The Value of Pursuing “Companionate Love”
Why “true love” carries as many problems as it solves.
My friend Emily always needed to be in a relationship. If she and her boyfriend broke up, she’d be back in another relationship within a month. She was beautiful, funny, and had zero trouble meeting willing suitors. And so the relationship windmill continued.
It always felt like she was chasing something that she couldn’t quite catch. She always felt dissatisfied.
One day, I turned to her and said, “Why don’t you just take six months to yourself and not date anyone. Just do you for a while and enjoy your life?”
She looked at me like I was insane, and just said, “That’s not how I work.”
Many people operate like Emily, always looking for their one true love, the solution to all their woes. And it should come as no surprise that belief in such idealistic notions has poor results. There’s a type of love that lasts longer, and resounds and performs better than all others. But is it worth pursuing?
Why the other path doesn’t work
A study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that the more someone believes in concepts such as “true love” and “the one”, the more likely they are to develop attachment…
