“When a man loves a woman, he can’t keep his mind on nothing else.” (Percy Sledge)
Last night I met one of my friends after 6-7 years. Actually I was not it touch with her because of her attitude and rude behavior, we did our schooling together and were a good and close friend till college time. She was in love with a guy and that guy was by one the best friend of mine since childhood. Later on I turned in to business and my social life almost ruined because of hectic schedule in work and meeting. I stopped taking phone calls, replying mail and meeting friends and family members. When my crucial time started, as I fallen in love with a girl and we got separated I started feeling very lonely and loneliness was killing me day by day. I started finding my college mates and other friends.
Last evening I received a call from her and she wanted to meet me at a restaurant and that restaurant was nearby my home so I accepted her invitation to meet her. Later on she requested me to come bit early as she wanted to chat something personally I called her at home and said my parents are here if you have time then meet them they will be happy to see you after long time. After meeting my parents and basic formality of gesturing we started for dinner place. While I was driving for the destination she told me that her boyfriend always asks a stupid question, Do You Still Love Me as Much as You Did, Darling? I laughed and inquired her what if she wants to move on wanted to leave him? But she denied all my suspects and said she is happy with him but such kind of question is ruing relationship between them.
People often talk about the intensity of their emotions: they tell us that their anger is overwhelming, that they feel extremely sad, or that they are madly in love. Despite this common usage, the concept of “emotional intensity” is complex, since it applies to different phenomena, not all of which are commensurable.
The diverse features of emotional passion are expressed in two basic aspects: magnitude (peak intensity) and temporal structure (mainly, duration). Duration can vary dramatically with comparable levels of peak intensity. In one study, participants rated the positive emotion associated with having “someone you find attractive suggest you meet for coffee” as almost as high as the emotion experienced after “saving your neighbour’s child from a car accident.” However, the average estimated duration associated with the former was twenty minutes, whereas for the latter it was more than five hours. Similarly, respondents estimated that they would stop ruminating about the coffee suggestion after about two hours, whereas the experience of the car accident would lead to rumination for about a week.
Ordinary people often measure emotional intensity. We measure the intensity of the same emotion experienced at different times and directed at two different people (“I love you more than I have loved any other woman before”), or the same emotion that other people have felt at different times (“You used to love me more than you do now”). We may also compare the intensity of different emotions in the same person (“Because of my great love for you, I manage to control my anger”) or the same emotion in different people (“This person loves his wife more than she loves him”).
Measuring emotional intensity is done by comparison with similar states and by finding certain features whose changes are typically correlated with intensity changes of the whole state. Instability, the felt intensity, and types of behavior may be such features. Thus, reference to the feeling dimension is important in measuring the intensity of our own emotions, but not that of others. In the latter case, behavioral manifestations are more important.
Emotional intensity is determined by several variables that may be divided into two major groups, one referring to the perceived impact of the event eliciting the emotional state and the other to background circumstances of the agents involved in the emotional state. The major variables constituting the event’s impact are the strength, reality, and relevance of the event; the major variables constituting the background circumstances are accountability, readiness, and deservingness.
The event’s strength is a major variable in determining the intensity of the emotional encounter. It refers, for example, to the extent of our perception of our beloved’s attractiveness and virtues and in the case of envy, to our perceived inferiority. A positive correlation usually exists between the strength of the perceived event and emotional intensity: the stronger the event, the more intense the emotion; thus the more attractive the beloved, the stronger the love.
The more we perceive the event as real, the more intense the emotion. The notion of “emotional reality” has an ontological sense referring to whether the event actually exists, and an epistemological sense, referring to its vividness. Emotional intensity is greatest when an event is real in both senses. The ontological sense is more important in love than in sexual desire, since love involves a more profound relationship. People can be sexually attracted to their partners while fantasizing about someone else; people cannot really love their partners while constantly fantasizing about others. Accordingly, vividness is more significant in sexual desire.
The variable of relevance restricts the emotional impact to areas that are particularly significant for our well-being. Although love involves the care for the beloved, love cannot fully be separated from considerations of our own well-being. The reciprocal nature of romantic love indicates the importance of this variable to love. In sexual desire, the well-being of the object is of lesser importance, and the relevance for our own good feeling and particularly for our self-esteem is very crucial.
Responsibility (or accountability) refers to the nature of the agency generating the emotional encounter. Major issues relevant here are: (a) degree of controllability, (b) invested effort, and (c) intent. The greater the degree of controllability there was, the more effort we invested, and the more intended the result was, the more significant the event usually is and the greater the emotional intensity it generates. Thus, frustration is intensified if we attribute a failure to ourselves and if we have invested a lot of effort in trying to succeed.
Our past control over events that have generated love and sexual desire are typically insignificant, since these emotions focus on the present situation, and retrospective considerations are of less relevance. Our effort has some role in generating love and sexual desire. If a person seems unattainable these emotions are stronger. Accordingly, “playing hard to get” is a most effective strategy for attracting a partner.
Readiness refers to the cognitive change in our mind; major factors in this regard are unexpectedness (or anticipation) and uncertainty. Since emotions are generated at the time of sudden change, unexpectedness is typical of emotions and is usually positively correlated with their intensity, at least up to a certain point.
The variables of readiness are more important in sexual desire than in love. Indeed, mystery is more significant in sexual desire. Nevertheless, unexpectedness and uncertainty do play some role in long-term romantic love. Their role is to help us realize that despite the close relation with the beloved, this person is not part of our furniture; the beloved is an independent agent who cannot be taken for granted.
The perceived deservingness (fairness) of our situation or that of others is of great importance in determining the emotional significance of a certain event. The variable of deservingness also plays an important role in love and sexual desire. When people think that their partner does not deserve them, their love and sexual desire will be reduced, and they are likely to look for extramarital affairs.
To sum up, even though it may seem impossible to measure emotional intensity, in practice we often do this in everyday life. Your feeling that your beloved loves you less now than she did a year ago can be substantiated-often without too much difficulty.
Special Thanks to psychology today’s editorial team for helping me in this.
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