Modern Romance

Companionate love is defined in opposition to passionate love. Whereas passionate love is the feeling people experience in the beginning of a relationship when the brain is overwhelmed with dopamine, companionate love “is less intense but grows over time,” and “[n]eurologically it’s similar to the kind of love you feel for an old friend or family member” (215). Some people chase the high of passionate love, jumping from relationship to relationship, but companionate love can only be achieved in long-term relationships and offers a sense of stability and comfort that isn’t found in the passionate love phase.

Emerging adulthood is a new phenomenon in which young adults forgo marriage and children to go to college, try different careers, and date different people. The goal is to become “a more fully developed person” (17) before finding a stable partner, but some people remain in the emerging adulthood phase until well into their thirties. Emerging adulthood is a phase of life that many older generations never entered; for them, they moved straight from their parents’ house into their spouse’s house, never taking the time to be alone. This wasn’t their fault, however. Society’s expectations for young adults have changed. Older generations assumed that teenagers would quickly get married, while modern society expects young adults to go to college.