The following is an excerpt from “Principia Amoris: The New Science of Love” available from Routledge publishing, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business.
My Own Phase 1
In my own case, when I first got to Seattle in 1986 I had about 3 months before school started. I decided to take the time getting to know the city and also time dating as many women as I could. After my divorce, I couldn’t meet women my age in the college town of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. I tried acting in community theater, and everything else I could think of. Finally, I changed jobs and moved to the University of Washington in Seattle.
So, in the emerald city of Seattle I answered almost every ad in The Weekly newspaper. In 3 months, I dated about 60 women. With most of them I couldn’t even enjoy a conversation. We just didn’t click. One woman I recall only talking to on the phone. She said, “Why don’t I tell you a bit about myself and then you tell me a bit about your- self?” “Okay,” I replied. She said, “Okay, then. Many of my best friends are lesbians and I’m on a lesbian softball team. Now you tell me about yourself.” I said, “I’m a lesbian.” She replied, “Is that supposed to be funny?” “I guess not,” I said.
After a while I was dating a very interesting woman. She was a professional, and she loved opera. She loved to wear very expensive, gorgeous gowns to the opera. She checked out my best suit and said it was barely acceptable, so I got to accompany her to the opera one night, along with her friend who shared her passion for the opera and beautiful gowns. After the concert, we went to her house and the girls talked about both being ardent survivalists. They shared this idea that the end of the world might come very soon, and they had a survival plan. That plan included a place with a fallout shelter, food for two years, fuel for a motorcycle, and a supply of guns and ammunition.
The girls got into a debate about the best handgun in the world, with my date preferring the 38-Magnum, and her girlfriend preferring the Glock-9mm. I sat there as the women talked, watching the sunset and listening to these beautiful women discuss the ultimate weapon, and I thought, “This is cool. I am not bored. This beats watching TV alone in Illinois.” But, this wasn’t exactly a relationship I really fit into. So I kept dating.
Then I met Julie. At first, we only talked on the telephone. We talked nonstop for four hours, with us both laughing a lot and telling stories. The time and conversation flowed so easily. I could tell immediately that this was special. We arranged to meet for coffee at a shop called “The Pony Expresso.” I am compulsively early, so I arrived first and waited for Julie to come in.
A woman came in, and I thought, “I hope that’s not her.” She wasn’t looking around, so no, it wasn’t her. Good. Then another woman came in. Again I thought, “I hope that’s not her.” Again, it wasn’t her. Then a third woman came in, and I thought, “God, I hope that’s her.”
It was Julie.
She came over and we started talking. It was so much fun talking to her and listening to her, even better this time. Again, the time flowed so easily. As we walked out, our steps immediately matched. I asked her if I could see her again. She said yes.
That weekend I dreamed about her, except she was a beautiful jungle cat, and as she prowled near me, I felt safe. My first nickname for her was born in that dream: “Tiger.”
On our second date, I told her that I had been dating but that after our Pony Expresso meeting I had decided to break off all other relationships to give this one a chance. She was terrified. On the third date I cooked dinner for her at my house.
It didn’t take us long to realize that we were totally in love, and we started spending a lot of time together. The limerence cascade had begun. Five months later I proposed, and she said “yes.” My mother later said that it was the only good choice I’d made in my life.
Only certain people can set off this cascade of emotions, hormones, and neurotransmitters. That person has to look right, smell right, taste right, and feel right when you hold them in your arms. Falling in love is actually very selective. As we now travel throughout the world, training couples therapists, one question we often get from therapists is what to do when the man says, “I love my wife, but I’m no longer in love with her. What do you do in a case like that?” (It can also be the other way round, with the woman saying that.) I now know the answer to that question. The answer is all about Phases 2 and 3 of love.
When we consummate that attraction, the hormone oxytocin joins the cocktail of limerence hormones and neurotransmitters, which include dopamine, testosterone, estrogen, PeA, DHeA, growth hormone, nerve growth factor, norepinephrine, serotonin, and vasopressin. Each hormone is associated with a different facet of love and limerence, playfulness, silliness, laughter, excitement, obsession, joy, aggressive lust, possessive ownership and jealousy, calm attachment, soft gentle affection, and a metaphorical opening of the heart.
For example, oxytocin is responsible for attachment, but also responsible for shutting down the fear system in the brain, and the resulting potential bad judgment that happens during limerence. Because of oxytocin we become attached, and also because of oxytocin we do not see the “red flags” that this new person is also showing us. We ignore negative signs that this may not really be such a good match. Research with oxytocin nasal spray has shown that it does heighten positive feelings in couples’ interaction. Other research has also shown that it clouds good judgment. In one experiment comparing spraying oxytocin with spraying saline up people’s noses, the clinicians gave their subjects a lot of money. Then a well-dressed “Swiss banker” came in and offered to take the subject’s money and either quadruple it for the subject or just keep it for himself, depending on what he, the banker, decided to do. The people who had saline sprayed up their noses said “no.” The people who had oxytocin sprayed up their noses dreamily agreed. Limerence implies the suspension of good judgment.
PRINCIPLE 3: The cascade of “in-love” hormones and neurotransmitters of Phase 1 is highly selective and multifaceted in the experiences of love and limerence. It is also generally accompanied by poor judgment, so that people will ignore the red flags that they will inevitably confront in Phase 2 of love.
John Mordechai Gottman, PhD
John Mordechai Gottman, PhD, is a scholar and researcher renowned for his work on marital stability and divorce prediction. He has conducted 40 years of research with thousands of couples and is the co-founder, with his wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, of the Gottman Institute. He is also the executive director of the affiliated Relationship Research Institute and a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington, where he founded "The Love Lab." More information about John and the Gottman Institute is available at www.gottman.com.
