The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts

partner whom they once loved. After all, if we were
deceived, we have a right to be angry. Did we really have
the “real” thing? I think so. The problem was faulty
information.
The bad information was the idea that the “in love”
obsession would last forever. We should have known
better. A casual observation should have taught us that if
people remained obsessed, we would all be in serious
trouble. The shock waves would rumble through business,
industry, church, education, and the rest of society. Why?
Because people who are “in love” lose interest in other
pursuits. That is why we call it “obsession.” The college
student who falls head over heels in love sees his grades

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tumbling. It is difficult to study when you are in love.
Tomorrow you have a test on the War of 1812, but who
cares about the War of 1812? When you’re in love,
everything else seems irrelevant. A man said to me, “Dr.
Chapman, my job is disintegrating.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I met this girl, fell in love, and I can’t get a thing done. I
can’t keep my mind on my job. I spend my day dreaming
about her.”
The euphoria of the “in love” state gives us the illusion
that we have an intimate relationship. We feel that we
belong to each other. We believe we can conquer all
problems. We feel altruistic toward each other. As one
young man said about his fiancée, “I can’t conceive of
doing anything to hurt her. My only desire is to make her
happy. I would do anything to make her happy.” Such
obsession gives us the false sense that our egocentric
attitudes have been eradicated and we have become sort
of a Mother Teresa, willing to give anything for the benefit of
our lover. The reason we can do that so freely is that we
sincerely believe that our lover feels the same way toward
us. We believe that she is committed to meeting our needs,
that he loves us as much as we love him and would never
do anything to hurt us.
That thinking is always fanciful. Not that we are
insincere in what we think and feel, but we are unrealistic.
We fail to reckon with the reality of human nature. By nature,
we are egocentric. Our world revolves around us. None of

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us is totally altruistic. The euphoria of the “in love”
experience only gives us that illusion.
Once the experience of falling in love has run its natural
course (remember, the average in-love experience lasts
two years), we will return to the world of reality and begin to
assert ourselves. He will express his desires, but his
desires will be different from hers. He desires sex, but she
is too tired. He wants to buy a new car, but she says,
“That’s absurd!” She wants to visit her parents, but he says,
“I don’t like spending so much time with your family.” He
wants to play in the softball tournament, and she says, “You
love softball more than you love me.” Little by little, the
illusion of intimacy evaporates, and the individual desires,
emotions, 
thoughts, 
and 
behavior 
patterns 
exert
themselves. They are two individuals. Their minds have not
melded together, and their emotions mingled only briefly in
the ocean of love. Now the waves of reality begin to
separate them. They fall out of love, and at that point either
they withdraw, separate, divorce, and set off in search of a
new in-love experience, or they begin the hard work of
learning to love each other without the euphoria of the in-
love obsession.
The in-love experience does not focus on our own growth
nor on the growth and development of the other person.