A Book About Love

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster eBook. Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Simon & Schuster. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP or visit us online to sign up at eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com CONTENTS Epigraph Author’s Note Introduction: Habituation 1 Attachment Interlude: Limerence 2 The Abraham Principle 3 The Marriage Plot Interlude: Divorce 4 Moments of Grace Interlude: Love Lost 5 On Memory Interlude: The Opposite of Love 6 Going On Coda: Scarcity About Jonah Lehrer Notes . . . and to prove/Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love. —PHILIP LARKIN, “An Arundel Tomb” “God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.” —HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN AUTHOR’S NOTE IN EARLY AUGUST 2012, a book I wrote called Imagine was taken out of print and pulled from stores. This happened because I made several serious mistakes in the text. The worst of these mistakes involved fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan. In addition, there were passages where I relied on secondary sources that were not cited. In the months that followed, other mistakes and failures came to light. In one instance, I plagiarized from another writer on my blog. My second book, How We Decide, was later taken out of print due to factual errors and improper citation. I broke the most basic rules of my profession. I am ashamed of what I’ve done. I will regret it for the rest of my life. To prevent these mistakes from happening again, I have followed a few simple procedures in this book. All quotes and relevant text have been sent to subjects for their approval. This also applies to the research I describe: whenever possible, my writing has been sent to the scientists to ensure accuracy. In addition, the book has been independently fact-checked. INTRODUCTION Habituation As we know, love needs re-inventing. —ARTHUR RIMBAUD1 1 Two psychological laws shape much of human experience. They exist in opposition to each other. 2 The first law is habituation. It’s a law of brute simplicity. When we are repeatedly exposed to a stimulus—no matter what the stimulus—we gradually come to ignore it. We become desensitized to the sensation, bored by its constancy. Consider your underwear. Do you feel it? Are you conscious of it? Of course not. The garments are rubbing against some of the most sensitive nerves of the body, but you’ve learned to tune those signals out. The cotton has become an invisible fabric, as imperceptible as the air. The most important implications of habituation have to do with pleasure. Although animals are programmed to seek out rewards, the law of habituation means that these rewards come with diminishing returns. That’s why the first bite of chocolate cake is better than the second, and the second is better than the third. It’s why that new gadget is exciting the first few times you touch the screen, but then it becomes just another device, gathering dust in the corner. The delight always vanishes, replaced by the usual boredom and indifference. Habituation is a phenomenon of sweeping power.2 It is one of the only mental properties shared by every species with a nervous system, from fruit flies to humans. The biology of habituation has been carefully studied in sea slugs and drug addicts; economists have used the phenomenon to explain the surprising disconnect between money and happiness;3 the concept has even been applied to the short life cycle of fashionable clothes, which lose their allure long before they wear out.4 Habituation is not a fact of life—in many respects, it is the fact of life. We spend our days chasing after the most fleeting things, those desires that never