It’s a rush more exhilarating than skiing. It’s a slippery slope down which you’re liable to break hearts including your own. Falling in love is fun; falling in love is dangerous.
When we fall in love we tend to move toward each other at an accelerating rate, gaining momentum in a surge to merge. We attribute the gaining speed to the unique glory of our particular partner and partnership, but more than we tend to notice, the acceleration simply comes with the terrain of love’s slippery slope. Love is a positive feedback loop. It snowballs, a function of five factors I’ll call, The Five Rs:
The Rush: On dates with potentially compatible partners, the object is to give each other sweet rushes through thoughtful, attentive, kind and generous gestures.
The Risk: If the attraction is mutual, then so is the risk of rejection. Both parties will become sensitive to signs of withdrawal.
The Ratchet: Any rush-generating gesture will come to be expected, its withdrawal a potential sign of risk. If you texted a thank you thoughtfully after the first date, then not texting after the second might be taken as a sign that you’re withdrawing. It becomes as hard to lower expectations as it is to lower a ratcheting car jack.
The Rise: With every delightful gesture becoming an expected gesture, to engender further delight you need to ratchet up with evermore-generous gestures.
The Rest: You can’t keep adding generous gestures at an accelerating rate forever. To survive the rest of a long happy partnership, you have to give the ratchet a rest, de-escalating gestures.
Successful couples de-escalate their generosity imperceptibly, as months or years into their relationship they get practical and come to take each other and the rarity of fresh new generous gestures for granted.
Many couples don’t survive the transition from Rise to Rest. Some don’t because love’s slippery slope rushes them toward each other too quickly to notice their incompatibilities. Others don’t because they think that the de-escalation signals withdrawal, evidence that their love has died. Still others choose not to survive the transition because if the fun part is the Rush and Rise, what’s the point of sticking around for the Rest?
Read more: PsychologyToday
