Learning What Real Guys Are like

Lesson 17: What is Real Love?

Whether you are single or have been married 20 years, I want you to pay extra attention to this lesson. I am about to address something that is at the heart of all relationships everywhere.

We have all had that that moment when you feel like, “I want to crawl inside you, consume your heart, & merge forever into one being, one soul, connected for all time like weird Siamese twins who like to have sex with… ” OK, I’ll stop. You get the point.

The start of a romance is full of obsession. It feels like it’s going to last forever, right? A man in love would rather rip his genitals off than even look at another woman! He thinks of you & only you all the time. He wants you, you, you, you, & you — in that order.

That’s what the movies show love as. That’s what the romance novels show love as. That’s what your parents told you love was, even if they fought all the time because they were disappointed in each other for not being the people they thought they were when they first got together. Because love.

Here’s the thing. That mad, passionate, explosive feeling we all experience at the start is not love. That’s actually something called limerence.

& there is a HUGE difference between those two things. I’m going to explain that in a sec, but first I have to talk to you about the phases we all go through when we partner up romantically with our fellow humans.

The Systems of Love

Helen Fisher is a biological anthropologist at the Kinsey Institute of Indiana University. She has spent a career studying love: what it is, what it isn’t, & why people like you & me fall deeply into & out of it.

What Helen Fisher says is that romantic love is one of three basic brain systems that evolved for mating & reproduction. When you get rid of all of the wonder – all the cultural myths & movies & romance novels – all the stories we’ve told ourselves & our children — it just comes down to getting you to want to have sex with somebody so you have a kid. & then stick around long enough for that kid to actually survive.

I know it’s a very cynical way of looking at things, but fundamentally, that’s what’s true. Let’s take a moment to dig into these three systems.

Love System #1 is About Lust

This is the deep in your bones craving for sexual gratification. According to Fisher, this drive evolved to enable you to seek a range of potential mating partners.

This system explains why you can have sex with someone you aren’t in love with. It explains why you can even feel the sex drive when you are driving in your car, reading a magazine, or watching a movie. Lust is not necessarily focused on a particular individual. It’s ultimately just a hard-wired fishing mechanism.

& it’s not hard to see how this can be true even if you are the most dedicated partner on the planet. You have certainly, unless you are asexual I suppose, felt lust & sexual attraction for more than one person in your life, & you have probably even felt lust or sexual attraction for two completely different people at the same time.

& that’s not a big deal when you understand this is simply a function of biology. It doesn’t mean you need to act on all those lustful thoughts. But understanding this can, among other things, help you to forgive a partner (& yourself) for harboring thoughts even when you’re committed. It just shouldn’t be that big a deal. This is the hand that nature dealt us all!

Love System #2 is About Attraction

According to Fisher, this drive evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time. This is also fuels the obsessive puppy love phase of a relationship.