Everyone already knows that romantic love requires sexual attraction, that’s a given. The second component is almost as well known. It’s called attachment, and its part of the show in both romantic and all other kinds of love, including love within families. Attachment is found in other mammal besides us humans: our cats Mischa and Wolfie have become attached to me and my wife, and we are attached to them.

Attachment gives a physical sense of a connection to the beloved. The most obvious cues to attachment are missing the beloved when they are away, and contentment when they return. Loss of that person invokes deep sadness and grief. Another less reliable cue is the sense of having always known a person whom we have just met. This feeling can be intense when it occurs, but it also may be completely absent.

Attachment accounts for an otherwise puzzling aspect of “love”: one can “love” someone that one doesn’t even like. (…)

Finally, there is a third component that is much more complex and subtle than attraction or attachment. It has to do with the lover sharing the thoughts and feelings of the beloved. The lover identifies with the loved person at times, to the point of actually sharing their thoughts their feelings. He or she feels their pain at these times, or joy, or any other feeling, as if it were her or his own. Two people can be attuned, at least at times, to each others’ thoughts and feeling.

It is important to note however, that to qualify as genuine love, the sharing need be balanced between self and other. One shares the others thoughts and feelings as much as one’s own, no more and no less. (…)

The definition of romantic love proposed here involves three components, the three A’s: Attraction, Attachment, and Attunement.

{ New English Review | Continue reading }

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ideas, music, relationships, video | January 14th, 2011