Coupling in Modern Times
The following is an excerpt from “Coupling, Uncoupling and Becoming Whole,” a chapter in my book, A Change Would Do You Good: Proven Strategies for Creating the Life You Want.
Despite thousands of years of practicing coupling, we humans remain fundamentally ignorant about the best way to select our partners and endure their annoying habits.
Pair-bonding (a term coined by evolutionary biologists) has existed as far back as the Neanderthals, primarily for the purpose of reproducing, at least among opposite-sex pairs. Historically, heterosexual couples wed for practical reasons: procreation in addition to ensuring economic and political control.
Late in the 18th and 19th centuries, Western cultures embraced romantic love as a factor in choosing a mate. Women were selected by men based on their attractiveness and their social standing. The primary goal for women was to become a wife and mother. As an institution, marriage worked best for men, who counted women as part of their property.
With the Industrial Revolution, more options were available for both men and women. Marriage in the U.S. peaked post World War II. As more women entered the work force, the economic force that kept couples together waned—divorce rates rose along with marriages.
Romantic love, an outgrowth of pair-bonding, has been evidenced in poetry and story-telling for thousands of years. Marriage, in particular monogamous marriage, is a social construct (an accepted idea) that evolved to strengthen the bonds within a relationship. Traditional Western marriage is an attempt to prevent couples from seeking romance outside of committed relationships, or as researchers say, “suppress alternate mate-searching.”
Love Sick
The ancient Greeks had eight words to describe the different types of love. Eros is passionate, lustful love which we often equate with romantic love. According to the Greeks and later confirmed by modern-day research, eros, alone, doesn’t keep couples together. More is needed to sustain commitment.
Not only did the Greeks consider lustful love weak, they also deemed it a dysfunctional type of love. They believed that the loss of control experienced during erotic love is both dangerous and distressing. Lovesick is a term we now use to describe the crazy-making aspect of romantic love, especially in its early stages.
Modern English speakers use the same word, love, to describe our feelings for our partners, our friends, a beautiful nature walk, or a tasty slice of pizza. But the Ancient Greeks distinguished between these feelings. For example, philia is the type of affectionate love witnessed between friends. Known to English speakers as platonic love (named after Plato), this bond was regarded as one of the highest forms of love.
And our positive feeling about that beautiful nature walk was called agape: the universal love of strangers, community and nature. Not to be short-changed, self-love, philautia, was considered a necessary condition for all other forms of love, for we must first learn to care for ourselves before we can care for others.
Even though the Greeks downplayed eros and elevated other types of love, the search for romantic love is universal, at least in modern cultures. But arranged marriages, polygamy, polyamorous relationships, infidelity, divorce and the rise in staying single by choice challenge traditional notions of romantic love and coupling.
The quest to find a soul mate permeates our culture. The basic problem with this concept is that we ask too much of one person. We expect our partners to fulfill all our needs—to satisfy what an entire village provided in previous generations. Inescapable disappointment and disillusionment are bound to follow this big ask.
Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
– Rumi