In Romantic Love much of the “feel good” is caused by a drug, PEA, phenylethylalamine. This amphetamine like drug, sometimes called the drug of infatuation, is secreted in a person’s brain. PEA raises your energy level so that you can work all day and be up all night. PEA makes depressed people feel better and anxious people relax. PEA raises the sex drive and thus “turns people on.” Sexually passive people are suddenly very active.

And PEA is what I call a proximity drug, meaning that when the loved one is near or when you think of the loved one, PEA increases. When the “loved one” leaves, the level of PEA drops. You can easily get the idea that “they turn you on,” when it is really your own body that determines these things. The effect of PEA is to make you want to be with your partner all the time. The experience is a bit like a roller-coaster.

Romantic love sounds like a puppy, panting with excitement.

Data

The second [difference] Romantic Love has to do with data – how much do you know about your partner.

In Romantic Love people have almost no data. I sometimes call them “dumb as posts.” Teenagers can fall in love with someone in the hallway at school. Millions fall in love with movies stars. Data is not a necessary or perhaps even a desirable attribute of Romantic Love.

I heard once that “People actually fall in love with the ‘person’ they dream of … when they look at their partner and not with the person they are physically looking at.” They don’t even know their partner. I like this phrase. [Infatuated people project values on their romantic interest]

If you ask Romantic Lovers about each other, you tend to get very inaccurate, but optimistic answers. “She really likes that, I think.” “He’s always done that, I am sure.” And even though Lovers seem to talk a lot, there seem to be many undisclosed “secrets.”

Because they think they know a lot, and don’t, their lives are fully of surprises.

Thus we can expect that along the path [from] Romantic to [where they are going], couples do a lot of self-discovery, self-disclosure, sharing, listening and learning.

Agreement

Another trait that we can point to is Agreement. Romantic Lovers put a high priority on Agreement. They speak of agreeing on almost everything as though disagreeing is somehow a bad thing. They talk of having the same values, same experiences, his/her towels, past-lives, etc. They are soul-mates. If I hear a couple saying, “We agree on most everything.” I know they are in Romantic Love.

Romantic Lovers seem to value agreement very highly and thus don’t get much data. They seem to prefer “shallow agreement.”

Consumption – Production

Romantic Lovers tend to be consumers. They frequent the mall. They buy things for each other. They collect. They party…. and when they are done partying have nothing to show for it. They appear needy.

Self-Responsibility

The last trait I want to compare is Self-responsibility. Romantic Lovers tend to be remarkably passive, waiting for the other to lead or to do it. It is fun to hear them saying, “No, you go first. No, you go first.” Or “What do you want to do for lunch?” or “I’ll do whatever you want.” It almost seems as if they are waiting for the other to speak, to take the lead, so that the other can follow.

But also this “waiting” seems to have a tone of anticipating someone else to take care of them. This can show up as simply as sitting at the dinner table and waiting for the other person to start clearing the dishes. It can show up in one person always holding the door for the other – a kind of compulsive one sidedness. This trait often emerges later in complaints about unfairness or feeling used.

It often shows up in the way Romantic Lovers speak. “You make my life so great!” “You turn me on.” This tends to sound as if one (active) person causes the other’s (passive) feelings. This trait becomes a powerful problem in the next territory of the map and surfaces as blame and finger pointing.

Romantic Love Ends

The Romantic Love period always ends. It has to. I like to say it lasts for 9 minutes up through 9 months. But it always ends.

If there was one thing I could change in this country, it would be to get Hollywood and all those Romance novel writers to teach that Romantic Love is a period, not a forever. People fraudulently tell you that if you find the right person, it will be happiness ‘forever after’. It isn’t. Perhaps we could make a class action suit against all the perpetrators of this lie. I have seen so much pain when the normal process of ending of the romance happens. “I don’t love him any more.” “She just doesn’t turn me on.”

Yet Hollywood, romance novels, and soap operas, repeat the lie, “And they lived happily ever after.”

And yet, I truly believe that falling-in-love, romantic love as a basis for partner selection [unless you already have a partner], is a wonderful and positive force. It just has to end and no one wants it to end.

It must

The first reason Romantic Love must end is that PEA, phenylethylalamine, the chemical basis for the “feel good,” is a short term effect. It stops. One day your partner will walk into the room, and you won’t be turned on. And it will never come back with that person again. It seems to be part of the mating process in mammals and after a while just stops.

When the PEA stops, the heightened sex drive stops. Since one partner or both partners’ sex drive will decrease unexpectedly, there is a lot of pain, and a sense of betrayal. “You lied to me that you liked it!” “What is the matter with me?” Yet this is normal.

By the way, many people get a kind of addiction to the “rush” of Romantic Love. They go from partner to partner trying to keep up the “feel good” and causing lots of pain. Better they should take a break and think about it. [This is the Michelle Langley book boiled down to a couple of sentences]

The second reason romantic love must end is that you cannot live together long and have no data. Living together produces data, and data is “terminal.” Once you’ve got it, you can’t get rid of it. As data begins to accumulate, the wonderful dreams, the fantasies, begin to be replaced by hard “facts”. You can’t stay naive forever.

The third reason romantic love must end is that holes begin to appear in the agreements. Over time you learn more and more that your partner doesn’t see things your way. Different values begin to surface. Time together brings this on.

The fourth reason is that buying things costs a lot and doesn’t fill the empty hole in selves. The two of you end up sitting there with lots of things, lots of charges on your credit cards and still feel empty.

And lastly the passivity emerges as blaming. And if I think you “turn me on”, then when I don’t feel turned on, I will think, “You turn me off.” It’s your fault.