Written by Kristin Barton Cuthriell, M.Ed, MSW, LCSW
Falling in love and real love are not the same thing. Whether you are single or in a committed relationship, it is extremely important that you know the difference. If you are single, knowing the difference can assist you in making a mature decision when selecting a partner. If you are already committed, knowing the difference may make you think twice about your relationship expectations.
Falling in Love
Falling in love often feels magical. We feel a rush of adrenaline, and our beloved is almost too good to be true. There is a temporary collapse of our ego boundaries, and we almost feel as if we are one. We often put the other on a pedestal, ignoring faults and exaggerating strengths. Our emotions run high, and in our mind, our new love is everything that we have ever wanted. Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking that if we can make this one relationship work, our lives will be healed; our problems gone. We have found the answer to our prayers, we tell ourselves. Life is good.
Does this sound familiar? Have you ever experienced such feelings about another person?
Real Love
Real love may or may not begin with the feelings described above. It may begin with the this is too good to be true feelings that go with falling in love, or it may begin as friendship, without such intensity. Either way, real love is different than the falling in love experience. Scott Peck, M.D. author of the classic book, The Road Less Traveled, defines love as “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Love is difficult to define, but for the purpose of this article, we are going to look at love from the perspective of nurturing self and other within the context of a romantic relationship between two adults.
Real love involves friendship. It is a give and take relationship based on kindness and goodwill. It is based on the sharing of similar values, beliefs, activities, and life goals. Real love involves emotional intimacy, being able to share vulnerable parts of self and feel safe. It involves a fine balance of separateness and unity. It is two different people, with different backgrounds and different opinions, coming together to share their lives with one another.
Real love is not only acknowledging the idiosyncrasies and the things that drive you crazy about the other person, but a willingness to live with them without trying to change the person to fit your ideal. Real love involves an equal amount of self-love and love for the other. In real love, the growth of the other is just as important as your own self growth. Real love is not an automatic feeling. It takes discipline and hard work. It is something that can’t be taken for granted and must be practiced every day.
Knowing the Difference is Important
Too often, people commit to one another because of the feelings involved in falling in love, without realizing that the intensity of these feelings will not last. They may bring two people together, but they will not keep them together. Before committing, it is important to look at the aspects of real love. Are the characteristics that make up real love present in your relationship, or are you in love with falling in love? Are you in love with the real person or some ideal that you have created in your head? Do you love the person for who they are, or are you planning to change them once they commit?
Another reason that it is important to know the difference is because many people end their relationship when the falling in love feeling fades, without realizing that this feeling will fade to some degree in every relationship. The falling in love feeling can turn into real love if certain qualities are present, and hard work, commitment, and discipline are practiced. People who go from one relationship to another, looking for that constant falling in love high, may miss out on ever experiencing real love on a deep level because real love takes time to develop.
Real love, on a deep level, involves a decision, and although the emotions may sometimes feel less intense, real love is much more powerful than falling in love. With real love there is no illusion, it is loving the other person for who they truly are and allowing them to love the real you.
This article was inspired by The Road Less Traveled, by Scott Peck, M.D. and by my own clinical work with clients.
I just love Scott Peck. When I was in the relationship wilderness for 9 years I ate his work up. It’s a major contributing factor to who I am today. Great reminder, thanks for that. 🙂
Thank you for your comments. I have also learned a lot through Peck’s work.
I am glad you brought this subject up. Real love is very hard for me to “adjust to” and I have mentioned in therapy many times that I feel like my sense of love is warped. I have a very difficult time letting down the walls to allow my vulnerabilities come through…and my expression of love is very wrong. I often make jokes and “harass” as affection and I know that is not healthy, especially for the other person. However, my love for my children is very different. I can let the walls down. I can be affectionate and very loving, compassionate, and want all the hugs and kisses in the world. In a relationship, i feel smothered and once the lust phase has passed, I have very little want for affection and intimacy. I have no clue how to fix this and was even told by a therapist that I probably developed this very young as a defense mechanism that may never be fully changed.
Any ideas or books that can help me to jump this hurdle? I feel like men will give me 200% of themselves and do everything to make me happy and I do nothing for them other than be a pretty face. 🙁 I don’t want to be like this, or make them feel that way.
I think that you can be helped. I recommend that you find a cognitive behavioral therapist. You may also find the book, Fear of Intimacy by Firestone helpful. It is a textbook, but has great information that you may relate to.
Our love for our children is unique in that children make no emotional demands of us. They allow us to just be. Their wants and needs are simple and unconditional. They are elated to have us in their lives and usually content with wherever our comfort level lies in the realm of affection. Adult relationships are more complex and dimensional. They cannot exist without expectations and emotional demands because we enter into them in a latent phase. An infant loves us without knowing us, but an adult loves us only after knowing us. The basis of knowledge creates expectations. Though I am not a professional, I might suggest that you seek out other individuals who are more independent. If you often incur feelings of suffocating in your relationships, perhaps a person who is just as happy alone as they are with you, may prove to be a successful match. I mention this only because in years past, I was very co-dependent and truly needed the companionship of my partners. It may have been suffocating. I am now at a place in my life that I am truly happy with who I am and being by myself. I think my independence helps both me and my spouse in our relationship. Good Luck in your search.
Thank you for your insightful comments and questions. Does distance make the heart grow stronger or are people more likely to stray? Good question. I am sure this depends on the individuals involved, the relationship, the unique situation, and the values of the couple involved. It is my hope that some of my readers will answer this question. I would like to know their thoughts.
I guess I’ve been lucky.
Thank you for reading, liking, and commenting. Have a great day.
So here is my question for you. Do you believe that distance can smooth this journey. My mother in law once told me that the military life saved her marriage. We live with our parents and sibling for at least 18 years, but then we leave them and are usually very ready for this separation. We love them through our childhood and for most of us, we continue this bond throughout life. In marriage, we are enamored in our courting period and then in love through early marriage and child rearing, but the marriage is challenged in the face of longevity. Its luster dims and we all must work harder. Is it possible that our spousal love would be reignited when presented with trial distancing or would we all just stray?
Argh. I just heard from my sister this week that she is planning to engage and marry her boyfriend of three weeks. Immediately alarm bells started going off in my head and you elucidated my fears quite well. Clearly they are still in the “falling in love” phase and the adrenaline has not worn off yet. I really hope they rethink it and decide to slow things down a bit before jumping into any serious commitments.
Although it would be wiser to wait, maybe they will be one of those couples who have enough in common, such as goals, values, beliefs, that their falling in love turns to real love. It does happen.
Great post and so true! The only thing I would add is the value of self-love. It’s hard to truly love another if we don’t love ourselves first. When we don’t love ourselves, we are more susceptible to the idea that the other person’s love will “fix” us.
Good point! I could not agree more. Thank you.
I think that the problem is that we use the English word “love” to describe too many different feelings ant then we get confused by what we truly mean.
I myself like agape, unconditional love – true love, but even that can define the love you feel for your childre or the love you feel for your spouse (which is different.)
Love is so complicated.
Hi, Bliss! Yes, I agree that Love is really complicated. As I explore Love, I began to discover that all definitions, feelings and experiences we attribute to it are manifestations of Love, just as how ocean, river, rain, puddle, clouds, vapor, ice and snow are the same water. BY paying attention to the origin of those forms, we cannot miss seeing what Love really is.
Thank you for your comments and great thoughts on love
Hi,
Very nicely said, and a very interesting read. 🙂
Thank You for visiting my blog.
Wow, very interesting post. Thanks for stopping to visit mine, as well. C’mon over anytime. I’ll fix us some tea. 😉
-Carol
I’ve been married for 39 years and have experienced many ups and downs in the course of my relationship with my husband. One thing that has helped me is the decision to make it work no matter what–I don’t view our life together as a train stop (getting off when I don’t like the way the trip is going). The other is my view that I married this man, had children with him and even now, he IS part of my family. We are separate, but we are united as one. The lust of early love is gone but I love HIM–we’ve changed and grown so much since those early years. We’ve worked hard, very hard, to continue our journey together. I’ve been very lucky indeed–no abuse ever or it would have come undone, I’m sure. But the other parts–the sticky ones, likes and dislikes–can be worked through where one can thrive, nurture and be nurtured. It’s a wonderment, this old love. Very nice article!
Your comments are wonderful. You are an inspiration and can teach so much to so many. Thank you.
I love where you said real of is about friendship…this is so valuable to know…I have been with my best friend and partner over ten years now…our foundation as friends made us what we are in it today….I wish more people would know and practice this simple step before they commit to marriage and children….but I have been there too…..I really enjoyed this post, your words bring much light and wisdom….thank you
Celeste
Thank you for commenting. Friendship is so important. I think too many people forget to treat their partner as a true friend.
Scott Peck’s classic is one of my many “textbooks” on Love. Thanks Kristin. Such discussion on Love’s true nature is so crucial to our transformation.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting.
Thank you for your presence, Kristin! =D
One of the lesser-known qualities of real love is that it makes possible falling in love, over and over, with the same person. Falling in love again and again with someone you really love and who really loves you is an experience I didn’t expect when I got married. You can have both, but the falling in love parts comes in waves. The real stuff is dependable like the tides.
Beautiful! Thank you for reading and commenting, Vicky.
Ah, what a really written and well-thought-out and articulated post, Kristin! You wrote about one of my favorite subjects (real love and how it’s different from romantic love), and you referenced one of my favorite authors and books (M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Traveled”)!
And as I read through your post, this is what my mind zeroed in on in particular—“Real love is not an automatic feeling.”
And these are the thoughts that came to mind after I finished reading your post. . . .
That’s precisely what differentiates real love from romantic love—that “Real love is not an automatic feeling.” In fact, real love is not even a feeling. Whereas “romantic love” is a feeling—it is purely and entirely an emotional experience. And, truth be told, romantic love is not even “love”—it’s not about “love”—so it really doesn’t warrant that word. Romantic love leads just as often, if not more often than not, to anger, divorce, separation, non-love, apathy, banishment, abandonment.
What romantic love really is (or seems to be) is infatuation, limerance, lust, the mating urge interacting with a lot of our projections and unmet needs and wants as well as our areas where we’re still dependent (not sufficiently self-developed enough yet). Romantic love is entirely emotional, automatic, reactive, and sometimes without principle.
When two people fall in love, they can’t believe that this super hot sexy interesting funny powerful cool (some combination of the above) person has chosen them, wants to be with them, and thinks they’re super cool, attractive, sexy, handsome, beautiful, interesting, captivating, awesome, et cetera.
And thus romantic love takes place and takes off because of all of this—because of all of this euphoria and disbelief and amazement. And because all of this (all of this emotion and feeling) is new—and with a new person—it’s all so exciting and exhilarating!
When we truly love another person, it’s not just about us—it’s about the other person—that person’s best interest and welfare/well-being and happiness and psychological health and spiritual growth are all as important to us as our own. We’ve internalized the other person in that sense; or we’ve permanently transcended ourself and our ego in that way.
But romantic love isn’t about the other person in that way—the other person is not yet an end-in-him-or-herself to us yet, because the other person is not yet a real person to us yet, someone we actually know really well and deep down. We’ve just met the other person. He or she is new to us. so the other person is not yet a real person to us yet, but a fill-in-the-blank person and a spackle and paste over and paste onto person—a person we largely project onto and makeover into the type of person we are craving. (And of course the other person usually helps in the process, in part by misrepresenting him- or herself, and hiding their character flaws and skeletons, and putting their best foot forward; just as we are likely doing).
And because the other person isn’t yet a real person and instead is a fill-in-the-blank person, the other person is serving as a means or a prop or a tool for us and our emotions—the person is making us feel better about ourselves, life, making us feel more alive, more acceptable, beautiful, desirable, et cetera. We’re using the other person and the relationship as a drug, we’re using the relationship to get high, jacked, pumped, intoxicated, buzzed. Thus romantic love isn’t (yet) really about the other person at all and about loving that person; instead romantic love is about us and how we’re feeling and what we’re getting out of the experience/relationship. It’s about the high. And so romantic love is about giving in order to receive; it’s about giving in order to feel a certain way and to keep feeling a certain way and to maintain that buzz; it’s about how the other person makes us feel. (As you asked, Kristin—“are you in love with falling in love?” many people are—most people love the high more than the person that gets them high; and most people love and value the other person because the other person gets them high—i.e. how the other person makes them feel. And once that changes—i.e wanes—the other person tends to be discarded, thrown back, becomes expendable—and is treated accordingly—capriciously, much less kindly, harshly, indifferently.)
So romantic love is not about actually loving the other person as a person, as a real life real live human being at all. At least no yet.
But after about 6 months to 2 years, “romantic love” tends to either crash and burn or begin fade and fall apart. The feelings are less intoxicating, the sex becomes less frequent, the lust and infatuation wane. Reality sets in. (“Reality intrudes,” is how Peck put it.) Individual differences and individual tastes and preferences start to reemerge and reassert themselves again. Ego preferences begin reappearing. People begin taking each other for granted, getting more and more comfortable with each other—perhaps too comfortable with each other—get tired of each other, get tired of trying new things or doing what the other person likes. Safe/agreeable topics of conversation are exhausted. The two people are no longer trying to win (or woo) each other: they’ve already won each other. So they get lazy, complacent, bored, take each other for granted, and start keeping a tally of every time the other person doesn’t make them feel special or go out of their way for them anymore (like they used to). They start experiencing more and more disappointment, unfulfillment; they start sobering up, experiencing the withdrawal symptoms (the DT’s) from their drug of choice (romantic love).
“And it is at this point, that they begin either to dissolve the ties of their bond or begin to initiate the work of real love,” to paraphrase Peck.
To me, Kristin, one of the most salient and game-changing/life-altering/eye-opening parts of Peck’s analysis is his insistence that real love *is not* a feeling—that “real love often occurs in the context in which the feeling of love is lacking, when we act lovingly despite the fact that we don’t feel loving” (pg 88), and—
“Love is not a feeling. Many, many people possessing a feeling of love and even acting in response to that feeling act in all manner of unloving and destructive ways. On the other hand, a genuinely loving individual will often take loving and constructive action toward a person he or she consciously dislikes, actually feeling no love toward the person at the time and perhaps even finding the person repugnant in some way. . . . Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. If it is, so much the better; but if it isn’t, the commitment to love, the will to love, still stands and is still exercised. Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to sometimes avoid acting on feelings of love. . . . True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision. The common tendency to confuse love with the feeling of love allows people all manner of self-deception” (pp. 116-119).
Great post, Kristin. Not sure how I missed it several months ago and how/why I happened upon it now. But it was clearly very thought-provoking for me!
Kindest regards,
John
So, SO true. And the Road Less Traveled is one of the deepest, best books I’ve ever read. Thanks for this!!!
Reblogged this on In Hot Pursuit of Happiness! and commented:
Word!!!
I wrote about experiencing the “fall” in love with my (now) husband. It’s fascinated me ever since it happened. Lucky for me the fall turned real. I enjoyed your post.
http://enchantedseashells.com/2012/07/30/just-a-cup-of-coffee/
Sounds like you married the right man. 🙂 I look forward to reading more of your posts.
Thank you! I’ve been enjoying yours.
I am thrilled to report that after 16 years of marriage I “fall in love” with my beautiful wife again and again and again… Yes, it does come in waves and is not constant, as is the cosntant real love I have for her and she for me. But without the frequent intoxicating moments of ‘falling’, our marriage would not be complete. You have to work at this process but it is possible to retain frequent episodes of falling if you desire it.
This is wonderful to hear! Thank you for sharing.
John, I enjoyed reading your insightful comments. Thank you for adding to my post.
You’re welcome, Kristin!