Unrequited (31 page)

  25       
 
the main arguments . . . have had remarkable staying power:
At this writing, the latest incarnation of the
Rules
juggernaut is
Not Your
Mother’s Rules: The New Secrets for Dating (The Rules)
by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider (New York: Grand Central, 2013). The original book in the series,
The Rules™: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right
, was published by the same authors with Warner Books in 1995.

  29       
 
organizes our lives, thoughts, and actions:
This idea comes from Robert Michael’s writings on political passions in student rebels of the late 1960s but is certainly relevant to romantic passion: “From a psychological point of view, passion is quite different from patterns of either thought or action because, unlike these, it cannot be compartmentalized or isolated from other personality functions. True passion organizes an individual’s life, his every thought and action, and allows no compromise. It is, to borrow a phrase, ‘nonnegotiable.’” See Milton Viederman’s description of Robert Michael’s work in “The Nature of Passionate Love” in
Passionate Attachments: Thinking About Love
, edited by Willard Gaylin, M.D., and Ethel Person, M.D. (New York: Free Press, 1988), 4.

  30       
 
a “future state of perfect happiness”:
Sharon Brehm, “Passionate Love” in R. A. Sternberg and M. Barnes, eds.,
The Psychology of Love
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 253.

  30       
 
across world cultures and religions:
Semir Zeki,
Splendors and Miseries of the Brain: Love, Creativity, and the Quest for Human Happiness
(West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), Kindle edition, location 2703.

  37       
 
be-all and end-all of intimacy:
Katherine’s unrequited loves bring to mind Laura Kipnis’s argument against marital fidelity: “Sometimes desire just won’t take no for an answer, particularly when some beguiling and potentially available love-object hovers into your sight lines, making you feel what you’d forgotten how to feel, which is
alive
, even though you’re supposed to be channeling all such affective capacities into the ‘appropriate’ venues, and everything (Social Stability! The National Fabric! Being a Good Person!) hinges on making sure that you do. But renunciation chafes, particularly when the quantities demanded begin to exceed the amount of gratification achieved.”
Against Love: A Polemic
(New York: Pantheon, 2003), 44.

  38       
 
“the enchanted gardens of the imagination”:
Stendhal,
On Love
, 53.

  40       
 
“seal with which lovers plight their troth”:
William J. Fielding,
Strange Customs of Courtship and Marriage
(New York: New Home Library, 1942), 55.

  44       
 
“There’s a special place in hell”:
Swift has also been criticized for buying a house near the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod during her brief relationship with Conor Kennedy (which she’s since sold) and making veiled barbs at ex-boyfriend Harry Styles at the 2013 VMA awards. See Nancy Jo Sales, “Taylor Swift’s Telltale Heart,”
Vanity Fair
, April 2013, 11; Andrew Gruttadaro, “Taylor Swift Disses Harry Styles While Accepting her VMA Award,” Hollywoodlife.com, August 25, 2013, http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/08/25/harry-styles-taylor-swift-diss-vmas-speech/; and Rachel McRady, “Tina Fey Slams Taylor Swift,”
Us Weekly
, January 13, 2014, http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/tina-fey-slams-taylor-swift-while-congratulating-amy-poehler-theres-a-special-place-in-hell-for-you-2014131.

  46       
 
how much she wanted him back:
“Platonic friendship makes the issue of persistence especially painful. The would-be lover may agree to remain ‘just friends,’ but the feelings do not necessarily go away, and the continued contact provides a constant reminder and stimulus to the desire.” Baumeister and Wotman,
Breaking Hearts
, 164.

  46       
 
whatever signs she can grab on to:
Ibid.
,
158–9.

  46       
 
because sometimes they do:
Hillary J. Morgan and Phillip R. Shaver, “Attachment Processes and Commitment to Romantic Relationships,” in
Handbook of Interpersonal Commitment and Relationship Stability
, eds. Jeffrey M. Adamas and Warren H. Jones (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999), 119.

  47       
 
didn’t want me to contact the object of her longing:
I, like other writers and researchers who have examined unrequited love, face the impossibility of getting both sides of the story. Interview subjects—unrequited lovers and rejecters alike—rarely agree to identify the people they’re talking about, much less consent to let you contact them.

  47       
 
no, this isn’t going to work:
The common reluctance to transmit bad news to people has been called the “mum effect.” Roy F.
Baumeister et al, “Unrequited Love: On Heartbreak, Anger, Guilt, Scriptlessness, and Humiliation,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
64 (1993): 377–94. See also Abraham Tesser and Sidney Rosen, “The Reluctance to Transmit Bad News,”
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
, ed. L. Berkowitz (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1975), 193–232.

  48       
 
similar neural mechanisms are at work in both kinds of love:
Frank Tallis,
Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004), 251–52.

  48       
 
turning his back on this most basic human desire:
“Attachment theory portrays human beings as organisms craving to form social bonds with each other, and so it is surprising to find a person rejecting attachment.” Baumeister et al,
Breaking Hearts
, 34.

  49       
 
toying with a vulnerable woman:
“One of the gender differences that stood out is the higher appetite for sex among men, especially casual sex. Having someone with a crush on you is an opportunity for that. Whether knowingly exploiting the difference or just thinking, great, I get to have sex—men are drawn into that. Whereas if the man is attracted to the woman and she doesn’t reciprocate, she’s not going to think having sex with him is all that appealing.” Roy Baumeister, in-person interview, October 25, 2013.

  49       
 
Janey’s ex is wrong for leading her on:
“To show attraction to another and then withdraw it is regarded as inconsistent, teasing, unfair. The common term is ‘leading the person on,’ and it violates the norms for appropriate treatment of other people.” Baumeister and Wotman,
Breaking Hearts
, 141–42.

  49       
 
can have the same power:
Baumeister and Wotman note that their research subjects can sustain a “self-deceptive persistence” despite “multiple and clear messages of rejection” when a beloved’s interest fades. Baumeister and Wotman,
Breaking Hearts
, 159.

  49       
 
arranged marriages in Western culture:
Charles Lindholm describes the early-nineteenth-century shift from arranged marriage to marriages of choice as stemming from the rise of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois individual’s life was increasingly divided between home and the workplace, which led to the rise of individualism and intimate personal relationships. “Increased personal choice and individuality,
along with a new emphasis on intimacy, meant that marriage was now constituted not by interest or duty, as in previous generations, but by the mutual idealization of romantic love. Love marriage has usually been portrayed by sociologists . . . as a necessary functional aid to the integration of a fragmented modern world.” Charles Lindholm, “The Future of Love,” in
Romantic Love and Sexual Behavior: Perspectives from the Social Sciences
, ed. Victor C. Munck (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 18.

  50       
 
Women responded by granting them time:
Karen Lystra,
Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 186–87.

  50       
 
kissing and heavy petting:
“Some indeterminate level of sexual expression and satisfaction was acceptable in Victorian courtships when individuals were in love and the expectation of marriage was strong. . . . Imbued with romantic love, sex was seen as an act of self-disclosure, not so much in the sense of revealing one’s body as one’s essential identity. Sex was identified with the inner life and was perceived as part of the privileged revelation of an ‘authentic’ self. Properly sanctioned by love, sexual expressions were read as symbolic communications of one’s real and truest self, part of the hidden essence of the individual.” Ibid.
,
59.

  50       
 
the initials of the boys they’d broken up with:
“In earlier days going steady had been more like the old-fashioned ‘keeping steady company.’ It was a step along the path to marriage, even if many steady couples parted company before they reached their destination. By the early 1950s, going steady had acquired a totally different meaning. It was no longer the way a marriageable couple signaled their deepening intentions. Instead, going steady was something twelve-year-olds could do, something most fifteen-year-olds did. Few steady couples expected to marry each other (especially the twelve-year-olds), but, for the duration, they acted
as if
they were married. Going steady had become a sort of play-marriage, a mimicry of the actual marriage of their slightly older peers.” Beth L. Baily,
From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 49–52.

  50       
 
As late as 1970:
Barbara Whitehead,
Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman
(New York: Broadway Books, 2003), 11–13.

  51       
lost in the shuffle is “any coherent set of widely accepted practices or conventions”:
Ibid., 13–14.

  51       
 
too many varieties of jam:
Barry Schwartz,
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
(New York: Ecco Press, 2003), 19.

  51       
 
too many prospects in a speed-dating session:
Sander van der Linden, “Speed Dating and Decision-Making: Why Less Is More,” June 7, 2011, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=speed-dating-decision-making-why-less-is-more.

  51       
 
for men, who can wait longer:
This issue, of course, is far more complicated. What’s actually happening is a complex sociological dynamic that relates to delayed marriage and childbearing, decreasing marriage rates, women’s increased educational and professional accomplishments, and the decrease in men’s educational attainment and job prospects. For a comprehensive discussion, see Kate Bolick’s November 2011
Atlantic
article “All the Single Ladies” and Hanna Rosin’s
The End of Men
(New York: Riverhead, 2012).

  53       
 
Why didn’t you call me?
:
Macy Gray, “Why Didn’t You Call Me,” on
On How Life Is
, Epic Records
,
1999.

  53       
 
He needs space:
“The rejecter hopes that a few unreturned phone calls would be sufficient to convey to the would-be lover that the love is doomed. The would-be lover wants to see each unreturned phone call as accident, oversight, inconvenience, indeed as anything except as a sign of lack of interest.” Baumeister and Wotman,
Breaking Hearts
, 140.

  53       
 
an unstated cost-benefit calculation:
Miriam J. Rodin, “Non-Engagement, Failure to Engage, Disengagement,” in
Personal Relationships 4: Dissolving Personal Relationships
, ed. Steve Duck (New York: Academic Press, 1982), 38–39.

  54       
 
bestowing value isn’t evidence-based:
The concepts of appraisal and bestowal, developed by Irving Singer, are discussed in
Romantic Love
by Susan S. Hendrick and Clyde Hendrick (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1992), 31–34.

  54       
 
falling in love is something they can’t control:
Morgan and Shaver, “Attachment Process,” 109.

  57       
 
we’ll put in the effort:
William R. Cupach and Brian H. Spitzberg,
The Dark Side of Relationship Pursuit
(Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2004), 100.

  57       
the more they valued the goal of having a relationship:
The Arons describe unreciprocated love as a “motivational paradox.” Typically, people love because they believe they will benefit from an intimate relationship, for example, the love the partner will give them. “Thus, it is paradoxical that one should love a person when it is known that the other does not love the self.” Arthur Aron, Elaine N. Aron, and Joselyn Allen, “Motivations for Unreciprocated Love,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
24 (1998): 787.

  58       
 
lower goals are supposed to be flexible and substitutable:
See Cupach and Spitzberg,
The Dark Side of Relationship Pursuit
, 98–101.

  67       
 
Iustus’s wife was besotted with Plyades:
Galen,
On Prognosis
, trans. Vivian Nutton (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1979), http://cmg.bbaw.de/epubl/online/cmg_05_08_01.html,100-102.

  67       
 
a woman being diagnosed with lovesickness:
Mary Frances Wack,
Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The Viaticum and Its Commentaries
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 9.