CRAZY LOVE
Remember teenage crushes and being “head-over-heals-in-love.” Well, if you do, you may also remember that everything that happened from about 12 to 20 years old was filled with emotional turmoil. As a teenager, anything can turn you head-over-heals. Certain things about adolescence make love and romance particularly crazy-making. This includes a spike in hormones, a brain that is not fully developed in areas of complex decision making, and not yet having a solid sense of identity. So, why might love still drive you hog-wild as an adult?
More Growth = Better Love
It may help to keep in mind that your first love may have taken place during the time when your brain was still developing towards its adult form. Emotional pathways linked to thoughts and feelings associated with love were formed. So there is a tendency to act in those ways that are pre-programmed, so to speak. But don’t worry. You are not stuck with that teenage love-mind. Current research is demonstrating that our brains have plasticity. This means that pathways can change. This is why some adult couples still act like teenagers, and others have gotten better with age. It just takes a little work to get better at regulating emotions, knowing yourself, and balancing give with take.
Couples Development - First, I want to say a little bit about the development of a couple’s relationship.
Many theories about couples development say that couples develop in a way that parallels early childhood development with parents. One of my favorite theories about this is by Ellen Badder, Ph.D., and Peter T. Pearson, Ph.D., who based their work on Margaret Mahler’s theory of childhood development. Basically, Badder and Pearson propose that a relationship starts with Symbiosis, where each person in the relationship basically merges their life with the other. This is the intense bonding in what we call the “honeymoon” phase, or feeling “madly in love.” Eventually, differences arise and a couple needs to face their differences, thus entering the second phase, Differentiation. I can tell you that theory and experience tells me that most relationships don’t make it past this point. Most people have to go through at least a few relationships before something long-term comes to be. In the next phase, couples practice doing things apart from each other. They each focus a bit more on themselves. This is called Practicing. More conflicts and power struggles can come up here. Eventually, each person will be a little more secure about who they are in the relationship, and Rapprochement occurs. Each person starts focusing more on the relationship and emotional support again. Couples in rapprochement can more easily alternate between independence and increased intimacy. As Bader and Pearson in their book, In the Quest of the Mythical Mate, 1988*, explain the later phases in couples development,“Encouraged to grow through external contacts in the world and strengthened by the knowledge that they are loved by each other, the couple may enter a later phase of constancy, in which the perfect is reconciled with the real and the stage of mutual interdependence is attained.” Here we see a balance between deep intimacy and love, and each person being secure in themselves. This is the polar opposite from couples who are co-dependent, where feelings and actions are based completely on another person, and each person in some way loses themselves.
I like this theory because it spells out what many of us have felt as we strain and struggle to grow our relationships. It challenges the myth of “happily ever after,” and implies that commitment and honesty are critical if a relationship is to last in a healthy way.
David Schnarch, Ph.D. is one of the leading authors and researchers on love and intimacy. He based much of his work on Murray Bowen’s concept of differentiation. “Differentiation,” simply put, means one’s ability to think, feel, and make decisions freely on their own; being able to “balance their independence with interdependence” in a relationship (Schnarch, 2012 in press*). His most recent developments support that the happiest couples have individuals with the ability to manage their own negative feelings, balance holding one’s ground with picking one’s battles, stay mindful and in control of one’s self, and be able to get out of one’s “comfort zone.”
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