You Just Know: The Power of Love

“… It’s strong and it’s sudden and it’s cruel sometimes, but it might just save your life.
That’s the power of love.
First time you feel it, it might make you sad. Next time you feel it it might make you mad.
But you’ll be glad baby when you’ve found that’s the power makes the world go’round.”
The Power of Love, Huey Lewis and the News in Back To the Future, 1985 #1 hit
The office was quiet after a busy last work day for office manager Seth Reuters. He was moving on his path to become Dr. Seth Reuters, a licensed psychologist. Politely unassuming, he asked if he might speak with me. Yes of course. As he seated himself across from me in my light filled garden front office deep in Philadelphia’s Theatre district, I wondered what might be on his mind.
Driven by his pilgrimage to decipher basic truth, Seth summarized that he knew I had been married to Erich, my first husband, for nearly 25 years. He also correctly surmised that I was tragedy struck when Erich had died suddenly a few years earlier and Seth had recently noticed that I had found confidence to marry a second man. “I don’t want to pry, but if you don’t mind, can you help me understand how you know when you meet the love of your life? There are so many people. How do you know when it is really the one? ” And, after that huge gulp of the deepest question one can ask, Scott looked shyly at me from the side to avoid full eye contact.
Surprised by the sudden intimacy Seth had engineered, I felt honored that this young man, who had self-funded his academics at Columbia, trusted me enough to ask me what might just be the most important question of most peoples’ lifetime. I had tackled this dilemma as I faced, first young widowhood, and later, dating after a quarter century of marriage. I smiled faintly, remembering the relief I felt that I could trust my instinct about whom to marry. “Seth, you just know. It is like nothing else. It is an event that happens once; maybe twice of you are very lucky. Someone comes along and everyone else is not right compared with what you share with this person. I trusted my gut. I just knew. Sorry to be inexact, but that is the real answer. You just know.”
Seth held my gaze. “I understand.”
Maybe, if you are very fortunate, you will know the consummate power of the many kinds of love: the love of parent and child, the love of owner and pet, the love of friends, and the primary bonding of two life partners. Maybe, just maybe, love will grab you by the shoulders, lift you off your feet, and transport you to a place of wonder, so life altering that you know you can never go back to the uninitiated. Dr Susan Johnson and Dr Helen Fisher have each spent decades researching the science of human love and attachment. Dr Johnson reports research that that humans are meant to mate for life. Dr Fisher informs us that the basic human need is to love and that the drive to love is part of our genetic makeup. Science indicates that the need to love is not the least bit illogical or random, but actually an ordered and wise recipe for survival of our species. And, to strengthen this argument, the social sciences, including human development and positive psychology, educate us to understand that engaging with others is the foundation for personal and interpersonal wellbeing. We need to love and loving skillfully makes us happy: this makes the power of love the central topic in our lifetime. Please do join us in the next issues as we explore this question of a lifetime.
To consider: What propels your love chemistry? How can you channel this force to create wonderful days and nights day after week after month after year?
To Read: Susan Johnson. Love Sense. Little Brown, New York, 2014.
Dr Judith Coche works with the power of love as part of The Coche Center, a practice in clinical psychology at Rittenhouse Square and Stone Harbor, NJ (www.cochecener.com). Find her this fall speaking on The Power of Love at TEDx Cape May.