THE LOVE REPORT
Dr. Kevin Grold
Copyright © 2012 Kevin Grold, Ph.D.
Smashwords Edition
Life Publications
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright © 2012 Kevin Grold, Ph.D.
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1468132380
ISBN-10: 1468132385
SYNOPSIS
The Love Report explores the many facets of love. It examines the significant questions that need to be answered if couples are ever going to fall in love and stay in love. The meaning of love is examined not only from a therapist's, philosopher’s, and poet’s perspective, but more importantly from the perspective of those who actually are in love.
The Love Report challenges the reader to think about the central areas of love before presenting the answers to these modern but longstanding questions. This book is not only essential for people looking for love, but also for couples who want to enhance their relationship, and for those who think they are in love but just want to see how well they measure up. This book is a unique and useful learning tool because it contains raw data and charts that enable readers to define their own conclusions—all with the goal of helping you create your own long-term, love relationship.
* * *
Do you know:
• How to be in love?
• What it means to be in love?
• How to make love last?
The Love Report will help you find the answers.
“Love, it is a high inducement to
the individual to ripen,
To
become something in himself,
To become world,
To become world
for himself for
another's sake,
It is a great exacting claim
upon him,
Something that chooses him out and
calls him to
vast things.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
CONTENTS
The Roots of Love
The history of love begins in ancient times and traces the styles of loving up until the present.
What Does it Mean to be In Love?
This chapter looks at the many ways that love has been defined and focuses both upon the relationship and the expression of love.
The Background of The Love Report
The backgrounds of loving couples are examined with a focus on what helps and what hinders a loving relationship. It explains the different types of loving pairs and identifies the tools used to uncover the secrets of couples in love.
The Components of a Loving Relationship
This focuses on commitment and what The Love Report subjects are conveying when they say they are in love.
What Makes Love Last?
Being vulnerable with your partner, self-disclosure, and keeping secrets are all discussed in this chapter. It also focuses on how often couples in love need to communicate to keep their relationship strong.
What Causes Love?
Attachment, Evolution, Need Complementarity, and the Universal Love theories are discussed. This includes a look at the use of pet names and whether or not partners in love take vacations from each other.
Love: Its Problems and Solutions
This chapter examines what causes the most difficulties for couples in love, what their parents’ relationships were like, and how couples in love solve their problems. This chapter also includes an in-depth look at self-esteem's relation to love.
Finding Love in a Culture Filled with Infidelity and Divorce
This chapter considers how infidelity has affected the search for love. How do you know you have found a partner you can trust? This chapter examines love at first sight and how loving couples decide they have found their soul mate. It includes a self-test and looks at the direction of relationships in the future.
The New Definition of Love
This chapter combines all the information learned in The Love Report. It includes the history, the most up-to-date information on love, and the crucial evidence learned from The Love Report. It then presents an entirely new definition of love, one that will lead our society into an era of lasting, loving relationships.
The ROME Scale
This chapter presents the Relationship Openness Maturity Evaluation or ROME Scale. This is a 22 question true/false test that covers the major topics in the book. By taking this test, the reader can determine how ready he or she is to be in a lasting, loving relationship.
Lessons Learned About Love
This chapter covers the most important points to keep in mind so that you can create your own loving relationship.
Sample Profiles of The Love Report Subjects
The History of the Marriage Vows
Having a lasting, loving relationship can be a very difficult task. However there is no challenge more important or that can provide more joy. When two people come together, there are an enormous number of complexities involved in the formation of this relationship. Unfortunately, loving relationships are rarely looked at objectively. We must move beyond guessing how to make a relationship work. What is needed is a definitive, well-researched book that will put all of the doubts, conflicts and guesses to rest. After researching couples for many years, and obtaining my Ph.D. with an emphasis on the topic of love, I compiled this information into the most complete, one-of-a-kind guidebook for anyone interested in having a lasting, loving relationship.
The research subjects, couples in love, which make up the basis for my conclusions, provide the most current consensus to help clarify this often confusing and overwhelming subject. Those of us trying to make a relationship work can now put all of our energy where it rightfully belongs—into making love happen...and, hopefully, last forever. My sincere hope is that The Love Report will bring more love into your life.
~Kevin Grold Ph.D.
Del Mar, California
This book is dedicated to my wife, Christine Hartline, who has taught me that love actually can be easy.
I Love You.
CHAPTER ONE:
THE ROOTS OF
LOVE
Love is actually a new phenomenon for keeping relationships together. Since the beginning of human history, passion, not love, has been the driving force behind the development of relationships. But love, for the purpose of bringing two people together, is in a stage of infancy. We haven't learned how to master it. In fact, we haven't even learned the basic components of a mature, lasting relationship. Although we can decide that we want to be "in love," or even "fall in love," reality hits us in the face when it comes time to make a decision to have a continuing relationship. We realize that there are no established guidelines to follow. Nobody ever taught us how to do it. And for the most part, nobody really seems to know.
Some of us are fortunate enough to have loving parents as role models, but many of us do not have anyone to look to for guidance. In addition, if we could find a couple or two willing to offer advice, it may not be the right advice for our situation. What we need is a new definition of love, one that is suitable for the relationships of our current society.
To arrive at a modern definition of love, we must first look at how love has been portrayed throughout history. By placing love in a historical context, we will be better able to look at love as a part of our heritage; a continuing part of the struggle between individuals—working to form a more perfect union.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF LOVE
Love originated in attraction. If we take a historical trip back to our primitive tribal ancestors, we see that males preferred certain females. The strongest, healthiest males demanded their choice of the most favored females within the clan—and often times they would choose several. The females wielded power by vying for attention from the males. Those females that made themselves most desirable would attract the best males. These ancient methods of attraction were the precursors to our modern-day love.
Our current view of love, which evolved out of this pattern, has changed dramatically throughout history. Some of the oldest surviving records including the Egyptian hieroglyphics, contained romantic poetry that described love as the "awful curse." Possibly the Egyptians were not actually describing something that we today would call love—because it wasn't until the Greeks that the first written exploration into the nature of love took place. Their philosophy separated primitive sexual yearnings from the higher aims of love. These higher aims were said to be the pursuit of ideal beauty—not an ideal beauty queen, but the ideal beauty of love.
Love and the Ancient Greek Culture
To the Greeks, homosexual love was love in its highest form. Marriage was a mere business arrangement designed for having children and protecting the earnings and property of the wealthy males. Their society was sexist. The husband earned a living while the wife tended to the indoor labor such as housecleaning and raising children. The wife in this arrangement was not much more than a slave to her husband—certainly not something that the women of today would accept. Hesoid, a famous Greek poet, wrote: "Get yourself a house, a woman, and a working ox. Buy the woman, don't marry her. Then you can make her plough, if necessary."
Love and the Ancient Roman Culture
With the Romans, for the first time, heterosexual love gained in popularity. The wife progressed little from her position as a slave, though she was now considered a self-respecting subject of her lord husband. She was required to do her husband's bidding sexually and otherwise. She was never to ask questions. A famous Roman senator, Metellus Numidicus, proclaimed, "If we could procreate without wives, we certainly should keep clear of that annoyance; but since nature has ordained that men can neither live happily with wives, nor at all without them, it is our duty to consider the perpetuation of the race rather than our own temporary pleasure." Love was still a long way from our modern conception.
The self-proclaimed "master of love" of this period was a poet named Ovid. He wrote an essay entitled The Art of Love, which had a strong influence on Roman culture. This essay instructed Romans on how to attract a lover, how to make love, and particularly how to consummate adultery. He would give men suggestions, such as: "Tell the lady of your desire that she has dirt on her and then brush off her breasts, stroking them lightly as if you are doing her a favor." Adultery became the accepted and even the preferred form of loving. The idea, according to Ovid, was to keep a lover for a short time until boredom set in, and then to choose a new, preferably married lover. The divorce rate went up and the birth survival rate went down owing to crudely administered abortions and the abandoning of newborns. The disintegration of family life is said to be a main cause of the fall of the Roman Empire.
The Bible offered an answer to these "evils of society." The Bible's fundamental law of love stated that one should "love your neighbor as yourself." This no longer included sleeping with the neighbor's wife. The early Church Fathers put forth the idea of celibacy and virginity. God was married to his Chosen People. According to the Bible, adultery was not a part of a truly loving relationship. True love existed only in the service of God and even married couples were thought to be living in sin (marriage, in the early Church doctrine, was thought to prevent a person from serving God perfectly). This love was an asexual, divine love where celibacy was viewed as most praiseworthy. Sexual intercourse was only for procreation.
Since the union of marriage continued to occur, the Church took the position that they disapproved of marriages that were contracted without the wife's consent (previously only parental consent was needed). Specifically, in 560 A.D., a prominent Christian king, Clothaire I, issued an edict that prohibited women from being married against their will.
Clothaire I
Prior to this time, marriages by capture and later, by purchase, were common. For instance, in ancient Israel a bride was obtained by paying a "bride price" called a mohar. Mutual consent of both parties was symbolized by the giving of kaseph or money. During the ceremony, the man only needed to give his bride a peruta, the smallest copper coin used in Palestine, with the words "Be thou consecrated (devoted) to me." In the Middle Ages, the ceremony of giving the coin was replaced by the giving of a plain ring.
DEVELOPMENT OF COURTLY LOVE
In Languedoc (southern France), a form of love, unprecedented in western civilization, was born. Many knights found themselves living in the castles of southern France, with only one lady, the wife of the lord of the castle. This lady of the castle utilized her etiquette and manners to keep these virile young men in line. The more crude and forward the men were, the more she kept them at a distance. It didn't take long for the more intelligent men to realize that refinement and courtesy were the way to this idealized woman's favor.
Men began to copy the patterns of a feudal vassal submitting to his lord. They went to great lengths to show their adoration. The troubadours of the time began to cultivate the arts of singing, dancing, and composing poetry to please the ladies of their desire. These knights took vows of faith, they squandered their money, and even engaged in chivalrous, life-threatening jousts to win the favor of their loved ones—all of which became known as Courtly Love.
(The marriage ceremony itself became an attempt to imitate the courtly marriages of kings and queens with the bridal gowns emulating a queen's royal dress and the bridesmaids and groomsmen emulating the royal court—a tradition which carries on in many marriages today.)
Eleanor, Queen of France, had a strong influence on the development of Courtly Love. She gathered knights, ladies, and poets around her and created an elegant court. Here, issues of love including chivalry, table manners, courtesy, and love-making were both taught and created.
In mock-legal proceedings a lover could present a complaint and defense regarding a matter of love. A jury of women handed down their decision which became a new part of the Courtly code of ethics.
Prior to this time, marriage was viewed as a tool for men to enrich themselves. Men would obtain a dowry and then proceed to annul the marriage. The ladies of the court would not stand for this—but they did not rule in favor of marriage as one might expect. Instead, they ruled in favor of love.
To decide on an issue of Courtly Love, the question was posed:
"Can true love exist between married people?"
The
Judgment: It cannot.
In 1174, the Countess Marie of Champagne (daughter of Eleanor), ruled in the court of love in Poitiers, that love was a free and mutual expression of emotion whereas marriage was a duty. Marriage was found to be incompatible with the freedom necessary for love; adultery was proclaimed as the true manner of expressing love.
Marie of Champagne had one of her clergy, Andreas Capellanus, write down the results of these court proceedings. His book, The Art of Courtly Love, classified the adulterous manners into thirty-one basic rules of Courtly Love. These included the ideas that jealousy is a necessary part of love; that the lover should always have the beloved in mind, and that loving two people at the same time is impossible. His book became the sole instruction manual on love and caused adultery to flourish throughout Europe.
During the Renaissance period, the nature of family life changed and more time was spent in the cities. For the first time, the beginnings of modern marriage could be seen in the rise of the importance of the idea that young couples should live apart from their families in a home of their own. The concept of smaller family units began to take hold which caused an increased time at home as a couple. As a result, the desirability of one's longer-term marriage partner, over and above the dowry, now became important. Couples who lived together were considered married by canon law (the rules of the Christian Church), and the dowry became the symbol of an honorable marriage.
Being an honorable member of society continued to rise in importance. The marriage vows of this time reflected this rise in that they now included a statement that declared marriage to be "ordained for a remedy against sin, to avoid fornication, that such persons as have not the gift of continency (celibacy), that they should marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body." (Consultation, 1536)
In the year 1563 at the Council of Trent, the Church Fathers declared that a marriage was not to be considered valid unless it was accompanied by a priest in the presence of two or three witnesses. Before this time, marriages occurred without any ceremony and were frowned upon by the Church.
Surprisingly, the priestly benediction (ceremony) is not found in either the Christian Bible or in the Jewish Talmud as one might expect. The creation of the marriage ceremony is left entirely to the person in charge of marrying the couple. The customary practice, started in the middle sixteenth century, was to follow the matrimonial rules listed in the Book of Common Prayer. This book popularized the "for better and for worse" version of the marriage vows and the ideal of commitment to one spouse. (Note: The Christian priest's duties were not only restricted to the vows, but were also considered, at that time, to be the blessing of the bridal bed to bring the couple a long life and healthy children. See Appendix 2 for an in-depth look at marriage vows.)
This quick historical jaunt finally arrives at the New World. Here we find that the Puritans valued marriage highly and specifically, sex within the context of marriage (Martin Luther argued that celibacy was invented by the Devil). Sex outside of marriage, and especially adultery, were considered serious sins that frequently led to excommunication.