How do you make LOVE last?
Studies have shown that positive emotions generate more creativity, less stress, stronger social bonds and protection against divorce
Weddings are all about the spectacle and a promise of forever love. But actually getting there is something all married or otherwise committed couples wrestle with once the honeymoon is over.
Decades of relationship research offers evidence-based insight, alongside all that homespun advice bestowed on newlyweds.
You can debate that relationships are an art, not a science. But maybe love is best understood as a philosophy. Married couple and co-authors of the recent book Happy Together: Using the Science
of Positive Psychology to Build Love That
Lasts, Suzann Pileggi Pawelski and James O. Pawelski frame their work around Aristotle’s notion of the good life. The ancient Greek philosopher argued that the ideal friendship is based on virtue, a message that translates to marriage as well.
In a successful marriage, both partners should strive to be considered “Aristotelian lovers” who see — and actively seek — the good in themselves and one another.
“Aristotelian lovers see the goodness in each other and work to become better themselves as individuals and help one
another develop their character strengths and get better as a team,” Pileggi Pawelski says by phone from Philadelphia, where she and her husband presented their research findings at the Canadian Conference on Positive Psychology.
Aristotle argued virtue was the only sound foundation. That’s why Aristotelian lovers focus on the good they see in their partner, not the fleeting sensations of pleasure or profit. That’s also why they focus on positive emotions such as joy, love and gratitude.
“When we looked at research, we learned those other things, especially passion, tend to die out. It’s hot and heavy in the beginning and then later — do you really like this person’s character?” Pileggi Pawelski says. Positive emotions have been shown in studies to generate more creativity and less stress, as well as stronger social bonds and protection against divorce.
In positive psychology, the aim is not to address conflict or cure illness but to encourage human flourishing and well-
being through the development of good character and good habits. This school of thought combines scientific rigour with the questions that have captivated philosophers: how do we define what is good and how do we become good? These ideas also apply to relationships, Pawelski says.
Crucially, Aristotelian lovers cultivate an identity outside the marriage. “Healthy relationships are characterized by a kind of interdependence, in which the other person doesn’t so much complete us as complement us,” the Pawelski’s write.
This prevents a relationship from stagnating and promotes individual growth, which has cascading positive emotional benefits. As each person changes in interests or habits over time, what makes them inherently good remains and develops further.
All three of the committed partners interviewed for this story by the Star — and yes, it was mostly straight women who responded to a call to talk about relationships — highlighted their individuality despite long relationships, children and cohabitation. All had non-traditional marriages: three-decade age differences, marrying after many years together, a strong partnership with a promise to marry but no formal plans, and stressed that the wedding is just a moment while the marriage is what matters.
Studies have shown couples do “merge” psychologically and even microbiologically, and other research has confirmed some aspects of the initial spark stay mysterious: love at first sight is real, and can happen within seconds.
But social psychology’s interdependence theory suggests that when self-interest is circumscribed by shared interests, partners can work freely toward individual goals with confidence because they enjoy the security of trust and commitment. In an interdependent couple, “each person can be secure, mature, and whole in him or herself, while at the same time being vulnerable and open to the other, appreciating the unique strengths the other person brings to the relationship, and benefiting from a mutual giving and receiving of support,” the Pawelski’s write.
Take Port Credit couple Stephanie Sparks, 52, and Brant Lambermont, 53. They met in 2006, connecting over an obscure quote from the novel Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on Lambermont’s online dating profile. After their first coffee date, Lambermont surprised them both by kissing Sparks on the cheek. Within a few weeks, they were planning Christmas together.
Despite a shared love of quirky
literature, Sparks and Lambermont have very different personalities. Sparks, a data scientist, is messy but logical. Lambermont, a film editor, is tidy and emotional. She prefers to read on the deck while he putters around the house. But they work together, happily delegating tasks according to the other’s strengths and interests, whether chores or emotional labour.
“It’s a true partnership. We don’t have a hierarchy in this house,” Sparks says. “Unless you count the cats.”
“The word ‘respect’ is thrown around so much. But it has to be full respect,” Lambermont says. “If there’s an ounce missing it’s going to show up.”
What they do share is an outlook on life and adopted the motto “Don’t Panic,” which is found on the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, and which they plan to engrave on wedding rings someday.
“Our personalities and our approach to life are complementary. We balance each other out,” Sparks says. “But where we are the same is our core values. If your core values are not the same the rest will not hold.”
Sparks has her own theory of relationships and commitment. She sees four phases: the honeymoon, the reality check, the panic stage and the comfy slippers. Many people never make it past the reality check, when people realize their part-
ner isn’t perfect and the inevitable conflicts creep in, or past the panic stage of wondering whether they can actually commit to this person.
This idea is famously backed up by fMRI brain scans that show newly in-love brains have increased activity in the region that makes dopamine, associated with desire, craving and addiction. Long-time couples who still reported being “madly in love” showed the same activity in the area of dopamine production, but less in the region that produced stress hormones. This all-consuming feeling begins to wane within a few years, hopefully into what has been called companionate love that has a distinct brain system of attachment characterized by oxytocin, the bonding and attachment brain chemical.
Growing up, Sparks observed her grandparents, who were open about the winning formula of their 75-year marriage. They died within13 days of each other, holding hands until the end. Their classic advice: say I love you every day, never go to bed angry, say thank you even for the little things. Indeed, interdependence theory suggests the personality of a relationship emerges over time, through repeating these everyday habits.
For Marilyn Melville, 72, the secret to her 38-year relationship with husband Austin Repath, 83, has been humour, communication and a deep
connection, combined with broad personal space.
The couple did not have children, which made it easier to take multiple lengthy trips alone, coming back to each other refreshed.
“We would never hold each other back if someone wanted to go and do something,” Melville says. She travelled to India for a month, learned Spanish in Cuba for six weeks and roamed across California for several months. Her husband once bought an RV and road tripped across North America alone.
“We’ve given each other a lot of freedom. Because we are both independent, that’s been very important.” They became a couple when she was 35 and he was 46, when they were both set in their ways. They lived common-law in Toronto’s west end for many years, feeling married enough without the rings and piece of paper. But at a Valentine's Day dinner in 2016, he proposed.
“I surprised myself by saying yes,” she says. “A lot of people said, ‘Why did you get married?’ and I said, ‘Well, he asked me.’ ”
“It was a feeling we wanted to celebrate and acknowledge what we had built together. It felt like the right thing to do.”
The ceremony was held that summer in a friend’s backyard overlooking the Humber River in front of 30 family members and friends. And though Melville never wears dresses, to her husband’s enduring consternation, this time she caved. It was red.
Alain de Botton, the UK-based writer and philosopher who is perhaps best known for a viral New York Times essay, “Why you will marry the wrong person,” has written extensively on the philosophy of love. De Botton typically scoffs at flighty romanticism and instead invokes the Greeks, writing often that love is an admiration for the best sides of another person and encouraging their development. His sage advice is to consider compatibility love’s achievement, not its precondi-
tion.
Despite a 31-year age difference, Nancy and Tony Romain figured that out quickly.
“We just got along, and before you knew it, we were in love,” says Nancy Romain, now 59. “It wasn’t easy for us, because we wanted to be married but my friends and his friends thought it would never last.”
They met in 1983 through a mutual friend and married one year later. When Tony died in 2017 at 89, many of those same friends sent cards acknowledging theirs was a true love story.
“During our marriage — he just looked at things so differently than a man my own age. He respected me. He never complained about anything I did. As long as I was happy, that’s all he wanted,” Romain says. “We got along so well. He really was my best friend.”
Assortive mating, or matching based on similar characteristics, is well-documented and many studies of heterosexual couples have shown a preference for a slightly older man and slightly younger woman. However, there is little empirical evidence on the connection between marriage satisfaction and age difference, especially over time.
A 2018 study in the Journal of Population Economics suggested the marital satisfaction of differently aged couples was likely to decline more than similarly-aged couples, but this was generally based on the theory that women marry for financial security and men marry for fertility. That’s less convincing than the research of John Gottman, who has studied couples for four decades in longitudinal studies and controlled clinical trials, and in 2017 wrote an overview of his life’s work in the Journal of Family Theory and Review.
Gottman claimed his research can predict new marriage success rates — 13 per cent will break up within six years — with 90 per cent accuracy, and his research has emphasized the role of friendship in love: feeling known, nurturing fondness and admiration, and turning toward “bids” for affection and connection.
These factors affect not only happy times, but help survive inevitable conflicts through “positive sentiment override,” which helps partners see each other as friends, not adversaries.
Gottman also found that the vast majority of conflicts — 69 per cent — are intractable, based on couples’ fundamental differences, which means dealing with conflict in a sane and accepting way is critical.