This project started with the hypothesis that lovers who have been loving for long enough have subconsciously adopted the Buddhist conception of love (which is loving without attachment). To test this hypothesis, I wanted to ask couples about their past – how they got together and what drew them to each other – their present – what their current conception of love is and how it has changed – and their future – what they look forward to doing or accomplishing together. By capturing their whole trajectory in a relationship, I hoped to capture the essence of what has brought together two people, what keeps them together, and what keeps them excited for the future. I did not reveal to any couple what the Buddhist ideal of love was or what my hypothesis was coming in to this project. I also picked couples that have been together for differing periods of time to get a range of different perspectives on love. 

I do not think it would be right to say that my hypothesis was neatly proven right. The notion of love without attachment is a high bar to meet. Romantic love is after all, especially hard to divorce from a kind of attachment. Romantic love seems like a special kind of its own – a kind of love that can only be parcelled out to a select few individuals in one’s lifetime. This was an obvious sentiment amongst the couples I interviewed. They all felt that they had found someone special and compatible enough for them to give romantic love to. Yet, I also do not think that Buddhist love was entirely missing from how the couples expressed their love. In fact, there were obvious signs that as their relationships progressed, there was less self-serving love and more love for the sake of the other. For Sean and Shan, this was seen in how love is quieter, more grounded, and sustainable. Sustainable love was likened to familial love where love is often secure, tacit, and unconditional. For Kim and Sherwin, love centred around compromise as well as shared experiences. Compromise, being predicated upon setting aside one’s own interests and desires to achieve a middle ground, is testament to a willingness to see beyond one’s self. For Rector Khoo and Paul, love is about placing caretaking as the priority – the act of caring more for the comfort and happiness of the other than for oneself. This is perhaps the most Buddhist response I received during the interview as Paul directly pointed to the act of abandoning the desires of one’s self and instead caring for the other person as an end in itself. 

Another feature that struck me about the couples I interviewed was how peaceful and happy they seemed when they talked about their love for the other. It was as if they could focus all their attention on an entity outside of their selves and this provided respite and joy. In the Art of Loving by Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, Fromm suggests (in a very Buddhist fashion) that love is the greatest tool we have to escape the confines of the ego. By loving another, we see a goal that far outweighs any whim or fancy that the self might ever produce. Judging from the copious amounts of laughter that the couples shared as well as the heartfelt looks that they gave each other, I have an inkling that these couples have found a special sense of oneness from the act of loving one another. This makes me feel more reassured than ever that love is the deepest blessing we have.