A person in love does not see his/her lover as others do. Freud believed we saw the lover as our ideal, and the more dissatisfied with ourselves we were, the more we needed a lover to make up for our weaknesses and the more inclined we were to idealize our lover. In contrast, Neo-Freudians and Humanists would say "you have to love yourself first" before you can maturely and truly love others. If you are insecure and dislike yourself, you will be unable to love, avoid love, or be fragilely dependent on love (see chapter 8). Both of these views imply that there are two kinds of love: immature love and mature love.

Surely, mature, healthy love would be better than immature, needy, neurotic love, right? Well, the research done to date (see Brehm, 1985, pp. 107-110 for a summary) doesn't support that reasonable-sounding statement. There is little relationship between our claimed self-esteem and how much we like (not love) others, such as friends, or how much we think others like us. You might think we would select partners with similar self-esteem, but that doesn't seem to be the case either. One problem with this research is that people tend to be defensive about their low self-esteem, they sometimes try to hide it and claim high self-esteem. If you study only people high in self-esteem and low in defensiveness (truly self-confident), they will tell you that they have frequently been in love and have frequently lost love. Thus, it isn't just the insecure, needy person who has a string of failed relationships, perhaps it's all of us who try to love. People who score high in self-esteem and high in defensiveness report the lowest frequency of loving and of losing. We don't know if these people take fewer risks or if they conceal their rejections. Low self-esteem people report a moderate frequency of loving and of losing.

There is some evidence that people who love themselves less, love their partners more. Compared to high-esteem persons, low-esteem persons (males and females) scored higher on the Liking and Loving Scales, trusted their partners more, and rated them more favorably. As we saw in the last section, women with either high or low self-esteem tend to get more involved in love relationships and idealize their partner more than men do. Apparently, the high self-esteem male tends to get less emotionally involved in his numerous love affairs. Does this mean that a low-esteem male is the better lover? We don't know, maybe both the high self-esteem and low self-esteem male brings his own unique problems to the love nest. This is an unclear area; we need more research. Surely the effects of insecurity and low self-confidence on a marriage will depend on how the partner responds in the long haul to these characteristics. Some of us like humble, self-depreciating, unassertive partners.

Besides self-esteem, another personality trait has been found to be related to love: externalizers (chapter 8) are more romantic lovers; they see attraction as mysterious and have had more love experience than internalizers. More personality traits will be discussed in the section about predicting marital adjustment.

The effects of separation and other environmental changes

Besides cultural and personality factors, the situation can influence how we love each other. If you meet an attractive person in a slightly scary or emotional situation, say at a concert or amusement park or going off to war or during final exams, you are likely to be more attracted to that person than if you had met in less exciting circumstances. The excitement adds to the attraction. In the same way, couples plan an exciting weekend or a special night out in order to revitalize their love for each other. This works well. However, not all excitement from external sources adds love to the relationship. College males who read an erotic story became, as you would expect, more affectionate with their girlfriends--we don't know if their love increased (Dermer & Pyszczynski, 1978). In another study, college students, male and female, lost some love for their partner after looking at pictures of nudes (Gutierres, Kenrick & Goldberg, 1983). The next paragraph may give some explanation of these seemingly contradictory results.

What happens when lovers must be separated for a short while? Folklore tells us two things: "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "out of sight, out of mind." Which is right? Well both probably are, depending on what you think about while you are separated. If you dwell on what the lover is doing and how wonderful he/she is and how much you miss him/her, your love will grow. If, on the other hand, you are busy and do not think much about him/her or, worse yet, think about another potential lover (or nudes in a magazine), your love is likely to decline. This is not just in matters of love, Tesser (1978) has a theory that as we think more and more about an issue, our opinion about that issue will become more extreme. In the chapters on depression and anger we saw the influence of repeated thoughts. Later in this chapter we will see the negative influence of thinking critically about our partner or our marriage.