What we really want from love

Forget love hearts and whispering sweet nothings, what women really want is someone who will die before them.

It’s a far from romantic notion, but relationship counsellor Steve Dromgool explains the reality of love all comes down to ingrained, biological needs and that includes looking for someone who can protect you.

In Being Human, Dromgool explains our common, rom-com inspired expectations of romantic love are not particularly useful.

‘‘They’re not only not useful, they’re actively harmful. If you go into a relationship with the expectation that just because you have chemistry everything’s going to be great, you are absolutely setting yourself up for failure,’’ Dromgool says, describing this idea as ‘‘the honey trap’’.

‘‘So you fall in love and then you assume that everything’s going to be like the honeymoon and then you feel disappointed when you wake up and you’ve got two kids screaming and you know the bills have to be paid and your partner is not talking to you.’’

Dromgool suggests while everyone is looking for a fundamental sense of intimacy and passion, for women it’s the need for safety that is ingrained.

‘‘Women, unconsciously, want to know that if something goes bump in the night, he dies first, she dies second, baby dies last,’’ Dromgool says.

‘‘And that’s just tied to that biological reality that when women walk around in the world, it’s with a much greater level of threat that they experience than men do.’’

Few of us will have ‘‘looking for a human sacrifice’’ on our Tinder bios or in our wedding vows, but many of us will know the feeling of not being able to eat, sleep or listen to anything but Taylor Swift songs when we meet someone special. But don’t worry; those feelings of obsession will be over by the time Swift has her next album out.

Rather depressingly for all the romantics out there, Dromgool says the longest romantic love (also known as the honeymoon phase) tends to last is about a year.

But when you learn more about the physical impact of falling in love, it’s easier to understand why that initial blast is limited.

‘‘[The] body starts triggering this hormone called phenylethylamine which is what your brain also produces when you smoke crack,’’ Dromgool explains.

‘‘So yeah, it’s highly addictive it’s highly habit forming and it’s why we always want to be with this other person, we want to touch them, we want to look at them, and we’re essentially fascinated by them – because being with them makes us high.’’

When that wears off, and life – and our nervous systems – returns to normal programming, that’s when reality hits. Dromgool says the idea of the ‘‘seven-year itch’’ is very much a reality; if you think about a relationship in terms of a bank account, a lot of money is deposited during the honeymoon period, but once the phenylethylamine starts wearing off, couples start eating into that credit and the cracks can appear.

In fact, an American psychological researcher named John Gottman developed a process where he could watch a couple talk for 15 minutes and then predict with more than 90 per cent accuracy whether they would divorce in the next five years or so.

Gottman’s four signposts were criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling.

Gottman also found that they could predict the number of infectious illnesses that partners would have in the following year based on the level of contempt in the conversation.

‘‘So if criticism is like throwing a rock at your partner, contempt is like throwing a grenade.’’

But Dromgool suggests the antidote to fighting contempt, and the other three signs of a troubled relationship, is simple.

‘‘The major relational superpower is appreciation,’’ he says, explaining how those in the honeymoon phase often spend time sharing what they like about each other. And Dromgool points to couples in happy, healthy long-term relationships doing the same thing.

‘‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ ‘You know you’re so amazing’. ‘I love the way that you do that’. So appreciation makes us feel safer, and resets our body back into that restroom repair system.’’

The relationship expert also suggests taking the time to think and understand how your partner needs to be loved, compared to how you want to be loved.

‘‘What makes your partner feel loved, secure and safe and feel alive?’’ Dromgool asks.

‘‘And if you do all of those kind of things, you’re filling up the bank account and you will build a long-term, happy relationship.’’

Women want to know that if something goes bump in the night, he dies first, she dies second, baby dies last.

Tomorrow: Food