Passionate/Companionate Love
My wife and I met nearly 15 years ago. I had just returned from college and was going to a wedding of a friend. I had seen Janelle around town and I knew that she also was planning to attend the wedding, so I invited her to join me. We had never spoken to each other, much less intended to date each other. In truth, we never really did date. There wasn't time. Six weeks after that wedding, I asked her to marry me. Six months from then, we said "I do." The pace at which we moved caused some of our friends and family concern, but Janelle and I knew what we wanted and we were confident that we had found the person God had designed with whom we wanted to spend the rest of our lives.
Passionate love is an intense feeling of desire and a yearning to be together (Myers & Twenge, 2015). I would say this very much describes the way we felt in the early days of our relationship. We dove in head first having no clue what we had gotten ourselves into. The first two years of my marriage were terrible. We fought constantly. Our relationship was like the roller coaster of ups and downs typical of passionate love (Myers and Twenge, 2015). To make matters worse, we had three second-trimester miscarriages. It was in the midst of these miscarriages, that something began to change in Janelle and I. The loss we were experiencing was unbearable. As we attempted to console each other, we also learned how to trust each other. And out of that trust, a deep friendship was forged. Janelle became my best friend and I became hers. We began to understand each other, give each other space to make mistakes, help each other clean them up when they were made, and truly support each other. In order for a relationship to last, passionate love must eventually surrender to companionate love. Companionate love is stable, consistent, trustworthy. It perhaps lacks the intense feelings of emotion and desire of passionate love, but it is the foundation of a healthy and lasting union (Cummins, n.d.). So much changed in our relationship during those two years that I questioned whether I had even truly loved her when I proposed. I didn't like the idea of that. One day when she was in the shower, I took her engagement ring. She was upset when she thought she had lost it. That evening I took her to dinner and re-proposed with a new, more beautiful ring - this time confident that I truly loved this woman. I had married my best friend and wanted the ring on her finger to be a symbol of what should have been there the first time I proposed. Our relationship had transitioned from passionate love to companionate love and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Passionate love is an intense feeling of desire and a yearning to be together (Myers & Twenge, 2015). I would say this very much describes the way we felt in the early days of our relationship. We dove in head first having no clue what we had gotten ourselves into. The first two years of my marriage were terrible. We fought constantly. Our relationship was like the roller coaster of ups and downs typical of passionate love (Myers and Twenge, 2015). To make matters worse, we had three second-trimester miscarriages. It was in the midst of these miscarriages, that something began to change in Janelle and I. The loss we were experiencing was unbearable. As we attempted to console each other, we also learned how to trust each other. And out of that trust, a deep friendship was forged. Janelle became my best friend and I became hers. We began to understand each other, give each other space to make mistakes, help each other clean them up when they were made, and truly support each other. In order for a relationship to last, passionate love must eventually surrender to companionate love. Companionate love is stable, consistent, trustworthy. It perhaps lacks the intense feelings of emotion and desire of passionate love, but it is the foundation of a healthy and lasting union (Cummins, n.d.). So much changed in our relationship during those two years that I questioned whether I had even truly loved her when I proposed. I didn't like the idea of that. One day when she was in the shower, I took her engagement ring. She was upset when she thought she had lost it. That evening I took her to dinner and re-proposed with a new, more beautiful ring - this time confident that I truly loved this woman. I had married my best friend and wanted the ring on her finger to be a symbol of what should have been there the first time I proposed. Our relationship had transitioned from passionate love to companionate love and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Cummins, Emily. (n.d.). Companionate Love: Definition & Examples. Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/companionate-love-definition-examples.html
Myers, D., Twenge, J. (10/2015). Social Psychology, 12th Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from vbk://1260372464
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