The popular understanding of the psychology of love is that when a couple embraces a committed long-term relationship, the passion and fire of new romance fades into affection, and mutual comfort. A recent study though reports that it isn’t passion that fades; it is only the maddening obsession with the other that does. The romantic passion still can carry on, and sometimes does, forever. The traditional view that researchers held got the ardor of the new relationship all mixed up with the romance, the attraction and love. And TV sitcoms and movies have been no help either. All you hear in them is how people get hitched, and then despair in private over how they will never again experience another first date.