ensure a healthy, happy, relationship of love and respect that will last a lifetime.