Older Women's Perceptions of Their Intimate Relationships

According to folklore and some recent theorists (see Hatfield & Walster, 1981; Safilios-Rothschild, 1977), the passage of time should have a very different effect on passionate versus companionate love. Passionate love should decline fairly quickly, while companionate love should remain fairly stable over time. To test this hypothesis and others, we interviewed 240 older women, ranging in age from 50 to 82, who had been married varying lengths of time, about their love for their partners and their partners' love for them. The data suggest that folklore and the theorists may be wrong. Time did have a corrosive effect on love—but it had an equally corrosive effect on both passionate and companionate love.