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LOVE DOES INCREASE OVER TIME FOR ROMANTIC COUPLES, SAYS RESEARCHER
But Commitment and Satisfaction Need To Be There Too, For It To Last
WASHINGTON - Do intimate partners really love each other more with each
passing year, as suggested by the Hallmark anniversary or Valentine's Day
card? Do they see their love getting better over time? A new study on
premarital relationship development in this month's Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology published by the American Psychological Association
explores how love improves over time for romantic couples if satisfaction
and commitment increase too.
"Love does tend to grow, but loving each other may not prevent break-up,"
according to psychologist Susan Sprecher, Ph.D., of Illinois State
University. "Couples break up because of decreased levels of satisfaction
in the relationship-not because they stop loving each other."
Dr. Sprecher discovered that satisfaction and commitment were as, or
more, important than love for couples in their desire to stay together by
surveying both partners of 101 heterosexual couples at a Midwestern
university. She examined both their actual and perceived changes in love,
satisfaction and commitment for each other over a four-year period.
By the end of the study, 59 percent of the couples had ended their
relationships. These couples reported decreased levels of satisfaction and
commitment before the relationship actually ended, but said that their love
remained unchanged.
"These results suggest that people do not end their relationship because
of the disappearance of love," said Dr. Sprecher, "but because of a
dissatisfaction or unhappiness that develops, which may cause love to stop
growing." She also noted that love might not completely end when the
relationship ends.
Of the 41 couples who remained together, 71 percent had married. The
couples who remained together reported that their love, satisfaction and
commitment increased over time. Furthermore, the largest increase was in
their commitment for one another.
Article: "I Love You More Today Than Yesterday': Romantic Partners'
Perceptions of Changes in Love and Related Affect Over Time," Susan
Sprecher, Ph.D., Illinois State University, Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, Vol. 76, No. 1.
(Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs
Office or at www.apa.org/journals/psp.html
Susan Sprecher, Ph.D., can be reached at (309) 438-8357 or
[email protected].
The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the
largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in
the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists.
APA's membership includes more than 155,000 researchers, educators,
clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 50 subfields
of psychology and affiliations with 58 state, territorial and Canadian
provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a
profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.
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