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Is It Possible To Love What One Has?
It is not customary to love what one has
Posted November 14, 2008
"It is not customary to love what one has" (Anatole France)
A prevailing view argues that romantic love burns itself out upon the attainment of its goal-the possession of the loved one. I will briefly examine two major reasons supporting this view: the role of change and the role of idealization in love. I will then point out the limitations of such a view.
A major difficulty in loving what one has is related to the fact that emotions typically occur when we perceive significant changes in our personal situation, or in the situation of those related to us. We respond to the unusual by paying attention to it. But a change cannot persist for a very long time; after a while, the system construes the change as a normal state and it excites us no more. What one has is the opposite of a novel change-this is a familiar person. Accordingly, sexual response to a familiar partner is less intense than to a new partner.
The importance of change for emotions, and hence their instable nature, is also expressed in the fact that intense romantic love often has the characteristic of "unfinished business"; it is an experience that has not yet arrived at the desired state-in this sense, it is incomplete. In the words of the Bee Gees, "A lover's dream... has no end." In contrast to how we feel about what we already have, we are typically excited by anything that is incomplete, unsettled, unexplained, or uncertain. When the situation becomes stable and normal, there is no reason for the mental system to be on the alert and to invest further resources.
The above considerations partly explain why courtship, flirting, and extramarital affairs are exciting. The period of courtship obviously has the nature of unfinished business, as we yearn for a future situation in which we might upgrade the current stage of our relationship. Similarly, flirting is a kind of foreplay and by its nature it has not yet reached the fully desired experience. Flirting involves the dynamic and unsettled situations associated with unfinished business.
Also extramarital affairs usually have the nature of unfinished business, as they are not complete and comprehensive the way normal primary relationships tend to be. In such affairs, lovers may feel profound satisfaction but they still desire more profound fulfillment of their yearning. Numerous novels and movies deal with romantic relationships that are not complete, and therefore maintain a high level of intensity for a long time. In the play, Same Time, Next Year, a man and a woman, who are married to others, meet by chance at a romantic inn and spend the night together. They then meet on the same weekend each year and stay in the same room. The tagline of the play is: "They couldn't have celebrated happier anniversaries if they were married to each other." Unfinished business does not imply merely thrill, but suffering too, since the element of frustration for not achieving what we really desire is central here as well (see In the Name of Love).
The incomplete nature of many intense romantic relationships is particularly evident in courtly love, espoused by the twelfth-century troubadours, and in cyberlove. Courtly love involved extramarital flirtation which was unconsummated sexually. Courtly love was perpetually unsatisfied as it did not allow the full possession of the (married) lady. Such unending love is more intense and hence was preferred to the love that achieved "fulfillment" and "satisfaction." Like courtly love, cyberlove also consists of passionate and enjoyable attitudes that are basically incomplete, as they lack actual physical interaction. This further increases the passionate desire to maintain the relationship at least until such interaction is achieved. In both cases people desire the unattainable, and quite often when it is attained, the desire disappears.
Another difficulty involved in loving what one has is the significant role that idealization plays in romantic love. Lovers are often blind to the beloved's negative traits and tend to create an idealized image of the beloved. We often love the idealized object rather than the real person. Indeed, people say that they are enacting their dreams with their beloved. The idealization of the beloved is more difficult when that beloved is the familiar person that we already "have"; hence, such idealization is more typical of love at first sight and of the initial stages of love, when spontaneous evaluations are based on scant information. Sustaining a sense of security often requires weaving an elaborate, and often fictional, story that either embellishes a partner's virtues and overlooks, or at least minimizes various faults. The attitude toward what one has is typically not ambiguous. Resolving ambiguity often eliminates positive illusion, leading to less satisfying situations.
Despite the above difficulties, loving what we have is not impossible and we can love the attainable. One reason for this is the positive role of familiarity in love, and this is enhanced if we are able to retain some moderate measure of change in the relationship and idealization toward our existing partner.
Not only change, but also stability, and in particular familiarity, increase emotional intensity: the familiar person is emotionally closer than the stranger. Romantic relationships consist of both change, which increases excitement, and familiarity, which enhances commitment and liking. The positive role of familiarity may lead love to grow and become deeper over time. There is indeed evidence indicating that frequency of listening to a certain kind of music may increase the preference for this kind. We tend to like music that is familiar.
Mere familiarity is not sufficient for sustaining long-term romantic relationships, as it may produce boredom. If we can perceive the object of our love as complex, this may provide the above mentioned elements of change and idealization, which increase emotional intensity. Indeed, we may not like a particular genre of music after a while, if we have listened to it too often. Here we should take into account the important factor of complexity: with increased exposure, simple music becomes less likable, while a complex piece grows more enjoyable. The factor of complexity is also important because novelty is equated with the unfamiliar; hence, a simple object is quickly evaluated as not novel. Complex objects give rise to many experiences of novelty, since the object has a variety of aspects that can reveal themselves in the process of becoming familiar.
The presence of unknown features in complex experiences may offer not merely some measure of change, but idealization as well. Complex objects involve ambiguous states, which have a kind of incomplete nature and hence have a certain lure. It is therefore more possible to idealize a complex object than a simple one. To persist in an idealized loving relationship requires a moderate but constantly distorted perception of reality; its moderate nature enables the lovers to believe in it despite its known inaccuracies. Stable and satisfying relationships reflect the intimate partners' ability to see their imperfect partners in an idealized light. People who are in love for a prolonged period of time maintain the idealized notion of their beloved for the whole period.
Loving what we have is common in parental love where responsibility, biological proximity, and shared history are more significant than novelty and change. There are also many cases in which romantic love can be found among those who love what they already have. These cases involve perceiving the familiar beloved as complex and this enables the lover to retain the elements of change and idealization.
Perceiving the other as complex has both subjective and objective elements. The subjective elements indicate that in principle, every person can be perceived as complex and hence be loved for a long time; however, the presence of objective elements indicates that this can be quite a difficult task. It is certainly possible to love what one has, but there are often many obstacles in the way of achieving this.
