Love in Later Life: Myths and Realities
Michael Stones
Professor of Psychology
Lakehead University
(PEI October 17, 2014)
Lee and Michael Stones in their book Sex
May Be Wasted on the Young (1996,
2004) pointed out that older people
considered their sexuality to be:
(1) A taboo topic they were reluctant to
discuss because of fear that personal
disclosure would elicit disapproval and
disgust from younger people;
(2) Something real, ongoing, and
important in their lives, despite being
something taboo.
Love in Later Life
That was the past. What I’ll talk about
today is the mingling of sexuality, love
and happiness, with a stress on love.
In young couples, we readily accept
the importance of sexuality to a loving
relationship that makes them happy. Is
the same true for older couples?
What little we know about romantic
love in older people comes Dear Blabby
columns advising lonely old people in
new affairs to keep the heat down (“Cool
it, honey!”)
or pictures of sweet gold
weddings couples in formal poses.
Yeah (yawn) right. But are Grandma and
Grandpa still passionate about each other?
Now that’s a question worth answering.
Hotly in love or just best friends? What do
scholars have to say about love?
Robert Kastenbaum raised this issue
40 years ago: “Loving is about more than
the counts of sexual interest and activities
… We have incomplete knowledge unless
we know something about love.”
My graduate student Katie Lemmerty
reviewed research on later life love since
that time. She found only 4 studies! Why
so few? Are gerontologists blind to love?
Is later life love a taboo topic even now?
Having questions but no good answers,
we did an exploratory study. For that, we
had to define love and its properties.
Dictionaries define Romantic Love
as strong and constant affection linked to
attraction and sexual desire.
Theories and research suggest three
main properties that I’ll refer to as
Shades of Love. I call them shades
because they are separate but coexist in
Romantic Love. They are:
1)Passionate Love;
2) Companionate Love;
3) Compassionate Love.
Romantic Love
MRI research found that photographs of
a Romantically Loved partner lit up
regions of the brain associated with
reward and goals. So rather being an
emotion itself, Romantic Love is better
considered a motivation that gives rise
to specific emotions such as euphoria or
anxiety. Such feelings and passion are
integral to an understanding of love.
Expressions of passion include
yearning for the beloved, obsessing
over that person, euphoria in his/her
presence, bodily responding to his/her
touch, pleasure from his/her attention.
Passionate Love
Someone passionately loved evokes in you
strong emotions, pervasive thoughts and a
desire for closeness. But common beliefs
about Passionate Love accord with lyrics
from that famous 15th century folk song,
The Water Is Wide: “When love is old, it
waxes cold and fades away like the
morning dew.”
Not a happy prospect for love in later
life, is it?
On a more optimistic note, those few
research studies on Passionate Love that
included older people did not find that
Passionate Love inevitably fades away.
Companionate Love
Companionate Love refers to intimacy,
attachment and commitment. Such
friendship and loyalty elicit “the affection
and tenderness we feel for those with
whom our lives are deeply entwined.”
Does Passionate Love eventually
morph into Companionate Love, as
commonly believed? Although most
research on Companionate Love was with
young people, even those findings are
conflicting: one study found that newlyweds had similar 1-year losses in both
Passionate and Companionate Love.
Compassionate Love
Compassion Love includes awareness of
the needs and wants of your partner and
willingness to put those before one’s own.
Whereas Passionate Love refers to
thoughts and feelings evoked by a
partner, Compassionate Love includes
thoughts and feelings elicited by your
actions taken on behalf of that partner.
Although we know little about
Compassionate Love in later life, most
studies suggest higher levels in longerlasting relationships.
Shades of Love Promote Happiness
All three Shades of Love bring about
rewards of higher wellbeing. People high
on Companionate Love have high life
satisfaction; those high on Passionate
Love report a surplus of positive
emotions; those high on Compassionate
Love gain in positive mood from helping
their partner, and have high self-esteem.
However, relationships fail to endure if
the rewards received fail to balance the
pain endured. The reasons for such pain
include changes in behavior, condition or
life goals by one or both partners.
Our Exploratory Study
We wanted to further knowledge about
later life love by correcting limitations in
previous studies that likely made the
findings inconsistent.
Specifically, those studies compared
(1) just one or two Shades of Love, in
(2) people of different ages, or (3) with
different lengths of relationship, but not
all three. Our study remedied these
limitations.
Otherwise, our research resembled
the earlier studies and – like them – had
limitations in sampling. Because of this,
we call our study ‘exploratory’.
Research Methods
The participants were 274 people that
completed the most useful measures
of Passionate, Compassionate and
Companionate Love on an internet
portal called Survey Monkey.
Their ages ranged from 18-74
years (mean = 36 years) with the
majority female (78%). The lengths of
their love relationship ranged from 151 years (mean = 6 years). Most lived
with their partner (60%); most were
unmarried (65%); and almost all were
heterosexual (97%).
Main Findings
I’ll describe here only significant findings
that relate Romantic Love and its three
Shades to age and length of relationship.
Here’s what we found.
1.Overall, Romantic Love was higher in
longer relationships but lower for older
people in longer relationships.
2.The latter occurred because of lower
Companionate Love for older couples near
their gold wedding stage. Because
enduring mutuality made their loyalty and
attachment a given, other Shades of Love
assumed greater importance in their love
lives.
Main Findings (continued)
Compared to Companionate Love,
Passionate and Compassionate Love
were:
3.Higher at older ages;
4.Lower in longer relationships (i.e.,
without taking account of age);
5.Higher for older people in longer
relationships.
The most important finding is #5.
What it tells us is that, as people age and
their relationship lengthens, passion and
compassion replace commitment and
loyalty as the most meaningful shades of
love.
Main Findings (continued)
To illustrate, the chart below shows
that Passionate Love for old people in
long relationships was higher than for
young and middle-aged people in
relationships of any length. Isn’t that
amazing!
Main Findings: Conclusions
Our findings agree with those from
earlier studies that Passionate Love fades
neither at older ages nor in longer
relationships. In fact, Passionate Love is
highest in older people and, in them,
strengthens more with the passage of
time than in people of any other age.
The same applies to Compassionate
Love but less dramatically.
In contrast, Companionate Love is
lower in older people and decreases
more in older than younger people with
the passage of time.
The Glue that Bonds Enduring Love
The glue that bonds a couple right
through to their golden wedding is
Romantic Love. Although Companionate
Love is an ingredient that degrades with
combination of age and time, Passionate
and Compassionate Love are both
stronger in older people and strengthen
further with the passage of time.
Let’s now consider these ingredients
from global and localized perspectives to
figure out the active agents that make
the glue work.
A Global Perspective
Remember I mentioned that people high
on Passionate and Compassionate Love
were high in positive emotion, whereas
those high on Companionate Love had
high life satisfaction.
We know from decades of research
that two distinct brain regions contribute
to emotional experiences. These regions
underlie (1) the pleasant-to-unpleasant
aspect of emotion and (2) the degree
emotional arousal. Well, the emotions
associated with the three Shades of Love
differ on the latter but not the former.
High Arousal as an Active Agent
Feelings associated with Passionate and
Compassionate Love have high arousal,
whereas those associated Companionate
Love do not. Therefore, high arousal
may be an active agent in the glue.
A Localized Perspective
Earlier mention of brain imagery
research depicted emotions arising from
Romantic Love as outcomes of motives
toward the attainment of rewards and
goals. Similarly, philosophers since the
time of Aristotle depicted happiness as
an outcome of motives toward the
attainment of rewards and goals.
The two preceding perspectives differ
only in the kind of outcome: specific
emotions versus global happiness.
Surely, therefore, a localized perspective
on happiness has relevance to an
understanding of Romantic Love.
Happiness Activating Behaviors (HABs)
A localized depiction of happiness
emerged from Positive Psychology over a
decade ago. Happiness Activating
Behaviors (HABs) is a term for ways to
promote happiness through cognitions
and actions. For example, this dog woofs
on the Habs to boost its happiness.
Happiness Activating Behaviors (HABs)
Just as HABs boost global happiness (as
shown by a long list of validated HABs), I
call that subset that boost Romantic Love
(through intentional cognitions and
actions) Love Activating Behaviors, which
has the lovely acronym LABs.
Everyone loves LABs.
Love Activating Behaviors (LABs)
LABs (like Arousal) work as an active
agent in the glue than bonds couples in
Romantic Love. They use LABs when
giving, getting and keeping the love they
have. Not only humans but even dogs
have a good repertoire of LABs:
Wagging their tails, rushing to greet
you, meeting your gaze with adoring
eyes, performing tricks to please you,
snuggling up when you’re tired, licking
your hands and face, staying loyal for
evermore … How can you not return
their love! (By the way, it’s dogs I’m
talking about, ladies, not husbands).
LABs in Synch
Romantic Love works best when both
partners have their LABs in synch.
For example: After seeing the
movie, a retired banker offers to take
his new date home to show her a
$1250 reproduction of a David Hockney
painting. She looks him directly in the
eye, to message that she knows his
game, then kisses him softly on the
mouth. The both win twice over,
thinking that:
“I’m good at this love game.”
“My new date wants me.”
Their love affair has begun.
LABs Out of Synch
Uggh! Romantic Love plays out badly if a
couple’s LABs are out of synch:
A 60-year divorcee takes the man she
plans to marry to a get-together at the
55+ Club. Because she wants to show
off to her girlfriends – that ‘We’re so so
good together!’ – she’s flirted mildly with
him all day. But he’s cool when they get
there, heads for the poolroom with the
guys. She’s hit with a doubly whammy:
“Wasn’t I been sexy enough earlier?”
“Maybe he doesn’t love me after all.”
I bet he gets hit with quadruple
whammies after they leave for home.
Gold Medalists in Romantic Love
If love is a game, gold medalists are
couples together long enough to
celebrate gold weddings – the last ones
standing in the love game. Here’s what
we know and infer about them:
1.Our findings tell us they are high in
Passionate and Compassionate Love;
2.We infer they know those LABs that –
for them – activate feelings of passion
and compassion; and
3.They’ve figured out how to keep those
LABs in synch.
They are happy people that live in a
magical mosaic of Romantic Love.
A Magical Mosaic of Romantic Love
Secrets about how to inhabit this magical
mosaic are few in number:
• Know your partner;
• Put your partner before yourself;
• Value your passion for that partner;
• Behave in ways to excite your partner;
• Synchronize with your partner what
ever behaviors arouse you both.
Making Romantic Love work takes
daring and reciprocity. Our gold medalists
know that making love is not just about
sex but takes place endlessly during the
most ordinary activities. For rewards like
that, the costs involved are worth it.
A Magical Mosaic of Romantic Love
Hints about how to enter and stay in this
magical mosaic include the following.
1.Know your partner as well as you know
yourself. (Always ask, don’t assume).
That’s what Companionate Love is about.
2.Learn to decipher subtle cues when
your partner wants to give or to receive
love. Don’t ignore them but respond
positively.
3.Know what turns your partner on
sexually. Push the limits a bit if boredom
creeps into the bedroom.
A Magical Mosaic of Romantic Love
4.Give loving cues to your partner not
only when you need to but to prevent
your relationship from going stale.
5.Include cues that your partner has to
decipher. They allow your partner to
show that he/she knows you well.
6.Know that making love is not just
about sexual acts. You can be making
love when doing just about anything.
7.Put your partner’s needs before your
own whenever feasible. Make your
partner feel capable and wanted despite
limitations or adverse conditions.
A Magical Mosaic for Happiness
Believe it or not, the secrets of a magical
mosaic for happiness parallel those for
Romantic Love. Replace the acronym LABs
(Love Activating Behaviors) by HABs
(Happiness Activating Behaviors), take a
global perspective rather than one of
Romantic Love, and voila! You now
understand how to foster happiness in
your clients. Happier clients are healthier
clients. Again, happier clients are healthier
clients.
The End