Now therefore, while
the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while
thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now
let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of
prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his
slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our
strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our
pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus,
though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him
run.
– End of “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
It's Valentine's Day 2022, and maybe you are a man like Andrew Marvell who is attempting to convince a reluctant (“coy”) lady to accede to your importuning and all the rest that the choice entails. The poem is a tour de force, and has come to be known as a seduction poem or carpe diem (seize or pluck the day) poem. Marvell's speaker in the verse uses wit, allusion and metaphor in a syllogism – a logical argument – that can be summed up in a short, more modern phrase: Life is too short, let's get it on before you and I decay.
Don't lie to me, you old
dog. I don't care if you're 9 or 99, you still don't understand what
love is all about, do you? Oh, you understand how to respond to the
traditional commitment with your obligatory gifts of candy and
flowers, but I know you – like every other male with a beating
heart – you are not capable of unraveling the mysteries of the word
“love.” It's OK, my friend. Take heart. Today I want to
explore just why we are so confused -- a message just in time to add to the sentimental observance.
So much about life remains a mystery. Brian Resnic, science reporter at Vox.com, covering social and behavioral sciences, decided to ask relationship researchers an age-old question: “What don’t you understand about love?”
These so-called “love experts” joined the ranks of matchmakers, romance authors, and poets in agreeing that the biggest mystery related to love is – “Do you really know who you want?”
Even though choosing a partner is the most important decision you’ll ever make, guess what? Scientists predictably don’t have all the answers, and they often disagree on which answers are even possible. Establishing that fact is not revolutionary. However, I found one theory about love in the article very interesting and probably much more relative to this 71-year-old who has been married to the same woman for 45 years. The theory simple states: “Actually, love is chaos.”
Chaos And Love
Paul Eastwick, a psychologist at the University of California Davis who also studies relationships, doesn’t think it will ever be possible to accurately predict couples before they form. “It is very, very hard to study relationships before two people will officially call themselves a couple,” he says. It’s just too chaotic of a system.
Eastwick suspects that a lot of the course of an early relationship is the product of chance. In a chaotic system, small changes in starting conditions can lead to widely divergent paths later on.
“We really have almost no ability to explain any of it. It’s like the dark matter equivalent in relationship research. ... Where does compatibility come from? If it’s not about you and them, it has to be coming from something that is created along the way.”
– Paul Eastwick
When you’re looking at a happy couple, he says, it’s like looking at a chessboard in a game that’s 16 moves in. “Maybe a master could have predicted [the position of the pieces] from the first move, but most people can’t,” he says. There are often many paths the game can take to get to the same position. “It’s worth having some humility about the role of luck and chance in getting this couple to this point,” he says.
(Brian Resnick. “What science still can’t explain about love.” Vox. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2022/2/9/22914378/the-science-and-mystery-of-love. February 9, 2022.)
Luck and chance. Eastwick posits the choices involved in starting a relationship pretty much “depend” – if you know what I mean. Your prevailing mood, your initial impression of a date, your continued availability – so much has to magically mesh together to even consider a second meeting and beyond. You get the picture – chaos must subside to allow Cupid to get good aim.
Dan Conroy-Beam, a University of California Santa Barbara psychologist who studies relationship formation, studies the mating market and understands the “choice” of a mate is a two-way street – that person has to “choose you back.” Of course, what are the odds of the meeting of two people with the right trade-offs?
Conroy-Beam uses a model for the answer. It goes something like this …
“Let’s say you take real-life happy couples, wipe their memories of ever meeting one another, and put them back into the world. If they meet again, do they hit it off? Is the love discovered again? If preferences matter and guide our decision-making, then there’s a good chance that the amnesiac love birds will find each other again.”
Of course, Conroy-Beam can’t wipe the minds of his study participants, but he can create mind-wiped versions of them in a computer. He first asks real-world couples lots of questions, individually – what they want in a partner, what their actual partner is like, etc. “Once we have that information quantified, we can create a little simulated representation of you inside of our computers – avatars – that want all the same things as you have and also have all the same characteristics as you.”
(Brian Resnick. “What science still can’t explain about love.” Vox. February 9, 2022.)
The psychologist then puts these avatars in a computer program with other couples who have had their memories wiped. And then gets them flirting. “We can see what kinds of decisions actually do a good job of putting people back with their real-world partners,” he says. The idea is that, if he can craft a model that recreates something that exists in the real world, it will probably be onto something important.
In his best effort, Conroy-Beam's models put around 45 percent of the couples back together, and he says the couples that are put back together in the computer tend to be the happier ones in the real world. That gives him some hope that his models can lead to better predictions of who will hit it off with whom.
However,
In Eastwick’s mind, the answer to Conroy-Beam’s thought experiment – would couples with their minds wiped find each other again? – is no.
“Take a happy couple and you wipe their minds, and there is a very good chance that you would get a very different outcome,” he says. “There is nothing about the truth of those two people, separately from each other, that does a very good job at predicting where they’re going to end up. It was about choices that they made along the way and the other chance circumstances.”
For Eastwick, the more interesting research question is less what gets a couple together, and more what keeps them together. “Compatibility comes from sort of a series of stacked-up choices that can’t be easily unwound,” he says.
(Brian Resnick. “What science still can’t explain about love.” Vox. February 9, 2022.)
Some choices, some chance – Is this the verdict on finding love? Eastwick doesn't think love is discovered between two people but grown. He suspects that love has to do with setting up a “groove,” or patterns of behavior that reinforce the relationship. And what works in one relationship might not work for another.
And, largely, love and compatibility are back to their state of chaotic existence. What are well- intentioned lovers to do in the overwhelming disorder? The situation reminds me of lines from Yeats …
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
From “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
And, for God's sake, what does all of this say about romance? In the passion of a relationship, how easy it is to mistake novel, exciting experiences for true love. It is very difficult to maintain separate identities while falling victim to the inevitable romance of courting. And, honestly, how many people attempt to enhance the chemistry of love in its earliest stages flattery (not to mention drugs and alcohol), hoping to solidify a sexual attraction over any thoughts of chivalry, etiquette, or affairs of the heart.
I join the ranks of those who believe that humans have an inclination to amplify what feels good and disregard disappointment, which may lead us to believe an affair is love when it’s only confusion.
Are we doomed to follow our hormones? Being a man, I understand that lust is what often drives male attraction, not being preoccupied with romantic obligations. You can call it the search for an excellent genetic match if you like – attempting to find someone who would allow us to produce the strongest and healthiest offspring. All I know is that so many males do not enter relationships thinking about long-term compatibility and the storied "happily ever after.” Women, you can represent for yourselves. Hell, I can't even find a definite definition of the word “romance.”
Conclusions
So, I, for one, can relate to what Paul Eastwick says. Love is chaos. It's as good an answer to “Do I really know what I want” as anything else I can semi-logically determine.
Let's bask once more in our ignorance, guys. Put on your shining armor, mount your spirited steed, and ride your way through the inevitable chaos ahead like the devoted chivalrous (perhaps “horny”) knight you are. Make your lover's Valentine's Day a commemoration of romance, whatever it means to you. Chances are she's confused, too.
One warning before closing: according to some psychologists, people can become addicted to drama because they have figured out how to trigger the body's stress response just for the rush. Maybe that also explains why chaos is considered “loving” – it is a human attraction many cannot resist.
“In a culture where the ‘extreme theme’ has become the norm, people are increasingly seduced into believing that intensity equals being alive. When that happens, the mind becomes wired for drama and the soul is starved of meaningful purpose.”
(Mark D. Griffiths Ph.D. “Are You 'Addicted' to Chaos?” Psychology Today. March 17, 2016.)
This type of life may produce heart-pounding excitement, but the absence of this addictive energy can bring about withdrawal, fear, and restlessness that is unbearable. Come to think of it, this accurately describes the love-life of many I know, those Drama Queens and Drama Kings who prefer constant chaos over stability and revel in the theatrics to be the center of attention.
I just wish they would keep the details to themselves or find a path of tranquility that leads to a destination of accepting more rational, less-demanding (and more loving?) outcomes. Even confusion and chaos offer solutions. Perhaps figuring out how to manage the dizzying effects of relationships is a start.
To conclude. I know you will do the right thing. In the name of love, rest assured your understanding of love will suffice … maybe it's entirely wrong, but learn to accept that lesson. (That's called “obedience” – another subject for a future blog entry.
In my weak mind, maybe one of my favorite artists Jimi Hendrix said it best …
Love or Confusion
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
From Are You Experienced
Is that the stars in the sky or is it rain falling down?
Will it burn me if I touch the sun,
so big, so round?
Will I be truthful, yeah,
in choosing you as the one for me?
Is this love baby,
or is it just confusion?
Oh, my mind is so mixed up, going round 'n' round_
Must there be all these colors without names,
without sounds?
My heart burns with feeling but
Oh! my mind is cold and reeling.
Is this love, baby
or is it confusion?
Oh, my head is pounding pounding
going 'round and 'round and 'round and 'round.
Must there always be these colors without names,
Without sounds?
My heart burns with feeling
Oh, but my mind is cold and reeling
Is this love, baby
Or is it-uh, huh, just, uh, confusion?
Oh, you tell me baby, is this, uh, love or confusion?
Mama, we must get together and, uh, find out
Exactly what we're tryin' to do
Love or confusion?
Confusion
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