Pat Love, Ed.D., is best known as the author of two popular books on marriage, The Truth About Love (2001) and Hot Monogamy (1994), and coauthor of How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It (2007). Her articles have appeared in such magazines as Men's Health, Good Housekeeping, Men's Magazine and Woman's World, and she has appeared on TV on CNN, The Today Show and Oprah. A licensed marriage and family counselor, she has also served as past president of the International Association for Marriage and Family Counseling.

The Good News: I was impressed with your book The Truth About Love. I enjoyed the structure of your book laid out in four stages couples go through—the infatuation stage, the post-rapture stage, the discovery stage and the connection stage. How did you come to discover what true love is in the human condition?

Pat Love: A short answer is research and clinical experience. If I have one talent, it's reading complex material and putting it into simple models. Add to this the fact that in the last 10 years we've had this explosion of information about how the nervous system functions and how it relates to relationships.

So just about the time we thought we knew a lot, this whole explosion of knowledge came along, and now with tools like the MRI we can look into the brain and see how it all works. Research and new information are pouring out like a fountain.

GN: It must be exponential, all this new knowledge and information.

PL: It is, and for me there's always the "So what?" question. What's the bottom line? That's why I took a chance and wrote a commercial book instead of a textbook. In academia, it's a thing of disdain to write a trade book instead of a textbook. But I looked at it and asked myself, "What's my goal?" My goal is getting the word out. And oddly enough, The Truth About Love is used in a lot of universities. It's now like a basic text.

GN: Though it may sound simplistic, I have to ask: How do you define true love?

PL: Well, you're really getting to the core of this thing. As I studied it, I fell into the Eastern approach of defining it as "the wish to make someone happy." In contrast, if you look at the Western view of love, it basically boils down to, "What have you done for me lately?"

In other words, if you will treat me the way I want to be treated, then I love you. In this view, love is the response to getting your needs met. The problem is, there's absolutely no research to back that up, research that says this is going to make you happy or that's going to constitute love. The only thing that research shows really makes us happy is using our particular talent for a noble cause. In other words, loving someone else.

GN: Would you say that love is an outgoing concern?

PL: Yes. And what's interesting is that we confuse love with pleasure. Pleasure is the feeling of getting your needs and wants met. When you meet my needs, then I feel pleasure. But pleasure exhausts itself in the moment. You have to keep having it. That's why it's very addictive, like ice cream. You have pleasure, but only while you're eating it. It doesn't sustain into the next moment, the next experience.

GN: I read in your book how you acknowledged that marriage doesn't come with a job description. That statement was both funny and true. Do you think most people just don't think about this, or that we make it up as we go?

PL: I think they just don't know this. The brain is so subjective. We are totally absorbed with our own reality. That's just the nature of it. It's so tempting to see your view as the true worldview, and to think your partner needs to view the world as you do.

One of the lesser-noticed but important parts of the whole book is the part about role definition. This is what destroys a lot of relationships.

For example, a woman might come into marriage thinking, "I'm going to expect you to take care of me financially, to provide for and protect me," yet also thinking, "Well, it's okay if I work, but my money is extra money." All the while she assumes, "Well, I'm doing my part."

She may have very good intentions, but the couple runs into trouble because she and the man are reading from a different script. The man might be thinking, "Well, here's a woman who earns plenty of money; she can take care of me." It works both ways.

It reminds me of an old cartoon I have about two trapeze artists. They've each swung out and met each other, and they both let go. So neither is catching the other. The caption below is "Oops!" That's what happens with couples. Each partner thinks that the other is signing off on these roles, but no one articulates them.

GN: In your book you related a modern marriage to assembling an airplane in flight. Could you elaborate a little on that metaphor for us?

PL: Let me give you a few research statistics that I thought were profound. Three out of four Americans believe that marriage is designed not for the bearing and raising of children but for personal fulfillment. In other words, each partner is saying, "Your job is to make me happy"—that's the purpose of marriage, and if you're not making me happy then the marriage isn't viable.

That's a seismic shift from the past generation—this idea that you're required to meet my ongoing needs and make me happy. And there's no research to back up the notion that another person could ever make someone happy.

I think it's like assembling an airplane in flight. And I don't think it's any coincidence that marriage and divorce rates today are 50-50. It's a roll of the dice. I have a colleague whose mother got married and divorced the year she was 91! She said all she and her husband did was argue about money and children.

GN: That's pretty sad. It fits with the preconceptions about love, for example that we never get angry and other unreasonable expectations, and that made me think, just what conditions people to think in this way? Is this wishful thinking, or have we never been educated to a better understanding of what's expected in marriage?

PL: What gives them those expectations is their experience, because during the infatuation stage of a relationship all of that is true. People think, "Because I have experienced an effortless high with you over an extended period of time, it's only fair and logical for me to think that since we have it now, we'll have it in a year."

It feels so wonderful that it's only logical to think, "Okay, I'm really experiencing this, I'm not making this up, this is happening, I do feel this way, I do want to spend time with you." So it's only logical for people to think that what they have at that moment is what they'll always have.

But we don't realize that we are biologically programmed to do that. And that's why we have these expectations, because we've experienced it or seen people who've experienced it, but we don't understand the transient nature of infatuation. When the infatuation wears off there's a letdown, what I call the post-rapture stage. Not understanding this, some couples break up when really this is an opportunity to break through to a deeper level of love and commitment.

GN: Could you give us the essence of what you mean by the discovery stage and the connection stage in marriage?

PL: The discovery stage is finding out what says "I love you" to your partner and giving it as a gift. And how do you do that? You do that by "atunement"—by tuning in to your partner.

We want three things in a relationship:

Number 1, somebody who is tuned in to you, who experiences you, who is really present.

Number 2, he or she really "gets you." They tune in long enough to say, "Oh, that's what he (or she) means, that's what he (or she) wants, that's who he (or she) is."

Number 3, once they get you, they respond accordingly in a committed way.

With babies you have to look and learn, to really watch and pay attention, to learn how to take care of them. That's how it is with adults too. That's what discovery is. That's really an ace in the hole with ongoing passion in marriage.

GN: To cap this interview off, let's talk about the connection stage in marriage as it relates to commitment. Your thoughts?

PL: Commitment is the opportunity to be truly known by another human being. Marriage and commitment are given bad press today. Pundits and politicians offer what should be done, but not much is heard about the delight of committed love. We do hear a lot from the media on divorces, especially when a celebrity is involved.

GN: Are there different kinds of commitment?

PL: There are. For example, there's commitment without marriage, and society is more accepting of this kind of commitment today. But this is living together for convenience. The attitude here is more individualistic and less relationship-oriented. Partners can have a wandering eye and constantly search for the other's shortcomings. True love eludes this relationship. When a person's commitment in a relationship is in question, the relationship lives in a state of heightened alert, and partners are more likely to overreact to the smallest issues.

GN: Would you say that a deep connection with your mate is not static but ongoing? Can this improve your marriage?

PL: The course of true love doesn't end with the connection stage of marriage. True love gets better as time goes on. An intimate connection energizes you and takes you to new heights beyond even the infatuation stage. So it does get better and better with a deep connection.

A marriage will continue to experience disappointments and disagreements, but a deep connection relationship comes with confidence that your love will see you through. The truth about love is that it just gets better and better with time.

GN: Finally, what are some concluding thoughts that show a deep connection with our mates?

PL: The most significant connection in adulthood is between marriage partners. Friends, children, even parents cannot meet our needs like a spouse can.

Someone might say that their friends are more committed to them than their spouse is. If that's true, then ask your friends to be at your house every night at six o'clock, or contribute to half of the housework and half the income. You'll soon see the difference between a friend and your spouse. Your spouse is a primary source of security who, when push comes to shove, is in your corner.

The connecting activities between two partners, like touching, holding, listening and supporting, produce the release of endorphins. These wonderful natural opiates give you a sense of calm and tranquility. Your relationship becomes a haven from the outside world. The fourth stage of marriage, the connection stage, is an ongoing stage of new joy and delights. The deeper the connection in a marriage, the happier and more secure it will be.

GN: Thanks for your time and for sharing with us the valuable information on marriage relationships we can glean from your book The Truth About Love. We appreciate it. GN