I came looking for an answer to
romantic love.
I saw the right question to be how to sustain
conjugal love.
I conquered with the
Brahma Viharas, hopefully...?
Like milk and water mixed: Buddhist reflections on love
-S Dhammika (2013)
Romantic love has all the defining characteristics of other types, although in a much more exaggerated and unruly form. Couples in love are intensely interested in each other; much of their time together is spent talking to each other about the minute details of their lives, likes and dislikes, hopes, interests and dreams. "What are you thinking? a young woman will sometimes say to her beloved. (p17)
Lovers come to care about each other too, about each other's happiness and well-being and particularly that the love they share continues and grows stronger. They empathise with each other, and in romance this is usually described as "two hearts beating as one". Desire for intimacy is heightened. During the first flush of love, the couple involved can hardly bear to be out of each other's sight and the desire for sexual intimacy often has a desperate, urgent quality to it. In fact, so closely is romantic love associated with sex that the physical act of sex is commonly called "making love". In no other type of love is positive feeling so dominant, sometimes overwhelmingly so, although it is commonly punctuated by episodes of despair and distress, anxious longing and shattered hopes. Arguments followed by reconciliations, or separations ending in reunions, seem only to intensify the partners' attachment to and longing for each other's company. Sometimes couple will even create such situations so that they can savour the reconciliation. The scriptures say" "When a couple or a husband and wife frolic in private with romantic love they chide each other 'Dear One, you don't really love me; your heart is elsewhere'. They chide each other like this falsely so that they can then love each other more passionately." (p18)
...the Buddha had a deep enough understanding of the human heart to know that despite the many tribulations romantic love could bring, it was also a source of great happiness and a real benediction. He often spoke of what he called "the satisfaction and the dangers (assadan ca adinava) in sensual pleasure", of which romance and sex were the most significant. And there is satisfaction in romatic love -- the wonderful feeling of being cherished and having someone to cherish, the companionship, the fun, the exhilaration of sex and the delight of sharing things. It can also nourish virtues such as loyalty, giving, unselfishness and patience. (pp20-21)
The Brahma Viharas can be looked at from several different perspectives: as orientations of character, as distinct and separate states or as a lattice of related states balancing and complementing each other. Buddhaghosa said the Brahma Viharas are "like a mother with four sons: one an infant, one an invalid, another in the prime of youth, and a fourth successfully making his way in the world. She wants the infant to grow up, the invalid to recover, the one in the prime of youth to long enjoy his youth, and she has no worries about the one making his way in the world." Another view of the Brahma Viharas is as four ways the loving mind relates to beings according to their situation and circumstance, as the appropriate ways love manifests itself. (p88)
