I Know You Love Her but It's Over Mate

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Source: bikeriderlondon/Shutterstock

If psychologists could define honey, they'd be far ahead of every poet, playwright, and songwriter who'south always tried to put this elusive feeling into words. Love mostly provides pleasance, merely as many of us know, that pleasure can come with a heavy toll.

It may be more than correct to view dear non as an emotion, but a country or situation that tin produce emotions both positive and negative. Still, that begs the question—what is the nature of this state, and why is it and so of import to our sense of well-beingness to have those pleasurable feelings?

Different the keen writers and artists who've grappled with the question of dear, psychologists have a more businesslike approach as they try to break information technology down clinically into its component parts. According to University of Maryland psychologist Sandra Langeslag, working with her Dutch associates Peter Muris and Ingmar Franken, it's not so important to define honey per se, but to define the "symptoms" that continue with information technology. These symptoms autumn into the categories of behavioral, affective (emotional), cognitive, and physical. Notice that they're talking about "romantic" dear, not the kind of dear that's simmered down from blazing hot to comfortably simmering, also called companionate love. In romantic love, your passion is still high too as your intimacy.

According to Langeslag and her squad, romantic love equals a mixture of infatuation and zipper. Infatuation is the heady feeling you experience when you're in the throes of a beat. The attachment slice refers to the desire to bond with some other creature, whether it's a romantic partner, a favorite pet, or your favorite relative. Thus, Langeslag and her colleagues believe that you tin can be loftier on infatuation and low on zipper with regard to another person considering the two qualities are independent of one some other.

Infatuation may bring with it those strong pleasurable feelings, as I noted earlier, or information technology can be associated with anguish, anxiety, distress, and misery. Because of this, Langeslag and her team believe that infatuation provides higher arousal levels than does attachment. It's infatuation that will put you through the highs and lows as y'all pick the petals off the daisy wondering if he/she loves you or loves y'all not.

When your attachment to your partner is potent, solid and, as psychologists call information technology, secure, your emotions will remain on a more or less even keel. If you're insecurely fastened, in dissimilarity, you may either fret constantly nigh whether or not your loved one will exist there for you ("anxious zipper") or dismissively push those y'all care near away ("avoidant attachment").

The perfect combination, Langeslag and team propose, is to be high on both infatuation and attachment. This is perhaps why, in looking at the 12 ties that bind, the research I reviewed on successful long-term marriages shows that partners who stay together even so care about what their partners are doing and want to be with them. Nonetheless, because the highs and lows of infatuation do tend to polish out over fourth dimension, it'southward more likely that people in it for the long haul are companionate — highly attached but only moderately (if at all) infatuated.

With this as a background, information technology's time for you to run across how your feelings measure up on the two dimensions of infatuation and attachment. You'll know, after completing this 20-item test, whether you're high on one, both, or neither based on comparisons with the numbers from Langeslag et al.'s study

Rate yourself from i = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree and respond according to your current honey interest or romantic partner:

I stare into the distance when I think of ________.
I feel that I can count on __________.
I get shaky knees when I am well-nigh ____________.
I am prepared to share my possessions with ____________.
I would feel solitary without ______________.
My feelings for ____________ reduce my ambition.
My thoughts about ____________ brand it hard for me to concentrate on something else.
____________ is the one for me.
I am afraid that I will say something incorrect when I talk to ___________.
____________ knows everything about me.
I hope my feelings for __________ will never end.
I get clammy hands when I am nearly __________.
I feel emotionally connected to ____________.
I go tense when I am close to ____________.
___________ can reassure me when I am upset.
I have a difficult time sleeping because I am thinking of ___________.
I search for alternate meanings of ____________'due south words.
____________ is the person who can make me happiest.
____________ is a part of my plans for the future.
I am shy in the presence of _____________.

Now add up your scores on each set of items:

Set 1: Items 1, 3, six, 7, ix, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20

Set up 2: Items 2, 4, five, 8, 10, eleven, 13, 15, xviii, 19

Have you figured out which set reflects which component of romantic dear? If your psych radar is turned on, yous've concluded that Set 1 measures infatuation and Set ii measures attachment.

Zipper Essential Reads

Now that you've totaled your scores, come across how you compare with the study's samples, which consisted of well-nigh 560 adults ranging from the late teens through the mid-50s, and about 2/3 female.

If your infatuation score was betwixt about 40 and 45, and was approximately equal to your attachment score, then yous're almost like people who were non withal in a romantic relationship with the object of their want. The highest infatuation scores were, in fact, highest amidst the U.S. sample (45 on average). Partners who had either gotten married, were living together, or who were dating had infatuation scores between 20 and 30 amongst the Dutch and slightly higher among the Americans. People either cohabiting or married had the highest attachment scores, in the 60s and above.

So now, looking back at your scores, it'south likely the longer you've been involved with your partner, the more than likely your infatuation score would dip across the midpoint of the one-7 scale, but your zipper score would be at or near 7. We might conclude that the lower your infatuation score and the college your attachment, the more likely it is that yours is a dearest that will endure, a finding that fleshes out the results of other studies showing how stress, dissatisfaction, and even educational level can contribute to marital unhappiness.

Other results from the study support the idea that information technology's important to distinguish betwixt attachment and infatuation. People in relationships for longer periods of time were lower on infatuation and higher on attachment. Role of the reason for this might accept to do with another fascinating consequence: In both U.S. and Dutch samples, loftier scores on infatuation were positively related to unhappy feelings. Conversely, people with high attachment scores reported lower levels of unhappy feelings.

If you want your relationship to exist a happy and enduring one, it's the attachment component of love that volition make this happen. Past knowing how the numbers add up, you can see how both you lot, and your loved ane, tin can enrich and heighten yours.