Tru love

Psychalive

True Love: What Love Is and What It Is Not

PsychAlive

RELATIONSHIPS

By PsychAlive

True loveThe topic of true love has been debated for centuries. Cynics often swear it doesn’t exist, while hopeless romantics think everyone should set out to find their soulmates. With science now showing that true love is not only possible, but can actually last a lifetime, we’ve decided to look at the psychological elements that allow love to bloom or fade.

Let’s start by defining what true love really is:

What is True Love?

Dr. Lisa Firestone, co-author of Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships, often says that the best way to think of love is as a verb. Love is dynamic and requires action to thrive. As Dr. Firestone wrote, “Often, we spend our time worrying about what our partner feels toward us or how the relationship looks from the outside. Even though it feels good to be loved by someone else, each one of us can only really feel our loving feelings for another person and not that person’s feelings for us. In order to connect with and sustain those loving feelings within us, we have to take actions that are loving. Otherwise, we may be living in fantasy.”

At times it may feel frustrating, but it’s actually pretty empowering to accept the fact that the only person we have any true control over in a relationship is ourselves. We are in charge of our half of the dynamic. Therefore, we can choose whether to engage in behaviors that are destructive to intimacy or whether to take actions that express feelings of love, compassion, affection, respect, and kindness. In order to consciously and consistently choose the latter, it’s valuable to look at the characteristics that in more than 30 years of studying couples, Dr. Robert and Lisa Firestone found to be vital to maintaining truly loving.

The father and daughter research team created what they call the “Couples Interactions Chart,” which compares the characteristics of an ideal relationship to those of what Dr. Robert Firestone termed a “fantasy bond.” The fantasy bond is an “illusion of connection and closeness [that allows couples] to maintain an imagination of love and loving while preserving emotional distance.” A fantasy bond forms when couples substitute real love and closeness for the form of being in a relationship. This bond diminishes the feelings of liveliness and attraction between individuals.