Is Happiness the Primary Goal in a Relationship?

Angelica Rios

English 102

Is happiness the primary goal in a romantic relationship?

For me, when you have a romantic relationship with someone, you share your hopes, dreams, happy moments as well as the bad ones, and your goals. Also, there's some kind of mutual support and you and your partner help each other grow as well as be willing to learn from one another. You can truly be yourself with someone who you respect and are respected by in return. But after reading chapter 6 of The Happiness Hypothesis my eyes were opened up to the realization that there are two kinds of romantic love.

Jonathan Haidt says on page 124, “As I see it, the modern myth of true love involves these beliefs: true love is passionate love that never fades; if you are in true love, you should marry that person; if love ends you should leave that person because it was not true love; and if you can find the right person you will have true love forever.” He then goes on to say further down, “But if true love is defined as eternal passion, it is biologically impossible. To see this, and to save the dignity of love, you have to understand the difference between two kinds of love: passionate and companionate.” I truly agree with how he describes compassionate love as vines growing intertwining and gradually binding two people together and passionate love as a drug.

Passionate love makes you feel like you're high, like every time you're around them you feel all giddy inside, you want to be with them all the time, want to marry them, have kids until something happens and the high is gone. But compassionate love is the kind of love you would have with your kids, your family members, a best friend, and you can have that with your significant other as well. When you're in compassionate love there will be hard times in but you don’t give up, you work out your problems.On How to be Good, David isn’t giving