“For twenty-five years I've washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked your cow. After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?” You may remember those lines, the lines Golde sings to Tevye when he asks, “Do you love me?” in Fiddler on the Roof, the 1971 blockbuster movie set in pre-revolutionary Russia. Tevye and Golde have been married for 25 years, have 5 daughters, and are grappling with what is love and what is comfort, and with is contentment.
It is a question not relegated to movie plots. The question of what is love often comes up in real life. And after 25 years together, do people still love each other.
In the study "Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love," Acevedo, et al, examined the body response of long-term romantic love using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) by examining the dopamine rich areas of the brain when subjects were queried of their feelings for their partners, close friends, highly familiar persons or friends, and less familiar persons or acquaintances.
Their results, and those of similar studies, showed significantly higher emotional responses for partners and close friends over time than for the not as close friends and acquaintances, when queried about their levels of compassion, friendship, joy, pride, love, passion, and sexual desire. Not surprisingly, levels of passion and sexual desire were greater for partners. That makes sense considering these emotional responses to eros or romantic love are generally directed inward and indicate what stimuli the respondents feel they receive.
What we found interesting was how the responses to compassion, friendship, joy, pride, and love remained high over time for partners and for close friends. These are qualities that reach out to other people and are indicators of how much the respondent can and wants to do for others.
We don’t need controlled experiments to know love can last a lifetime. Kindness is an ageless quality and is a key ingredient to compassion, friendship, joy, and love, particularly agape or selfless love. What we do need reminded of is that it takes work for love to last a lifetime.
We have referred to this Fred Rogers quote several times, most recently in Love’s Struggles. “Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle.” Love takes work. We noted that it takes work even for friends to remain friends over the long run. The advice we proposed to maintain a long-lasting friendship, to be honest, caring, and available, works in maintaining all loving relationships.
There are cynics who would argue that if love takes work, then it isn’t love. Love should flow freely, they would say. Our answer to that is that selfish love may not require work, or at least not much, because of its simplicity, or one-sidedness, and flows more to the receiver. Consider the difference between passion and compassion. In the more selfless loves, the energy flows between both participants. There is action, empathy, service, and ultimately acceptance. Those who work to offer selfless love also experience greater contentment with themselves and appreciate the benefits of receiving as well as giving. Feelings that can and should last a lifetime.
The authors of the study attempted to quantify love by the amount of dopamine released when people were exposed to stimuli recalling their partners versus their friends versus their acquaintances. And the authors found yes, even in long term romantic relationships, love results in dopamine released and pleasure experienced. We know that. We also know that all love also increases the release of adrenaline and norepinephrine, not just “feel good chemicals” but life sustaining substances.
Love is more than just feeling good, even more than feeling good for a lifetime. Love is a quiet quality that lives in each of us waiting for a chance to be shared. There is no expiration date on kindness, that main ingredient in all types of love.
Tevye summed up their conversation with, “Then you love me!” and Golde replied, “I suppose I do,” Tevye agreeing, “And I suppose I love you too.” They both agreed, “It doesn't change a thing, but even so, after twenty-five years it's nice to know.”
That is love and comfort and contentment – long term. Love, lasting a lifetime.
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