Love, Twu Love

I feel like this article's been all over blog-land, lately but I just took the time to actually sit down and read it. It's the one about True Love and how it really can last a lifetime. A large part of me has wanted to say since hearing about it -- of course love really can last a lifetime. We wouldn't have so many stories idealizing it if it didn't happen to someone. And we wouldn't always be hearing about our grandparents, parents, neighbors, or cousins if it wasn't happening with some regularity.

The thing that shocked me about the article upon actually review it was this: unless I'm reading it wrong, the results are a lot worse than they are reporting. According to CNN, they scanned the brains of couples who'd been together for 20 years and couples newly in love. They found that 10% of the couples who made it to 20 years retained that same level of chemical reaction as the newbies.

But that's out of the couples that make it to 20 years! How many actually do that in this day and age? So a goodly amount (yes, I do think 10% is a goodly amount) of the people who have the stuff to make it stick are still as ridiculously in love now as they were then, but that's only out of the people who had the stuff to make it stick. And! Because we obviously haven't had time to research anything based on these findings, what happens when their brain chemistry does change? Will they progress similarly to a fairly new couple, meaning that they may easily fall out with each other? Or will they progress in a way closer to the other "we've made it this far" couples? I guess, in a way, I'm trying to ask: So we know a tiny number of couples do this, but is it really a good thing? Or should we be lauding the couples who've matured in their relationship and passed this point?

According to this old NYT article, only about half of couples make it to married 20 years. And that's married 20, not "together 20". I don't know the exact parameters of the True Love study. But 10% of "about half" is really more like 5%. True love is getting more and more elusive! And I'm still not sure that I even want to be in the 5%. I'd love to still go nuts over my boyfriend/husband in 20 years, but I'd also like to think we'd both mature emotionally in that time. Because I'm not sure I can handle 20 years of, "He's so fluffy!" as an answer to... everything. And only emotional maturity is going to change that one.

I should also say I was pretty shocked by the marriage statistics from the NYT article. I thought we were having a lot more divorces. Oops!

-- Lu