Q: I love my partner but am not in love. Is that a problem?
A: It depends.
If you are calling this a “problem,” the true problem is likely your perspective and not the other person at all. You’ve fallen for a cultural and psychological trap, and you’ve checked out of a relationship that now feels emotionally stunted. On the other hand, if you accept the truth about love and infatuation, you will see that “love but not in love” is not the cause of your relationship problems, but the solution.
Throughout childhood we are told that romantic love is the pinnacle of human experience. Popular media depict the “in-love” feeling as the key to self-realization and happiness. Adults tell us that this feeling will let us know we have found “The One,” and we will become our best selves in head-over-heels love. If the love is true we will stay in love forever, and the relationship will be our respite from the suffering of everyday life, happily ever after.
This is the mainstream love mythology (MLM), the current form of the ancient romantic tradition of courtly love. Despite its minimal resemblance to actual emotional reality, most of us walk around profoundly influenced by MLM, and the consequences in real relationships can be dire. When we grow up and find ourselves problematizing the “love but not in love” situation, our resulting doubt can slowly and agonizingly disintegrate a potentially great relationship.
For happier, more sustainable relationships, we must first carefully observe the psychological mechanics of romantic love and differentiate that from commitment. Then we must examine the two sides of commitment, both internal and external. Once we move past MLM and commit to emotional honesty within, we open ourselves up to the possibility of commitment to another person.
The Story
Love for a beautiful stranger is intense. Words seem too small to express it because the huge feelings are so disproportionate to the non-context of this brand new relationship. As a result, lovers often communicate through artistic metaphor, especially via music. Infatuated lovers temporarily inhabit a technicolor universe in which past/present and self/other distinctions blur, but within a year or so these psychological phenomena fade. However, because MLM insists that “true” love never dies, we may grow uncertain as the relationship starts to feel less magical and more ordinary. This anxious uncertainty leads to doubt, which may cause us to leave the relationship.
For those who stumble into it, falling in love is a beautiful pain/pleasure high and should be fully experienced as such. However, like any high it disappears, and it’s not for everybody. There is no problem with never falling in love. Many psychologically healthy people, due to disposition and/or circumstances, never fall head-over-heels in love, and many of them enjoy great relationships throughout their lives.
To judge a relationship based on the presence or absence of a passive psychological phenomenon beyond anyone’s control is absurd. Furthermore, because infatuation hinges upon a complex psychological distortion, it actually hinders a couple’s ability to get to know one another. Once it’s gone only nostalgia remains, and only then can lovers truly see each other as they are.
Couples’ nostalgic origin stories (“…and the rest is history”) are endearing, but they merely add to the confusion, partially due to the statistical phenomenon known as survivorship bias. When we think of happy marriages, we think of the couples whose relationships have survived and who talk about love like it’s their job. We unconsciously omit all the bitterly divorced couples who no longer sing that song, and we forget about the countless destructive relationships that also began with head-over-heels infatuation.
The Commitments
Time is the great equalizer. No matter how high the love fever gets, once it breaks it’s gone forever. The ecstatic pleasures of MLM have almost nothing to do with the construction and maintenance of a long-term relationship, other than sometimes being its emotional starting point.
At some point a significant crisis in the relationship emerges, and that crisis tests the strength of the commitment. From then on the relationship will be increasingly characterized by the ebb and flow of the various challenges that life delivers. Successfully overcoming crises together creates meaning and strengthens the bond like nothing else can.
Commitment happens on two levels: internal and external. Internal commitment starts before the relationship begins. It is the complete ownership of emotion. Self-deception is the most destructive force in any relationship, and a relationship in which true feelings are denied and projected is doomed. In that situation, every conversation involves some form of lying or gaslighting. If we are in denial of our own feelings, we can’t honestly engage with anyone or fully commit to anything.
This internal commitment is also known as emotional availability, and it is the most reliable predictor of anyone’s likelihood to find a partner. Once we commit to ourselves, we open the possibility of committing to another person. This external commitment doesn’t happen once over dinner, after sex, or during a formal ceremony. It is the active form of love, or love as a verb, and it is the process of actively doing things for one person to make life better for both: showing up, prioritizing, remembering, and owning all that’s said and done. On a long enough timeline, a successful relationship is defined not by the presence or absence of a single emotion, but by the fullness of the mutual commitment.
The Doubt
The “love but not in love” dilemma seems like it’s about a lack of the “in-love” emotion, but it is not. It is about a lack of certainty. It results from anxiety around that uncertainty, rooted in leftover MLM confusion and an underlying resistance to internal commitment.
When we remain internally uncommitted, our own feelings are obscured by ideas of how we “should” feel, and we try to solve emotional problems with rational thought. To compensate for our missing internal emotional compass, we crowdsource relationship advice and collect myriad conflicting opinions, but those external voices only amplify the confusion. The lack of internal emotional input only deepens the doubt. In this state, “love but not in love” is an existential riddle, and escape feels like the only answer.
In the face of the inherent unpredictability of relationships, it is only natural to long for a sure thing. However, uncertainty is a standard feature of all consequential relationships, and any guarantee is an illusion. Any relationship that counts also generates anxiety, and not all anxiety is bad. Ideally we can channel this anxiety into motivation to prioritize this important relationship and show up as our best selves. 80% of success is indeed just showing up, and for the 20% beyond that, there are no guarantees.
The Answer
Loving relationships are a refuge from the burdens of everyday life, but in contrast to the MLM portrait of love, they are not leisure. Relationships are ever-changing and require active, daily attention. Internal and external commitments must be remade again and again as conflicts continually emerge. When taken seriously, relationships are not a form of leisure, but are the highest and noblest form of work.
The work of relationships is continually seeking out and overcoming resistances to commitment and surmounting obstacles together as one. At times this work is repetitive, routinized, and rote. At other times it feels supportive, soulful, and surprising. Over time the scrapbook of challenges faced and obstacles overcome becomes a source of profound meaning that humbles and transcends both partners.
By then infatuation is long gone, and no one is “in love” à la MLM. A mutually committed relationship does not wrestle with the state of “love but not in love.” It actively performs that state every day not as an existential question, but as its answer.