Love lives for three years - a common thesis, in which there is some truth. Unfortunately, people often forget that this is just a fraction, and not the whole truth.
The result of such forgetting is divorce and separation, emotional wounds and suffering. In order to somehow reduce the destructive power of the mentioned thesis, I wrote this note.
"I'm flying, I'm in paradise!..."
Let's start with the main one. Indeed, there is a feeling that lives for about three years. And you can even call it love.But in social psychology it is called more precisely - love-passion. This is a specific psychological state, which is accompanied by arousal (not only in the sexual sense), directed at a specific person. In addition to excitement, there is also an obsessive desire to be with this person and serious feelings in case of separation (even temporary).
According to the description, by the way, it is very similar to the behavior of an alcoholic - he shakes with the desire to drink, overcomes all obstacles on the way to the coveted bottle and suffers greatly if he cannot drink.
On the psychological level, love-passion is experienced as bliss - a person flutters, flies, full of euphoria, everything is beautiful and smells of violets. True, there are psychologists who consider this all as a disease, but this is still only a point of view, albeit a well-founded one.
The main thing is not this. The main thing is in the duration of love-passion.
Everything ends someday
Man is an addictive being. As studies have shown, we very quickly adapt to both good and bad. People who have won a lot of money are no more happy after two months than those who have not won anything. People who have been diagnosed with HIV feel the same way after five weeks as those who have not.The ability to adapt is our great evolutionary advantage.
True, in the case of love-passion, it goes sideways to us. It lasts an average of three years (those same three years!), And then a terrible time comes.
Still, everything was fine, both were shaking with passion, everything was painted in iridescent colors, wings seemed to grow behind our backs ... But we are already quarreling, rolling out mutual claims and telling our friends, girlfriends, what a monster our partner turned out to be “really ".
Once again - it seems to us that our partner was pretending, but in fact he was different. This is mistake. Most likely, love-passion just ended.
At such a moment, a person is faced with unexpected news - it turns out that relationships are quite difficult, albeit rewarding work. But I don't want to work! When there was love-passion, you didn’t have to work, everything was spinning by itself, without any effort.
The easiest thing in this situation is to blame the partner for everything and get a divorce. It is curious that in all countries where divorce is possible, the highest frequency, according to the research of the American scientist Randy Fisher, falls on the fourth year of marriage (I quote: “during and about the fourth year”). At least that was the case in 1994.
Everything converges. They met for a year, two lived in marriage, for a year they suffered from a discrepancy between dreams and reality - and broke up. Disappointment, you know, is a terrible joke.
There is no way to avoid it - love-passion will pass, remaining only in relatively rare and unpredictable bursts. This is inevitable, like the onset of winter in Minsk - it will come anyway, do not hope for a miracle.
But something is really available to people - you can sober up.
Yes, just sober up. Do not fill your head with fairy tales about beautiful love that arises by itself and develops by itself, It's not like that - relationships are always work, difficult, but rewarding.
Here is some interesting data from India (from 1982). Indian scientists Usha Gupta and Pushpa Singh studied 50 married couples. It turned out that the spouses who married “for love” after five years no longer love each other so much. Their love has grown cold.
But the spouses who were combined by an arranged marriage began to love each other more. And - as a result - very happy with their marriage.
Why is that? Because they had no illusions and subsequent disappointments. They immediately knew that it would be difficult - and calmly treated the difficulties of marriage. Therefore, it was easier for them to overcome them.
In social psychology, in addition to love-passion, love-friendship is also distinguished. If love is passion - about excitement, then love-friendship is about tender affection.
That's just on love-friendship and keep all happy marriages. Yes, love-passion is pleasant and attractive. But it ends, inevitably ends.
And if you don’t want to get divorced, you can switch to love-friendship. It does not exclude lust and passion, it will only be less exalted and more demanding on the efforts of partners.
How to go to it? It's simple (though not easy). No need to focus on what has stopped working in a relationship. Start noticing what keeps working. Maintain it, make an effort, show attention to the partner - that's all.
Yes, it requires a lot of work, yes, love-passion is not accompanied by such efforts, yes, that's right. But love-friendship can last until death. And love-passion cannot.
The choice, as you know, is individual.
And I have everything, thank you for your attention.
It is hard to believe that our feelings and the logic of relationships in a couple are genetically programmed. But the behavior characteristic of lovers has been developed over millions of years of evolution. “This is true,” says Sergey Savelyev, Doctor of Biological Sciences, author of the book The Origin of the Brain. “Our distant ancestors simply didn’t have time for romance: the main goal was to survive and continue their race.”
It was this need that forced people to pair up: alone, it is difficult to protect a child, get food for him and at the same time protect yourself and him from predators. But something else was needed to make the man and woman stick together.
“You can say that this is how love arose. Thanks to this feeling, two adults were able to admire each other, and so much so that they wanted to live together, and suffered when they parted, says French neuroscientist Lucy Vincent. “The chemical processes that took place in the brain seemed to blind them: they did not notice each other’s shortcomings, felt integrity and completeness, and were emotionally dependent on a partner.”
The strength of this feeling allowed the couple to stay together for the survival of the child, and after about three years, when he grew up and could do a lot on his own, it faded away. “Now one parent was enough to survive,” continues Sergey Savelyev. - Why stay together if the task of procreation is completed? From an evolutionary point of view, such a question is quite logical.
The power of hormones
“Like in ancient times, the love feeling of a modern person is controlled by his brain,” says Sergey Savelyev. “And all in order to help preserve the human genome: we must continue our species, and the brain forces us to behave in such a way as to achieve this goal in the best possible way.”
Anthropology professor at Rutgers University in the United States, Helen Fisher, has spent 30 years researching the nature and chemistry of love. They showed that its various stages - romantic love and long-term attachment - are neurologically and biochemically different from each other.
But each is accompanied by an increase in hormonal levels. The feeling of falling in love is associated with androgens and estrogens, stable love relationships - with dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin, the feeling of attachment - with oxytocin and vasopressin.
When the work of the brain returns to normal and it returns to its usual rhythm, hormones stop stimulating the emotional dependence of partners on each other. At this point, the hormone oxytocin begins to play a special role. He seems to help the couple overcome the emerging crisis moment in the relationship. Its blood level rises when two people caress each other, kiss, make love, and even when they talk peacefully over dinner.
Oxytocin stimulates the immune system, slows down the heartbeat, thanks to it our body relaxes. And we feel a deep sense of togetherness and affection. “Love makes us focus on one particular person - this saves us time and energy,” says Helen Fisher. “And attachment encourages us to live with one partner long enough.”
Perhaps that is why those couples who maintain a warm, tender relationship, and three years after the first meeting, live together for a long time. Partners are aware that they are no longer emotionally dependent on each other, they do not need to be together every minute. And yet they are happy.
“Perhaps from this moment true love begins,” suggests Jungian analyst Robert Johnson. “Partners strive to get to know, to understand the other as an ordinary, real person, they begin to love him in this capacity and take care of him.”
Is it worth breaking up?
It is difficult for lovers to imagine that excitement, strong emotional dependence on each other will pass in about three years, and a crisis may arise in family relationships.
“It was like my eyes were opened,” says 26-year-old Lilya. - I realized that my husband does not suit me at all, we are different people. And he began to behave with me in a different way, began to teach, to make claims. I realized that I stopped liking him.”
Starting new relationships and experiencing new crushes, they may never experience true love.
“At the end of the phase of crazy love, when we do not receive “supporting” this feeling of brain signals, there comes a moment of awakening, comments Lucy Vincent. - Our satellite no longer seems irresistible to us, on the contrary, “unexpectedly” we find many shortcomings in it. There is a feeling that we have been deceived. And we think that maybe we just made the wrong choice.” Since the partner is experiencing approximately the same thing at this moment, there is a danger of a real break in relations.
Those of us who react too violently and quickly to the cooling of feelings and consider separation as the only possible reaction to what is happening are at risk of falling into a vicious circle. Starting new relationships and experiencing new crushes, they may never experience true love.
University of London Medical College scientists Andreas Bartles and Semir Zeki scanned the brains of students in love and found that love triggers mechanisms similar to those that produce euphoria from drugs.
“Moreover, “love affection” is formed according to the same algorithm as drug addiction,” says psychophysiologist Alexander Chernorizov. - A person again and again strives to reproduce forms of behavior that have already led to a feeling of pleasure, in a broad sense - to success. And this is a biologically justified algorithm.”
“Lovers are always in high spirits, they can’t sleep, they don’t want to eat,” says psychologist Ekaterina Vashukova. “Euphoria-producing chemicals can also be addictive.” Starting new novels, some of us strive with all our might to return to this intoxicating state.
But such people quickly develop tolerance for "love drugs", which is why their romances are so short-lived. Physical attraction, not supported by feelings, also leads to the production of "euphoric" substances, but for a much shorter period and in smaller quantities.
More than chemistry
“The brain and the chemical processes occurring in it, of course, affect our behavior, but love is never fully programmed,” says Alexander Chernorizov. - Of course, we also depend on the "hormonal component" of love attraction - this is the ancient driving force of our survival.
But hormone chemistry alone is not enough to explain the success or failure of a relationship. The power of hormones is great, but so is the power of personal, social experience. In real life, these factors act together, and it cannot be argued that any of them takes over.
When Helen Fisher was asked how she feels about love after receiving the results of her research, she replied: “I studied the mechanism of love, but this did not diminish her charm in my eyes. You continue to enjoy the dessert, even if you are given a detailed description of its composition, right?
Knowing that the information written in the genes affects our feelings and behavior, that at some point hormones affect us, does not detract from the happiness that we experience next to our loved one. And our desire to maintain and continue relations with him. On the contrary, now we have the opportunity to think differently: dependence is over - there is time to think about the development of our relations.
The roots of the myth
The French writer Frederic Beigbeder did a lot to popularize the myth of the primordial doom of any attachment. The hero of his famous novel Love Lives Three Years, Marc Maronier, after three years of marriage, falls passionately in love with another. But the stereotype that "eternal love" does not exist makes Maronier skeptical about this relationship. As soon as he enters them, he already foresees a quick break.
Begbeder once admitted that he takes up the pen solely for the purpose of "doing something with it." And he is convinced that the idea of a stable relationship in a couple has become obsolete. Not feeling the border between falling in love and long-term affection, Begbeder's heroes call for the very concept of "eternal love" to be consigned to oblivion. And at the same time they demonstrate an infantile unwillingness to perceive relationships in a couple as the result of constant and meaningful inner work.
"Don't get hung up on relationships"
Why is it dangerous to pre-set an expiration date on a relationship? What is the attraction of such an approach? And how to overcome the crisis of three years? We talked about this with a psychotherapist, doctor of psychological sciences, author of the book “Psychology of Personality and Human Essence” Alexander Orlov.
psychology:“Love lives only three years” - why is this setting so in demand?
Alexander Orlov:
A wedding as a one-time event, fidelity as an indisputable value - such is the centuries-old position of the Christian society. The modern world uses other ideas, in particular - that love lasts three years. This is a very market setting. She not only allows her to leave her partner after three years, she simply obliges to do it!
We are already participating in a pipeline of constant change. Under the pressure of society, we change cars, housing, clothes for more fashionable and prestigious ones. And we've been doing this more and more lately. Now our relations are also involved in this movement.
Everyday life can push to the decision to part with a partner: in any relationship there are periods of falling in love, routine, difficulties, conflicts. And at some point it may seem that love has passed. Society offers ways not to solve, but to distract from these problems.
The problems are only exacerbated, which eventually leads to a break. And to the search for new partners and relationships in which all the same difficulties arise. This situation creates a situation of adultery, mutual betrayal, makes it the norm of life.
When the period of falling in love passes and the scenes of showdown begin to repeat like a broken record, you need to make an effort and break out of this circle in order to change your own life. Only then does the prospect of new relationships appear, new meetings within the former family, in which live not a housewife and a breadwinner or, say, a matron and a henpecked man, but two full partners, each of whom has his own life.
They are not limited to family relationships, they live dynamically, they change, but at the same time they interact. There are also problems in such a marriage. But they become an incentive for change, development of each of the partners, and not a reason for monotonous conflicts that lead to the thought: “Enough, as much as possible, we must disperse!”
The development of each of the partners and their joint development as a couple helps them understand and feel that love does not die after three years - it continues to live, taking on new forms.
Love - how much in this word! Passion, attraction, the feeling of floating above the ground, when it seems that you can handle everything. Why do some couples break up a couple of years after they met, while others go hand in hand for the rest of their lives? Is it true that love lives for 3 years - about this in this article.
Why love lives 3 years in terms of psychology and physiology?
Scientists have found that many human feelings, including those, are due to biochemical reactions in the body. When a person falls in love, certain parts of his brain begin to release a variety of substances - hormones, biologically active components, neuropeptides, adrenaline, serotonin, amphetamine-type substances, etc. They determine a person's behavior for the next 3 years. Why exactly 3? Yes, because just by the end of this period, biochemical reactions in the body stop.
For those who are wondering why they say that love lives for 3 years, it is worth answering that a child conceived during this period maintains the level of hormones at the proper level. Until he gets stronger and gets on his feet, their concentration remains quite high, and after the incident of 36 months it drops. After that, the woman loses interest in her partner. From the point of view of psychology, there is a fading of feelings, spurred on by everyday life, mutual grinding, and the solution of various family problems. Therefore, it is safe to say that love lives exactly 3 years and this is true. Another thing is that not all partners break up after this period. Many move to a new level, due to the formation of the hormones endorphins in their blood.
That is, if partners enjoy each other, housekeeping, sex and other aspects of life, then they remain close. That is, the relationship is experiencing a new round of its development, which is called mature love.
Scientists say: any, even the most ardent at first, love dies 3 years after the start of a relationship. Then comes mutual respect, habit, fear of being alone, but that feeling that makes men move mountains, and women - to look younger and prettier before our eyes - goes away forever or turns into friendship. Psychologists agree with this - who in their practice have encountered hundreds and thousands of such "transformations" - and physiologists, who have carefully studied the entire "chemistry" of love and explain it with ordinary hormonal surges.
Critical time
As unromantic and bleak as this theory may seem, there is plenty of evidence for it. “With me, with my friends, all relationships sooner or later became obsolete. If someone stays married, then either out of habit, when people are passive, or by calculation, afraid of losing their living space or a feeding trough, or by force - when one is seriously afraid of losing, for example, the opportunity to see a child, ”the reader shares her experience Verra.
“I have everything the same,” confirms the guest of the forum, who wished to remain anonymous. - Created a marriage in 2003. There was such crazy love that we couldn’t live without each other for a minute ... we were sure that we would be together until the end of our lives, and we didn’t allow thoughts of separation and divorce, looking at others ... A son was born right away! After 3 years, everything changed, everything became different ... Perhaps due to the fact that they lived with their parents ... As a result, they lived together for 6 years and divorced 5 months ago.
The everyday difficulties that our anonymous reader writes about can really play an important role in the destruction of a marriage. As psychologists say, a family should always have its own, separate space, and if you have to share it with your parents, the older generation will inevitably interfere in relationships and can ruin them. Plus, relationships change with the advent of a child. Before that, the center of the world of a woman in love was her man, but now all her attention is devoted to a new little man - and the husband may feel slighted.
- A man, when he becomes a father, is going through a crisis, as a woman switches her attention to a child, - confirms psychologist Anetta Orlova. - During this period, he feels abandoned and on this basis he can become depressed, angry.
Who is guilty
However, even with visible "communal" well-being in the family, not everything can go smoothly. “So that they love each other after 3-4 years ... and don’t splash out irritation on a loved one, don’t start treating him carelessly (“where will he go ... always there”) - I haven’t seen this in never in his life,” Verra states sadly.
“Love can go. For example, after 20 years of marriage. Love leaves gradually, drop by drop, when your loved ones, your views, your habits begin to annoy your spouse, ”confirms another, anonymous reader.
“And the lack of culture, intelligence, wisdom and, on the contrary, the presence of envy, greed, selfishness helps to leave love,” another unnamed forum member talks about the reasons for the short-term relationship. “After all, the listed absences give rise to the listed presences ... When communication is replaced by TV, travel by shopping, creativity by survival at work, when there is nothing to strive for, except for the next portion of the imposed consumption of something edible, wearable, watchful, etc., then love - as the highest act of complex spiritual co-creation, as the realization of one's psychological and intellectual tolerance - dies ... ".
So what happens, any family that intends to exist for more than 3 years, and even wants to have offspring, is doomed to quarrels and parting in advance? Do all those couples who live soul to soul for decades, do not love each other, but only endure? Based on experience, it is difficult to agree with this ...
barrel of honey
To begin with, patience is also an extremely important element of any family relationship; but love, many believe, is not needed in every family at all.
“The family should be based on healthy calculation. And if it’s on love, then love will die from everyday life, and the family will collapse (if, apart from sexual craving and puppy delight from each other, there was nothing at the heart of this family), ”writes an anonymous user.
Of course, not every relationship can be explained only by "puppy delight" and "sexual craving", but love, passion and family life are really different concepts, although not mutually exclusive. “Sexual desire, even lust, arises from visual perception and remains only at this level and passes immediately upon receiving this object. This is not love, but hormones, physical desire, ”says another Anonymous. “A happy long life together is one thing, another is the duration of such a feeling as Love. In the first - joys, calculations, conveniences, attachments... In the second - Love. Here, HER life is short ... ”, another unnamed Visitor believes.
“I have been living with my husband in a legal marriage for 21 years already (or else - to whomever). Maybe someone will say that this is not love, but a habit or something like that. And the child has already grown up, and the husband is not an oligarch ... but we are all together! And mind you, no self-interest, ”one of the readers shares her story. So it means happiness in the family - is it still there? And love, contrary to science, does not fit into the framework of just "chemistry" and psychology?
The further the better
“Heightened sexual emotions live for 3-4 years, when emotions win over the brain. Then you are already fed up with emotions - and love passes into another stage, stronger, you love with your brains.
Approximately on this opinion most of the "optimistic" visitors to our forum agree. And, I must say, some of the scientists agree with them. American psychologists, for example, last year said that 2.5-3 years is a critical period for any relationship. After him, in fact, the passion ends, and when the hormones “calm down”, people can take a good look, think and understand: do they really need this particular life partner. If the answer is positive, then everything will be fine on the intimate, everyday, and emotional level. “And sexual relationships will remain vibrant and stormy (and always daily!),” confirms one of our users. If, apart from sexual attraction, there was nothing at the heart of the family, such an alliance is doomed to failure.
be happy
And finally, a few secrets of a happy life together, shared by our readers:
“The ability to compromise and understand, care and attention, you can’t be selfish in love, I think this is the main thing.”
“A woman should keep not only the hearth, but also the family. The man, in turn, must protect the woman.”
“In every period, in every age, love develops and is always different. You love not only for a stormy night, but also for simple things, like the ability to make things, the ability to make surprises, for the desire for life, for sports, for the ability to hear music, for the ability to be a family.
“Do not humiliate another, do not rummage through bags and pockets, do not check the salary tab. Buy fashionable clothes for your husband, and even cooler ones for yourself. Don’t ban classmates, it’s all over!”
“My recipe for family happiness is in no case, under no circumstances, to allow yourself to offend the person who is next to you! You can criticize his actions, habits, swear, but do not call names and do not insult! Not “you are an idiot and a fool”, but “you did a strange thing” or “I did not like your behavior”. In this case, any quarrels will pass without a trace, without hidden resentment and bitter sediment - and this is what squeezes out love and respect drop by drop.
“The main thing for maintaining love is to respect each other, to make sure that your soul mate is always good and comfortable with you. This relationship should be mutual."
In 1997, Frederic Begbeder's novel Love Lives for Three Years was published in France. It is based on the well-known theory that people's romantic feelings for each other pass at the moment when the action of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is also involved in the reward system, weakens. And although by the end of the book the protagonist begins to doubt how viable this hypothesis is, the thesis “Love lives for three years” is surprisingly firmly stuck in the mass consciousness.
There is nothing wrong with trying to explain the nature of human relationships in terms of neuropsychology or behavioral biology: leading scientists around the world are doing this. But in everyday life, the formula proposed by Begbeder is often used to find the simplest and most convenient explanation for parting, to justify misbehavior, or never meet with anyone at all, so as not to risk it again. In reality, love and affection are formed and maintained through more complex mechanisms.
Falling in love and gene transfer
To begin with, let's figure out where those very three years came from and why, when it comes to lovers, the expression "There was chemistry between them" is often heard. Scientists are well aware of what substances are produced by the body when a person has an affair. We are talking about androgens and estrogens, which are responsible for libido, dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin, which maintain a stable feeling of pleasure from communicating with a particular man or woman, as well as vasopressin and oxytocin, which form attachment.
The intensity of their action and the truth can vary under the influence of various factors, including the duration of the relationship. But if the hero of Begbeder was sure that in a few years two people manage to simply get bored with each other, then science relies on a different pattern. Giving us a cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters, nature hints: she is waiting for us to produce offspring. According to Darwin's theory, the main task of a biological species is not just not to die from hunger or the teeth of a predator, but to pass on genes to the next generations.
It takes an average of 17-18 months for a couple to conceive, bear and give birth to a baby. Add to this lactational amenorrhea, a six-month period of breastfeeding, when the likelihood of becoming pregnant again is very small. Plus, about a year more, during which the child is so dependent that for his survival it is better to have both parents nearby. And the mother, in turn, is especially vulnerable and needs the protection and support of her husband or partner. The cycle of the birth of a new person and his adaptation to an environment filled with viruses and other dangers is more or less stable. And it fits perfectly in just three years.
That's just from the moment when the ancestor of modern man took the path of increasing the brain, we have evolved not only physiologically, but also culturally. Nowadays, couples do not always want to get married right away and have offspring. They have a variety of contraceptives at their disposal. Some do not plan to have children at all. So it is not surprising that the mechanisms originally provided by nature for maintaining partnerships for the purpose of procreation now do not work in all cases.
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brain and love
Ideas about the finiteness of love are often based on the fact that sex with the same person gradually becomes boring, sooner or later one of the partners goes to the side and the relationship falls apart as a result. According to a VTsIOM poll, infidelity is the second most common reason for divorce in Russia. But does this mean that love rests only on physical attraction?
Not at all necessary. Scientists from the Canadian Concordia University, together with colleagues from Switzerland and the United States, conducted, during which it turned out that sexual desire and a feeling of love activate, although connected to each other, but still different areas of the brain. The participants in the experiments were asked to look at erotic images and photographs of people who were dear to them. The readings were recorded using a CT scanner.
It turned out that desire activates an area of the striatum (one of the brain structures), which is also involved in the reaction to things that bring pure pleasure: not only to sex, but also, for example, to delicious food. The response to the feeling of love is observed in the zone that is usually associated with the work of the reward system and the formation of addictions. And since addiction can persist in a person for a long time, it is logical to assume that the same applies to love.
Experiments by scientists from the State University of New York at Stony Brook gave even more revealing results. The study participants were divided into two groups. The first included people who only recently became a couple with their new lovers. In the second - people who have been married for 10 to 29 years and claim that they still love their husband or wife as much as at the very beginning of the relationship. It turned out that in both of them, when viewing photos of a partner, there is similar activity in the ventral tegmental area - a part of the midbrain that is involved in the reward and pleasure systems. That is, love that lasts for decades really exists.
And the work of "chemistry" does not stop at all after the first stage of the relationship ends. For example, if you continue to have regular sex and orgasm, oxytocin levels rise, which supports your mutual affection and trust. This occurs in both women and men.
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Neurophysiology and semantics
When we hear about people who are happily married for a long time, it is often not enough to explain the stability of their relationship that they simply love each other. Other reasons immediately come to mind: cohesion around children, a common household, a joint business, friendship and habit, after all. Science says that it is quite possible to love one person for a long time.
But there is one important fact. Trying to estimate how long love can last, we are faced first of all with a problem not of a psychological or physiological, but of a semantic nature. Sexual desire or readiness to conceive a child are understandable and universal categories. To the question "What is love?" everyone will answer in their own way.
Therefore, it is hardly worth talking about the uniqueness of the results of research in this area. Only one thing is clear: in comparison with primitive society, we have stepped far ahead. The way we build life and what feelings we experience, with whom we fall in love and with whom we marry, is subject to a huge number of different, often conflicting factors - not only the desire to continue the family.
So to say that modern love lasts as many years as it formally takes to conceive, give birth and nurse a child is at least naive. The firm belief that love will invariably end in disaster - and not just sometime, but at a specific time - has not yet brought happiness to anyone.
