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January 19, 2008
The eventual goal of love is...
not the exciting, heat raising experience that we all wish we could hang on to forever (unless you plan to take Dopamine pills for the rest of your life!), but instead, according to this week's Time Magazine, the goal is "to move beyond the early thrill of love and into the comfort of the Sunday-paper-and-coffee phase".
While the scope of the article is to explain the why(s) and wherefore(s) concerning the importance of love and mating, I was comforted to see that my desire for stability is more common than I thought. Don't get me wrong-I never want to be part of the "old fuddy club". In fact, those closest to me know that I am all about keeping the heat in the relationship alive and well. But, I do believe that the type of stability spoken of in the article is romantic and valuable in its own way; it's built on mutual respect, love, memories (of the wild times), and all of the secrets and private jokes that the couple share.
And then there's the quiz. Yep. A quiz-titled "The Thermometer of Love". Its focus is to assess the different temperatures of love; cool, hot, and scalding. The scores range from 15 to a maximum of 135. I scored a 115, thank you very much! The number/score reflects the heat of your emotions when you felt most passionately about the person in question. If you're currently single, then in order to take the quiz you have to be willing to muster up those old feelings you had for a certain someone. Fret not, the quiz is fun to take, and what have you got to lose? You might learn something about yourself that you didn't know. Good luck!
According to this article...
"If partners are going to stay together, they need a love that bonds them to each other without the distraction of passion. That's not to say that people can't stay in love, or that those couples who say they still feel romantic are imagining things. These people, however, are the exceptions, and nearly all relationships must settle and cool. Long for the heat of early love if you want, but you'd have to pay for it with the solidity you've built over the years. 'You've got to make a transition to a stabler state' says Barry McCarthy, a psychologist and sex therapist. If love can be mundane, that's because sometimes it's meant to be".
And, of course, it will only be as mundane as you both want it to be, right?
Posted by dvaldesd at January 19, 2008 06:48 PM