Features of Passionate Love and Its Neuroscientific Basis
Passionate love is a form of love defined by Elaine Hatfield (1988), characterised by intense craving for the other person, absorption in them, physical arousal and the sheer force of the emotion involved. Hatfield's Passionate Love Scale (PLS) measures it across three aspects: a cognitive element, in the form of thinking about the other person constantly; an emotional element, in the form of heightened happiness when in their presence; and a behavioural element, in the form of the urge to be physically close to them. Neuroscientifically, passionate love is associated with over-activation of the dopaminergic system. In fMRI research by Helen Fisher and colleagues, people in the early stages of romance showed strong activation of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the caudate nucleus when viewing photographs of their beloved. At the same time, a decline in serotonin promotes intrusive thinking, while a rise in norepinephrine heightens arousal and the concentration of attention. It is this neurochemical cocktail that produces the addictive quality of early romantic experience.
How Passionate Love Changes Over Time
Passionate love is a time-limited phenomenon. Its intensity usually decays gradually over the first months to years of a relationship, and when that happens varies widely from couple to couple. This is a consequence of hedonic adaptation: the dopaminergic response to the same reward stimulus, in this case the partner, weakens through neural adaptation. The decay does not signify any decline in the quality of the relationship; it is a normal biological process. Many people nonetheless interpret it as love having gone cold and mistakenly conclude that something is wrong with the relationship. Culturally, too, films and novels frequently portray passionate love as the only true love, which reinforces the belief that fading passion equals relationship failure. In reality, the transition from passionate love to companionate love marks the maturing of a relationship and brings with it a deeper bond and a steadier sense of happiness. It is worth noting, however, that some couples are reported to be able to sustain passionate love over long periods.
Passionate Love and Compatibility Assessment
In compatibility assessment, passionate love is an important concept for distinguishing early attraction from long-term compatibility. Strong passionate love is an advantage in getting a relationship started, but its power to predict relationship satisfaction over the long term is limited. What determines long-term quality is rather the set of elements that remain once passionate love has decayed: intimacy, commitment and compatibility of personality. In relation to the Big Five, high extraversion and high openness show positive correlations with the intensity of passionate love. High neuroticism is associated with instability in passionate love, in the sense of a wide swing between intense elation and dejection. When the heat starts to go out of things, seeing that as a change that happens to everyone rather than as a flaw in your partner or in yourself saves you from jumping straight to the question of whether to break up. From there, looking at what remains in place of the passion, whether your values are pulling apart, whether you can talk things through after a quarrel, whether you still have occasions to do something new together, makes it easier to work out where the substance of continuing this relationship actually lies.