Part I – The Flames and Shadows of Romantic Love

The following is Part I of a three-part blog post. Look for Part II next Sunday.

I’ve read that every time you remember something, you’re really only remembering the details from the last time you remembered it—the specifics can change over time, like some mental game of telephone (Paul, 2012). I guess that means I can’t really trust this memory, as it’s one of my earliest, but I’ll tell you about it anyway.

I had a dream when I was three years old. In it, I reenacted the ballroom dance scene from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast with Suzannah Rotz, a girl my mom babysat every now and then (and therefore the love of my life). I remember the aerial views, the rose-colored lights, the graceful sweeping motions of her dress, and—most of all—an almost tangible sense of romance. Now, over 20 years later, that dream has been reduced to a mere idea—a shadow. I couldn’t tell you how much of that dream was real and how much of it I’ve added throughout my life—I don’t know how it’s been shaped by my experiences and my expectations. I don’t even know for sure if the dream was a response to Beauty and the Beast or if it was something that originated within me.

I used to feel the same way about romantic love.

I feel like I’ve always had a good grasp on what love is, but romantic love? It’s hard to really define it, or know what makes it different from love in general. Everyone seems to have their own opinion, however—all fraught with generalizations, rosy expectations, grandiose gestures, and an overwhelming sort of passion. Most people can’t define romantic love, or even pinpoint its cause or origin, but everyone has their own experience to share. But is that experience really their own, or is it the product of their circumstances? What is romantic love?

Jungian psychotherapist Robert A. Johnson says that Western culture now regards romantic love as it once regarded deity: with spiritual fervor and mystery (1983, p. 55). Because romantic love has become the center of so many peoples’ spirituality, many resist any attempt to explain or rationalize it. Romantic love has become an idealized experience that nobody wants to quantify for fear of losing their “happily ever after.”

Whether or not they dance around a hard definition, we can still catch a glimpse of how individuals in our society define romantic love by looking at their language and behavior surrounding romantic relationships. As Johnson puts it,

In our culture people use the phrase, “romantic love,” indiscriminately to refer to almost any attraction between man and woman. If a couple is having a sexual affair, people will say they are “romantically involved.” If a man and a woman love each other and plan to marry, people will say it is a “romance.”… Or a woman will say, “I wish my husband would be more romantic.” But what she actually means is that her husband should be more attentive, more thoughtful, and show more feeling. … We assume that if it is love, it must be “romance,” and if it is romance, it must be “love.” (1983, p. 43-4).

I think it’s obviously a problem when, as a culture, we use the same term for sexual affairs as for loving, committed relationships—and for behaviors that aren’t even inherently “romantic.” Can we really call these “romantic” thoughts and behaviors “love”—the same word we use for the bond a mother has for her child? Or is romance a category of its own? As a culture, we may want to make a distinction here. If we’re not even sure how to recognize what we’re looking for, finding someone to love becomes an insanely difficult task.

In the spring of 2014 I took on that task as I debated over whether or not I had found the love of my life. I was dating a girl named Allison Tenney (sorry, Suzannah). I knew that I loved her even a month into the relationship, but was I in love with her? Did I feel romantic feelings for her? As the relationship progressed, I always enjoyed being around her, and I could see her as a potential wife, but was I in love with her? Most guys probably could have answered that easier than I could, referring to physical symptoms like butterflies in the stomach, that “warm glowing” feeling, the insane desire to kiss her—whatever. But I just didn’t get that.

I, as a man who is remarkably gay, couldn’t rely on my physiology to make that decision for me.

It seems like most people rely on their senses and their attractions to determine whether or not they’re “in love.” Many scientists familiar with neurochemistry and the inner workings of the brain would agree, arguing that romantic love is a purely physiological experience. Dr. Helen Fisher, a leading expert in the biology of love and attraction, describes romantic love as one of three interrelated motivation systems that drive mammals to mate (the other two are the sex drive and attachment) (2006, p. 89). Romantic love in other mammals is classified as “attraction,” which is characterized by “increased energy, focused attention on a specific mate, obsessive following, affiliative gestures, possessive mate-guarding, and motivation to win a preferred mating partner” (p. 90). In various MRI (brain scan) studies held by Fisher and her colleagues, individuals who reported to be “madly in love” displayed a lot activity in their right ventral tegmental area (a fancy name for “this part of the brain”) when shown images of their beloved (p. 91). This area of the brain is associated with high dopamine production.

Dopamine is sort of like the doggy treat of neurochemicals—the brain releases the hormone to reward good behavior. The brain definitely considers furthering the species (mating) good behavior, so when you see or spend time with a potential mate, you are essentially on drugs. You think I’m kidding? Dopamine activity is “associated with ecstasy, intense energy, sleeplessness, mood swings, emotional dependence, and craving” (Fisher, 2006, p. 92), all of which are experienced in romantic love—and drug addiction.

Though dopamine is the main culprit, people under the influence of romantic love may also experience other neurochemical changes. Increased testosterone, for instance, is associated with feelings of lust in both men and women (Van Goozen, et al., 1997). Increased norepinephrine—a hormone similar to adrenaline—gives symptoms of “a pounding heart, elevated blood pressure, and other physiological responses” (Fisher, 2006, p. 92). In a comparison of an OCD group, a recently in-love group, and a control group, researchers found that both the OCD group and the recently in-love group exhibited decreased serotonin, another hormone which “most likely contributes to the lover’s obsessive thinking and impulsivity” (Marazziti, et al., 1999).

Though this seems like an intense addiction, physiological effects of romantic love seem to be fleeting. In a study by Bartels and Zeki, participants had been “truly, deeply, and madly in love” for over a year longer than the participants in Fisher’s study (2000, p. 3829). Their love also registered as less intense than that of Fisher’s participants, who took the same survey (Fisher, et al., 2005, p. 60). In their own supplementary study, Fisher and her associates discovered that individuals who have been in love longer show love activity in different areas of the brain than their honeymooning counterparts—areas that are associated with attachment behaviors in other mammals (p. 60). So maybe romantic love isn’t the only thing couples can experience. Perhaps romantic love can eventually evolve into something more lasting.

Long story short, romantic love is at least initially supposed to feel like being on drugs, and I wasn’t getting any of that with Allison. Maybe my brain just isn’t “programmed” that way. But is physiology all there is to romantic love? Were my options for an eternal companion based solely on my neurochemistry? I’m a gay man, but I had always dreamed of marrying a woman (literally), and as a member of the LDS (Mormon) Church I believed that only a marriage between a man and woman can last forever. That made it especially frustrating when I felt for other men the sorts of things I wanted to feel for Allison. How could I ever marry Allison when I didn’t feel in love with her? Was “just love,” without the excessive dopamine, enough? Was it even real?

Around the same time that I grappled with those questions, Allison and I became very close friends with a few other men who also experience same-sex attraction. Since we all were LDS, they also believed that marriage could only be between a man and a woman in order to be eternal. Because of this, they had also tried dating girls in the past—though to varying levels of success. I was able to share with them my hopes and my frustrations, and, for the first time in a long time, I felt completely open and authentic. I loved these men deeply, and I loved that fact as much as I was terrified by it.

I soon found myself praying some interesting prayers: Please help me to express my love appropriately. Please bless my relationships to be what you want them to be. I was terrified of falling in love with these amazing men, and in contrast I wanted desperately to fall in love with Allison. I thought that if I fell in love with one of my friends, I would be helpless to that love, and that I would abandon all of the goals and values that I held dear. I was caught up in the mysticism of romantic love—a product of my culture. To me, romantic love was some mysterious force that happened whenever you grew too close to someone, and I had no control in the matter. I thought that if I did fall in love with one of my friends, it would ruin our friendship forever.

Left and right, movies, songs, and books were telling me how I was supposed to love Allison and how I was supposed to love my friends, and I was tired of it. Eventually I learned that, as Wesley Hill put it, “You can’t very well commit yourself to pursuing chaste same-sex friendship as a gay Christian and expect that romantic, erotic feelings won’t, somehow, be involved in the pursuit” (2015, p. 76). Maybe romantic love and general, friendly love weren’t as cut-and-dry as I was trying to make them out to be. Besides, I couldn’t very well be expected to follow Christ’s admonition to “love one another” (John 13:34, King James Version) when I was trying hard not to care “too much” for someone. I decided that I shouldn’t hold back from loving my friends because I was afraid of falling in love with them—I’d deal with that if and when it happened. I was tired of being afraid of the nebulous notion of romantic love. I was going to love as God and I saw fit, not as I was expected to by the culture that surrounded me.

At the top of a roller coaster in early July, I asked Allison to marry me.

She said “yes.”

References

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Johnson, R. A. (1983). We: Understanding the psychology of romantic love. New York: HarperCollins.

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Marston, E., & Tenney, A. (2014). Ethan Marston and Allison Tenney [video interview]. Voices of Hope. Retrieved from http://ldsvoicesofhope.org/voice.php?v=65#.VkE9CfmrTIU

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Paul, M. (2012). Your memory is like the telephone game: Each time you recall an event, your brain distorts it [webpage]. Retrieved from http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2012/09/your-memory-is-like-the-telephone-game.html

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