Against Romantic Sensitivity | Psychology Today

?When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.? George Bernard Shaw

Can we be too romantically sensitive? Is it worthwhile achieving the heights of love only to crash down, or is it better to maintain a steady level of low sensitivity? I shall examine these issues by distinguishing two types of sensitivity and considering the real case of Carol.

The story of Carol

?To be loved is a strength. To love is a weakness.? Zsa Zsa Gabor

Carol is a beautiful, intelligent and very sensitive woman who has been married for 30 years to her high-school sweetheart. She describes her husband as an excellent human being?he loves and adores her and she loves and respects him. They are each other's best friend. She feels very satisfied with her marriage and considers her love to be profound, though it is on the borderline between companionate and passionate love. Carol has a negative attitude toward being madly in love and claims that ?Being madly in love is nothing; it is of no value as it is often so harmful. I would rather remain steadily at an average low level of passionate love and not seek a madly exciting relationship that is bound to end and to generate frustration and depression.? Carol wishes to avoid the pitfalls of a highly sensitive romantic relationship that could end in either or both partners being badly hurt. The good companionable love that she has now is good enough for her.

Laura Kipnis argues that "taking an occasional walk on the wild side while still wholeheartedly pledged to a monogamous relationship isn?t an earthshaking contradiction." Carol does not see any value in such an occasional walk and prefers the sweat of occasional joggings over the sweat of occasional sex, as jogging involves no tears and no bad blood.

In order to evaluate Carol?s attitude, we should first analyze the nature of emotional sensitivity.

Emotional sensitivity

?Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.? Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal anti-smoking campaign

Sensitivity, in the sense discussed here, may be characterized as a response to our physical or mental environment; it is the tendency to have a strong reaction toward romantic circumstances. Strong romantic sensitivity implies that you are quick to notice and be affected by romantic cues. Romantically sensitive people are tender and sympathetic toward other people. Though such people may be easily excited, they might not find it easy to fall profoundly in love, as such love demands a combination of many virtues that are rare to find. There are people who may not find an intense, genuine, profound love throughout their whole life.

In comparison to people with lower emotional sensitivity, those with higher sensitivity perceive the events around them as more significant. Their environment is replete with many meaningful events. Such people do not need to seek emotionally charged situations, as they react strongly to everyday situations. People of low emotional sensitivity have to look for unique events, or even create such events (for example, a mountain-climbing expedition), in order to enjoy the sensation of a significant event.

People of high emotional sensitivity are typically more sensitive to both negative and positive situations; accordingly, their sadness and happiness are more intense. Those who become extremely overjoyed when good things happen are more likely to experience an equally strong negative impact when bad things happen.

Like other emotions, love is characterized by a lack of indifference. Indifference expresses the absence of normative preference and hence the absence of emotional sensitivity. Therefore, people in love prefer to be hurt by the beloved rather than be treated indifferently. As Jose Ortega y Gasset indicates in his book On Love, the person in love "prefers the anguish which her beloved causes her to painless indifference." Similarly, the saying goes that it is better to break someone's heart than to do nothing with it. In her song, "A second-hand love," Connie Francis says, that "I'd rather have this kind of (second-hand) love than not see you at all."

Indifference is a shield we use to protect ourselves against external negative impacts. Hence, people sometimes prefer to lower their sensitivity levels in order to prevent themselves from being hurt. However, a significant reduction in emotional sensitivity may be harmful, as emotions have an important function in our survival.

A person who is totally without emotional sensitivity has no parameters and no warning system, no immediate evaluative guidelines that enable him to determine relevance and importance. In a world without emotions, Jose Antonio Jauregui argues, a young man, when meeting a young woman, may be able to see her, touch her, and think to himself: ?This is someone with whom I could get along well.? However, without emotions, the young man will not be excited by her presence and will not be attracted to her. A lack of all emotional sensitivity would render us inhuman.

Emotional sensitivity plays an important role in our lives and we should not attempt to reduce, block or eradicate it, but we can attempt to moderate its negative impact. Just as it is not advisable to cut off your head to get rid of a headache, so it is not advisable to eliminate your sensitivity and desires in an attempt to get rid of the pain these cause you.

Two types of sensitivity

?I have been poor and I have been rich, and rich is better.? Bessie Smith

Two levels of sensitivities may be discerned: (1) sensitivity as a reaction to a given (external or internal) event, and (2) sensitivity to your own reaction, in the sense of giving it more or less weight.

You may, for instance, be very sensitive to insults: the moment you are insulted, you becomes extremely upset. The weight that you give to this sensitivity might enrage and distress you and after each incident, your anger might take a long time to subside. However, you can decide to work at giving lesser weight to such insults and not to pay much attention to them. Likewise, you may be very sensitive to romantic possibilities and get extremely excited when such possibilities arise. However, since you are married, you can decide to give less weight to such forbidden circumstances and stop yourself from thinking about them. Sensitivity-1 is the immediate spontaneous sensitivity to a given event in the short term; sensitivity-2 is the manner in which we deal with sensitivity-1.

An example of high intensity of both types of sensitivity is the case of Abel Kiviat, the 1,500m silver medalist in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm who had the race until Arnold Jackson ?came from nowhere? to beat him by a mere one-tenth of a second. About 70 years later, at age 91, Kiviat admitted in an interview: ?I wake up sometimes and say, ?What the heck happened to me?? It?s like a nightmare.? Despite winning a most respectable place that ranked him second in the world, Kiviat was very sad in his initial spontaneous reaction (sensitivity-1), and throughout his life he gave tremendous weight to the experience of losing the gold medal (sensitivity-2).

A romantic example of high intensity of both types of sensitivity is intense love at first sight, which continues to be intense for a long time. An example of low intensity of both types is the case of two people who are not in love with each other and are having mechanistic sex, which has no significance for their future happiness.

Managing our sensitivities

?I like restraint, if it doesn't go too far.? Mae West

We can manage both types of sensitivities in different ways. Managing sensitivity-1, which is to a greater extent a function of our personal makeup, is typically the result of a slow process of habituation (drifting), and while managing sensitivity-2 is more up to us and can include, for instance, the use of escape devices, such as being intensely involved in other activities.

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-name-love/201209/against-romantic-sensitivity

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