Romeo and Juliet would approve: A new study found that romantic love can stand the test of time. Though it is widely held that romance and sex must ultimately yield to friendly companionship over time, new research found that’s not the case. Instead about 13 percent of people reported high levels of romance in their long-term relationships, in a new study published in the March issue of the journal Review of General Psychology. Researchers analyzed data from surveys of more than 6,000 people, including some in newly-formed pairs and many in marriages of more than 20 years. The scientists found that a surprisingly high number of people were still very much in love with their long-term partners, though the researchers drew a distinction between romantic love, which can endure, and passionate or obsessive love, which often fades after the beginning of a relationship. ‘I think generally, in the literature, love has been measured as passionate love, so I think that’s one reason for this widely-held assumption that love had to fade in relationships,’ said Bianca Acevedo, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who authored the study while she was a graduate student at […]