★ “Romantic Love Can Last”

AoM:

As it turns out, your brain reacts to love the same way it reacts to cocaine. So you weren’t nuts to feel addicted to your beloved nor the physical pain of withdrawal when she left you. Love lights up the reward centers of your brain and douses them in dopamine, as well as serotonin and oxytocin. These neural fireworks set off feelings of euphoria, pleasure, craving, recklessness, and obsession.

So when you’re smitten, you’re literally flying high. But the high can’t last, and it isn’t designed to. Or so it was thought.

Researchers theorized that intense romantic love was only a temporary stage designed to make mate selection more efficient, and that once this powerful force brought two people together, it inevitably mellowed into attachment or “companionate love,” a stage that develops as time passes and the couple’s lives become intertwined. As opposed to the intensity of romantic love, companionate love is marked by a happy togetherness and a comfortable stability that is designed to keep the couple together to raise their children.

And indeed, that progression from romantic to companionate love can be observed in the majority of the population. When researchers looked at the brains of those who had been together for years, the scans confirmed their theory; the regions that used to light up with romantic love had dimmed and been replaced by activity in the centers for long-term attachment and pair-bonding. Passionate, romantic love, researchers concluded, had an average shelf-life of about 12-18 months–up to four years at the absolute most.

But what about the elderly couple holding hands that your girlfriend points at and says, “Aww, I want to be like them?” The couples who claim to still be head over heels for each other even after a few decades together? Are they lying? Fooling themselves? Is it possible to thwart evolutionary destiny?

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