Passionate Love Exists Even In Long Term Relationships

By Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D.

That crazy thing we call love is perhaps one of the most studied and least understood areas in psychology. One reason is that many studies of romantic relationships are carried out not in real life, but in the lab. Making matters worse, many of these studies involve dating relationships between samples of convenience, consisting of undergraduate students. Though these students are certainly capable of close relationships, many of them haven’t matured enough to know themselves, much less what they want out of a romantic partner.

What better way to find out about love than to survey the experts? Not the psychology experts—the expert members of couples who have been married 10 years or longer. The surprising findings of this study, reported in the prestigious journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, showed not only that many people were still in love even after 10 years of marriage, but also which factors predicted the strength of their passion. As reported by Stony Brook University psychologist K. Daniel O’Leary (2012) and his research team, the findings provided a stark contrast to the typically glum view we have of long-term marriages. Rather than being doomed to a bland, mediocre existence, these couples endorsed their positive feelings toward their spouses with hearty (dare I say) enthusiasm. A whopping 40 percent of those married 10 years or more stated that they were “Very intensely in love”—the highest rating on the scale. Another 15 percent gave their marriages the second-highest rating on the love intensity scale. Perhaps even more surprisingly, those who stuck together for 30 years and more also gave their marriages high ratings with 40 percent of women and 35 percent of men saying that they were very intensely in love. Clearly, many couples are able to maintain high levels of passion as the decades go by well into their middle and later years.

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