Sonja Lyubomirksy, Perishable Love, Hedonic Adaptation

When he was in college, the Phantom would occasionally be asked by a new girl friend if he loved her,  and he would reply, "What do you mean by that?"  And there was always an indignant, angry, "Well, if you don't know, then obviously, you don't love me."

It was a question which greatly annoyed the Phantom because what it was, it seemed to him, was a demand for affirmation of a fantasy, a delusion, a lie. In those days, nice proper girls did not sleep with boys, unless they declared themselves to be "in love." Now, of course, college girls simply "hook up," for a Friday night, without the lies, so progress has been made.

There are legions of accounts of how quickly "love" fades,  from Raymond Chandler's observation, "The first kiss if magic. The second is intimate. The third is routine."

From "The Heartbreak Kid," to the old college joke about how if you put a jelly bean in a jar every time you have sex with your new wife for the first year and you take one out every time you have sex with her after the first year, no matter how long you are married, you will never empty the jar.  The observation that passion fades is longstanding and widespread.

A Harvard gynecologist investigating the underlying endocrine changes which might explain the very common problem of loss of libido in women marched  through every known hormone which might be involved,  from testosterone to estrogen to progesterone and beyond, and could find no answers in the hormone profiles of women with good libido versus those who had no libido. "The only thing," she said, "Which reliably and consistently restored libido among our study subjects was a new partner."

Professor of psychology, Sonja Lyubomirksy writing in the New York Times today writes of studies which rated happiness in people involved in new love affairs and showed the sense of wonder and happiness faded only a little slower than the same sense one got from having bought a new coat, started  a new job or acquired a new home.  After a time, we start taking the most amazing, thrilling things and people  for granted.  Think of the most dazzling woman you can imagine--Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Anniston--but once you've lived with these ladies for a while, ardor fizzles. They are yesterday's headlines. 

This, the professor calls, "hedonistic adaptation" and if we cannot define a hormonal basis for it, at least it makes sense in an biological sense: Siblings see each other daily for years and even if the sister changes as she goes through puberty,  she is such old news you are likely not attracted to want to have sex with her and have inbred babies. At least this hypothesis would give a "reason" for why this phenomenon might be adaptive for a species.

The professor notes, "If we obsessed, endlessly about our partners and had sex with them multiple times a day--every day--we would not be very productive at work or attentive to our children, our friends or our health...if passion did not fade, 'we would end up doing nothing at all with our lives.'"

The professor says we are hard wired to crave variety, which is why the natural shift from passionate to "companionate" love comes as such a letdown.

This is why, she argues older men seek "trophy wives" looking for the next new thing in a serial attempt to keep things fresh. Women, she says are even more stimulated by novelty.
"When married couples reach the two year mark, many mistake the natural shift from passionate love to companionate love for incompatibility and unhappiness."
The phantom recalls a conversation with a woman who told him she had wild sex with her lover but the morning after she had moved her things into his apartment, she lost all libido, not  just for him (although especially for him) but for all men. She was looking for a hormone therapy which could restore her libido. The Phantom told her he thought the real therapy might be to move out.

Another conversation, from years ago,  with the mother of a new girl friend.  The new girl friend had a boyfriend of three years, who often came home  but, the mother observed, they look more like brother and sister.  The mother was rooting for the Phantom to displace the old boyfriend, in hopes it would rekindle a passion and thrill in her daughter. "You've got to go for hot sex and obsession and passion while you still can," the mother said. "Because, believe me, after you're married, no way."

She was, Professor Lubomirksy would say, mistaking a shift to companion type love as a shift toward unhappiness, when it was simply a flame burning at a more manageable intensity.

The professor advises long married couples to do new things they find exciting with each other--travel, skiing, rock climbing, anything to embrace new experiences together. 

In general, the Phantom finds little to recommend psychobabble, but this professor is providing something different: What she teaches should be a basic freshman course in college. If we could promulgate this truth telling rather than the fairy tale version of love students arrived with in college, lives might be lived more happily.

Listening to all the babble at wedding ceremonies about "love" is enough to make the Phantom nauseated. God meant for these two people to find one another. They will now forsake all others because that's what true love is all about. Love is the thing that makes you walk down the sidewalk without your feet ever touching the ground.

If we could get past all that drivel, the Phantom suspects all opposition to gay marriage would evaporate. If marriage were seen as an embrace of a lifelong partnership, companionship as opposed to a sexual ceremony for the purpose of propagating the species, we could let people alone. 

We can and are now propagating without the blessing of the state or the church every day in America. We don't need government or organized religion to tell us when we can have sex, children or families.  

If we could just look at truth in the eye, we might  all be better off.