Romantic Passion

In the fall of 1937, Ed Keefer was a senior in the school of engineering at the University of Toledo in Ohio. Tall, slender, and bespectacled, Keefer was the president of the calculus club, the vice-president of the engineering club, and a member of the school’s exclusive all-male honor society. He also invented the Cupidoscope.

The electrical device could not have been more perfectly designed to bring campus-wide fame to its creators, Keefer and his less sociable classmate John Hawley. It promised to reveal, with scientific precision, if a couple was truly in love. As the inventors explained to a United Press reporter as news of their innovation spread, the Cupidoscope delivered on its promise “in terms called ‘amorcycles,’ the affection that the college girl has for her boyfriend.”

Built in the school’s physics laboratory, the Cupidoscope was fashioned from an old radio cabinet, a motor spark coil, and an electrical resistor. To test their bond, a man and a woman would grip electrodes on either side of the Cupidoscope and move them toward one another until the woman felt a spark—not of attraction, but of electricity. The higher her tolerance for this mild current, the more of a love signal the meter registered. A needle decorated with hearts purported to show her devotion on a scale that ranged from “No hope” to “See preacher!”

It all sounds like a slightly painful party game—but the Cupidoscope was one experiment in a serious, decades-long quest to quantify love. This undertaking garnered the attention of leading scientists across the United States and in Europe in the early years of the 20th century, and it is memorialized most prominently in the penny arcade mainstay known as the Love Tester.

Possible Preaching Angle:

“How do you measure love?” The Bible gives an answer to this important question: It is measured by the self-sacrifice of the Cross—“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16); “Then you, being rooted and grounded in love, will have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:17-19).

Forty-two percent of Americans have fallen back in love with a partner after going on vacation together. A survey of 2,000 adults looked at the magic of vacationing and found that three-quarters of respondents believe vacations are great for those looking to keep the spark alive in their relationship.

Overall, vacations are a joyous time, making the average person feel happier. Most respondents agree that traveling is always more fun with a buddy (78%). Eight out of 10 say traveling with someone is one of the best ways to strengthen your bond.

When on vacation with others, two-thirds of respondents tried to take as many photos as possible to commemorate the trip, looking back at these pictures an average of five times throughout the year. From relaxing on the beach to resort experiences, families, friends, or couples are bound to return from vacation with memories that will last a lifetime.

Vacations are also a time for stepping out of your comfort zone or bettering yourself. 61 percent revealing they’re more likely to be adventurous with others on vacation than by themselves. Similarly, seven in 10 people shared that they feel more in touch with themselves when returning from a trip than before. And a third of Americans have even had an epiphany about some aspect of their life when on vacation.

Falling in love can be exhilarating, but it isn’t the secret to marital happiness. “Passionate love”—the period of falling in love—often hijacks our brains in a way that can cause elation or the depths of despair. But, according to researcher Arthur Brooks (writing in The Atlantic), the secret to happiness isn’t falling in love; it’s staying in love. Brooks writes:

This does not mean just sticking together legally: Research shows that being married only accounts for 2 percent of subjective well-being later in life. The important thing for well-being is relationship satisfaction, and that depends on what psychologists call “companionate love”—love based less on passionate highs and lows and more on [friendship], stable affection, mutual understanding, and commitment.

Passionate love, which relies on attraction, does not typically last beyond the novelty of the relationship … As one researcher bluntly summarizes the evidence in the Journal of Happiness Studies, “The well-being benefits of marriage are much greater for those who also regard their spouse as their best friend.”

In the novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin, an old man is talking to his daughter about the secret of marital love between he and his late wife. He tells her:

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other, underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we found that we were one tree and not two.

PBS’s The Great American Read is an eight-part series that explores America’s 100 best-loved novels. The series notes that one theme emerges often in these 100 best-loved novels—the quest for love, especially a romantic love that will endure.

Here are some quotes from literature experts commenting on the series and the novels:

“Love is the driving force behind everything that we do. So I think reading about all these different types of loves and the ways in which they present, is one of the great human questions.”

“I love a good love story. I think everybody wants it. If you don’t want it you’re trying to get it. If you have it, you’re trying to keep it.”

“Every book on this list is about love and death. And finding love that transcends death. I mean, who’s not going to love a love story?”

“We are fascinated by the fact that things can go wrong in love. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want this sort of thing to happen to us.”

Possible Preaching Angles: Romantic love and marriage are among God’s greatest gifts to humanity. Even higher than this is God's love, expressed through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The ultimate love story is when God chose us and made the ultimate commitment and sacrifice through his Son.

Is it possible to make an idol—or even a whole religion—out of romantic love? Consider the lines from these popular songs:

Gonna build my whole world around you. … You're all that matters.
~~ The Temptations, "You're My Everything."

If we believe in each other [there's] nothing we can't do.
~~ Celine Dion, "Love Can Move Mountains"

You're my religion, you're my church.
You're my holy grail at the end of my search.
~~ Sting, "Sacred Love"

She tells me, "Worship in the bedroom."
The only heaven I'll be sent is when I'm alone with you.
~~Hozier, "Take Me to Church"

Croatia's capital city of Zagreb is the home for an unusual museum. The Museum of Failed Relationships was founded by two Zagreb artists after the end of their four-year romantic relationship. The pair laughed about setting up a museum to showcase the many shared objects from their life together that now held complicated memories.

The joke snowballed, and the artists (collecting items from friends and visitors to their growing number of gallery shows) soon had over 1,000 items—each with a story—on their hands. "We might say it's a love museum, just upside down" says Drazen Grubisic, one of the founding pair. Their collection includes a shiny new axe (used to splinter the furniture of an ex-lover one item per day), pink fur-covered handcuffs (no description given or needed), and scarred and partially crushed lawn gnome (hurled at the car of a departing husband).

A kitschy wooden box (made from matchsticks) frames a little picture of a couple named Jelka and Valdo. Valdo made it for his wife Jelka on their wedding day. The description on the box reads:

After 18 years of marriage he left me for another woman; we officially divorced after our 25th wedding anniversary … [For our anniversary] I ordered a cake with the number 25 written on it and the pastry shop cut it in half. I sent him the half with the 25. Our sons celebrated our anniversary first with me and then with their father. He and his girlfriend were very shocked but they ate the cake anyway. The cake is gone and so is our marriage. I still have the box, two sons and a lot of memories …

While the items are personal, the feelings that come when love fails are universal. Each item is an intimate peek into how we strive for and often lose love. "Some [people who come to the museum] are laughing" Grubsic says. "But some … some are really thinking."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Divorce; Marriage; Commitment; Vows—Our love (and our failed love) for others; (2) God, love of; Christ, love of; Covenant—God's committed love for us. We're all hungering for a kind of love that won't ever let us down. That love is found in Christ.

Do you want an easy way to keep romance alive in your marriage? Turn off the television. That's the advice from researcher Dr. Jeremy Osborn from Albion College in Michigan. Osborn tracked 390 married couples in his study "When TV and Marriage Meet."

In the study, couples answered questions about their satisfaction with their spouse, relationship expectations, level of commitment to the marriage, TV viewing frequency, and how much they believed that TV relationships were actually realistic. Overall, the study found a simple pattern: when belief in TV romances goes up, satisfaction with your actual romantic relationship goes down. In other words, the "on-again, off-again relationships on TV shows—built up by sweeps weeks and season finales—impact what you think a wife or [husband] should be."

Dr. Osborn summarized:

I found that people who believe the unrealistic portrayals on TV are actually less committed to their spouses and think their alternatives to their spouse are relatively attractive …. My hope would be that people would … ask, How realistic are my expectations for my spouse partner and where did those expectations come from?

Possible Preaching Angles: Marriage; Divorce; Renewal of the Mind; Media—Obviously, this illustration applies to marriage, but it also applies to the way cultural influences shape our lives in ways that we don't even realize.

Based on a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults:

• Forty-eight percent of men still have feelings for an ex-girlfriend or ex-wife.
• Thirty-seven percent of women still have feelings for an ex-boyfriend or ex-husband.
• Overall, two in five adults feel they let the "right one" get away.

NFL running back Shaun Alexander writes:

At the University of Alabama, I was meeting women from a lot of different backgrounds. My mother had taught me never to exploit women—that sex was meant only for marriage—and to treat women with respect. I knew the boundary lines it wasn't right to cross… I knew if I didn't keep my focus, I could fall. And it could occur anytime.

One time it almost did. It happened the first year of college when I'd gone home for a visit. To protect her privacy, I'll call her Sherron. One night we were alone in my room while my mom was gone. We were kissing, and I thought seriously about having sex with her. But something in me kept whispering, This isn't right.

Just then the phone ran. It was my mother, and she asked, "Is everything good, Shaun?"

"Uh…yeah, Mom," I said. "It's good."

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," I answered. "Sherron is here and we're going to go out and eat and probably go to a movie. Something like that."

"Okay, that's fine," Mom said. "I'm going to stay in Covington with your grandma, so I'll call you tomorrow."

As I hung up, thoughts raced through my mind. What am I doing here? Something isn't right about this. This is so easy and nobody else will know. But I'll know, and God will know. It was more than wrestling with my thoughts. I was in a full-out fight. I had to decide who my body would serve.

Just then, Sherron leaned close to me and whispered, "I've brought condoms."

My thoughts were racing. Mainly I was thinking, Am I one of those rotten guys who says he loves Jesus but folds when it's easy or when he won't get caught? "No, we can't do this," I finally said.

"Why not?"

"We're not supposed to."

"What does that mean?" Sherron asked.

I jumped up and pulled her to her feet. "It means we're going out."

I hurried her out to the car, and we drove to the mall. That was the closest I ever got to having sex before marriage. Mom's phone call had kept me from making a big mistake. Many times I've been grateful to my mother for calling exactly when she did.

When researchers at the University of Texas at Austin asked 2,000 people why they have sex, there were plenty of answers—237, to be precise. The most popular answer given by those surveyed was that they felt an attraction for the other person. Others said sex was a chief way to feel closer to someone else or to show someone how much they are loved. Many simply said they had sex because "it feels good" and "it's fun."

Most of the answers were expected, but researchers also received quite a few unexpected reasons for sexual behavior. The more startling included:

• "[I wanted] to boost my social status."

• "[I had sex] because my partner was famous."

• "[I wanted] to get a raise or promotion."

• "[I wanted] to change the topic of conversation."

• "[I wanted] to return a favor."

• "Someone dared me."

• "I wanted to punish myself."

• "I lost a bet."

• "I had sex to keep warm."

• "[I had sex] because my hormones were out of control."

• "[Sex] seemed like good exercise."

• "I wanted to give someone a sexually transmitted disease."

Hollywood publicist Michael Levine lives in what many consider the beauty capital of the world, surrounded on a daily basis by gorgeous women. But he isn't satisfied. "Although I'm a successful, red-blooded American male," he confesses, "it is beauty alone that is keeping me single and lonely." He subscribes wholeheartedly to what is commonly called the "contrast effect": "Men are barraged with images of extraordinarily beautiful and unobtainable women in the media, making it difficult for them to desire the ordinarily beautiful."

Levine has scientific research to back his convictions. Psychologists Sara Gutierres and Douglas Kenrick of Arizona State University have studied this theory for the past 20 years. Their conclusion is that we judge both our own and other people's attractiveness based on the social situation we're in. If a woman of average beauty enters a room of extremely beautiful women, she will be perceived as less attractive than she actually is. If the same woman enters a room of unattractive women, she will be perceived as more attractive than she actually is. The same applies for men.

The researchers found that this contrast effect influences many women to de-value themselves: "Women who are surrounded by other attractive women—whether in the flesh, in films or in photographs—rate themselves as less satisfied with their attractiveness and less desirable as a marriage partner." For the overwhelming majority of women who don't meet these impossible standards, multi-million dollar industries are eager to help improve their appearance.

The effects on men are also damaging. It leaves them alone and yearning for superficial beauty instead of real love with real women. The researchers note that "under a constant barrage of media images of beautiful women, these guys have an expectation of attractiveness that is unusually high—and that makes the people around them, in whom they might really be interested, seem lackluster, even if they are quite good-looking."

Sociologist Satoshi Kanazawa, assistant professor of sociology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, took a close look at a specific group of men surrounded daily by large numbers of young women in their prime. He found that male high school and college teachers are more likely to be divorced or separated than their male counterparts who taught kindergarten and grade school. Kanazawa believes this contrast effect—whether experienced in real life or through the media—harms marriage and keeps men single and miserable. Many don't know why they no longer find their middle-aged wives attractive.

Michael Levine is living proof of these harmful effects. He comments: "My exposure to extreme beauty is ruining my capacity to love the ordinarily beautiful women of the real world—women who are more likely to meet my needs for deep connection and partnership of the soul." He wonders what his life might have been like if he had never moved to L. A. and become a publicist.

But then he realizes that the images of the women he works with are "broadcast all over the globe. While most people do not live in L. A., they visit it every day when they turn on the TV or go to the movies. It is safe to say that, to one degree or another, we all live in the shadow of the Hollywood sign."

Marriage strips away the illusions about sex pounded into us daily by the entertainment media. Few of us live with oversexed supermodels. We live instead with ordinary people, men and women who get bad breath, body odors, and unruly hair; who menstruate and experience occasional impotence; who have bad moods and embarrass us in public; who pay more attention to our children's needs than our own.

We live with people who require compassion, tolerance, understanding, and an endless supply of forgiveness. So do our partners. Such is the ironical power of sex: It lures us into a relationship that offers to teach us what we need far more—sacrificial love.

Brian Shipwash did not let the possibility of his death stop him from following through with his intentions.

Riding together on his motorcycle, Shipwash and his girlfriend, Shandra Miller, headed up North Carolina's Pilot Mountain. At a curve in the road, Shipwash lost control and crashed into the side of an oncoming pickup truck. The couple went flying, and the motorcycle landed on top of Shipwash.

A group of ten other Harley-Davidson riders rushed to help and found the handlebars of the motorcycle stuck six inches into Shipwash's abdomen. As soon as they pulled the handlebars from his stomach, Shipwash pulled a small box from his pocket. It was broken and bloody, but inside was a ring.

Recounting his words to the Associated Press, Shipwash said, "Shandra, the reason we were going to Pilot Mountain today was so I could propose. I know this is not the best time in the world, but will you marry me?"

"I was crying at the time because of the wreck," Miller said. "But when I saw [the ring], I just started crying even more."

Though he suffered a broken hand and leg, Shipwash did not damage any major organs. No one else was injured in the accident. And Shandra Miller said yes.

Roger Zerbe suffered from early onset Alzheimer's disease. His wife, Becky, remembers a journal entry he left for her after a particularly troubling bout of forgetfulness.

"I picked up the journal on my pillow and read:

Honey,
Today fear is taking over. The day is coming when all my memories of this life we share will be gone. In fact, you and the boys will be gone from me. I will lose you even as I am surrounded by you and your love. I don't want to leave you. I want to grow old in the warmth of memories. Forgive me for leaving so slowly and painfully.

Blinking back tears, I picked up my pen and wrote:

My sweet husband,
What will happen when we get to the point where you no longer know me? I will continue to go on loving you and caring for you—not because you know me or remember our life, but because I remember you. I will remember the man who proposed to me and told me he loved me, the look on his face when his children were born, the father he was, the way he loved our extended family. I'll recall his love for riding, hiking, and reading; his tears at sentimental movies; the unexpected witty remarks; and how he held my hand while he prayed. I cherish the pleasure, obligation, commitment, and opportunity to care for you because I REMEMBER YOU!"