It can feel exactly like falling in love. According to Gottman’s research, that intensity is only the first phase.
You think about them when you wake and again before you sleep, and most of the hours in between. You reread the messages. You rehearse conversations that have not happened yet. For a while this is the most alive you have felt in years, and it is easy to call it love. Hyperfixation is the word many people now reach for to describe it: an attention so complete that everything else seems to dim.
The term comes from the study of attention, where, as the Cleveland Clinic notes, this kind of intense focus is often associated with ADHD. But you do not need a clinical term to recognize the feeling. What you probably want to know is simpler: is this love, and will it last? For that, decades of Gottman research on couples are far more useful than the label.
Hyperfixation and the first phase of love
Gottman describes three natural phases of love. The first, which the psychologist Dorothy Tennov named limerence and Gottman places at the very start, looks a great deal like hyperfixation aimed at a person: obsessive, intrusive thoughts and a fear of rejection. It is partly chemical, and Gottman notes that this phase tends to come with poor judgment, the kind that makes it easy to miss what we might otherwise notice. That is part of why it feels so total, and part of why, on its own, it does not last.
Why it fades, and what that means
Sooner or later, that early intensity fades. Many people feel this as a loss, even grief, and some take it as proof the love was never real. A partner who was once someone’s whole focus can suddenly feel ordinary. In Gottman’s research, though, the fading of that first phase is not the end of love. It is the beginning of the phase where lasting love is built.
What makes love last
The second phase turns on one question: will you be there for me, even when I am not at my best? Gottman found that the answer, far more than the early spark, is what builds trust and shapes whether a relationship lasts. It is built in everyday moments, through what he calls attunement, the desire and ability to understand and respect your partner’s inner world, and through turning toward, the act of noticing and meeting a partner’s bids for connection. It is also where emotional safety is built. None of it happens by itself; it is something two people choose and practice.
A third phase follows, which Gottman calls commitment and loyalty: the work of cherishing what you have and building gratitude for it, rather than dwelling on what you think is missing.
The fading of that early intensity is not a loss. It is the beginning of a steadier love, one that two people build on purpose and get to keep.
When conflict comes up, as it does in every relationship, What Are You Really Fighting About? is a free place to start.
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