Compassionate Love for a Romantic Partner Across the Adult Life Span

Compassionate love has received research attention over the last decade, but it is as yet unclear how it is experienced over a lifetime. The purpose of this study was to investigate compassionate love for a romantic partner throughout the adult life span, exploring individual differences in the propensity to experience compassionate love in regard to age, gender, religion, love status, love styles, and subjective well-being. The results showed that religion and love status display significant effects on compassionate love. Believers experienced greater compassionate love than nonbelievers, and individuals in love presented greater compassionate love than those who were not in love. Love styles and subjective well-being were found to be related to compassionate love. These findings corroborate studies that indicate that individuals who experience higher compassionate love for a romantic partner are more likely to report Eros, Agape, and subjective well-being.

Love status -Falling in love is difficult to define. It is a selective orientation towards a particular individual (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1988) that can mirror hormonal changes and physical attraction, and "can actually lead to giving of self for the good of the other" (Underwood, 2009, p. 5). Given that someone in love is dominated by feelings of caring for one specific person, CL may increase with being in love. Thus, in this study, it was expected that individuals in love would experience higher CL for a romantic partner than those not in love.

Objective 2
The second objective of this study was to examine the relationship between CL and other psychological constructs, namely love styles and subjective well-being.
Love styles - Lee (1973) put forward a comprehensive six-style model of love, with three primary styles and three secondary styles, by analogy with chemical compounds. The primary styles include Eros (passionate, romantic love), Ludus (game-playing love), and Storge (friendship love). Compounds of two of each of the primary styles form the three secondary styles: Pragma (rational, shopping-list love, a compound of Storge and Ludus), Mania (possessive, dependent love, a compound of Eros and Ludus), and Agape (all-giving, selfless love, a compound of Eros and Storge) (Neto & Pinto, 2015).
All the above love styles are different ways of loving as there is not just one way of loving (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986). The Love Attitudes Scale is based on Lee's typology and measures attitudes towards love. It was tested cross-culturally (Neto, 1994;Neto et al., 2000). Research with college students showed that CL is significantly and positively associated with erotic and agapic orientations, negatively associated with ludic and pragmatic orientations, and without association with storgic and manic orientations (Neto, 2012b).
Subjective well-being -Subjective well-being (SWB) focuses on personal evaluations of one's life experience and has three components: satisfaction with life, positive affect, and negative affect (Diener, 2000;Updegraff & Suh, 2007). Satisfaction with life is a cognitive evaluation of one's life satisfaction either globally or with respect to specific life domains based on criteria chosen by each person (Pavot & Diener, 2008). In the present work we considered global satisfaction and two specific life domains, namely satisfaction with love life and satisfaction with sex life.
Positive affect concerns occurrences of positive emotions such as joy, contentment, and happiness. Negative affect concerns the experience of negative emotions such as shame, sadness, and anxiety. Although cognitive and affective components of SWB are correlated, they form distinct factors (Lucas, Diener, & Suh, 1996) and thus, a comprehensive evaluation of SWB requires measuring both components. Past research reveals that individuals who experience CL for other partners are happier in their relationships. For example, Diener and Lucas (2000) found love to be a prominent predictor of SWB (e.g., Diener & Lucas, 2000), and Smith (2009) showed that altruistic love was related to happiness (Smith, 2009). Other studies have documented that satisfaction with love life is linked to happiness and satisfaction with sex life (Apt, Hurlbert, Pierce, & White, 1996;Neto, 2012a Objective 3 Predictors of CL -The third objective was to explore the best predictors of the CL for a romantic partner.
Therefore, the following question was addressed: What are the best predictors of CL for a romantic partner? In order to answer this question, multiple regression models would be used to examine the relative strength of background variables, love styles, and subjective well-being in predicting CL. Significant predictors of CL were expected within each of the three sets of variables.

Method Participants
All participants were dating someone or had a partner (were in a relationship with at least one month

Assessment Instruments
The participants were assessed using six scales, previously adapted to the Portuguese population, in addition to questions pertaining to age, gender, religion, and aspects of relationships. All scales were scored in such a way that higher numerical values corresponded to higher levels of the construct being measured.
Participants assessed their degree of agreement with the statements using a 5-point Likert scale. The Portuguese adaptation of this scale was previously performed by (Neto, 1994;Neto & Pinto, 2015 Diener et al. (1985) and adapted to the Portuguese population by Neto (1993), was applied. It consists of five items, such as: "I am satisfied with my life." Respondents rated their degree of agreement with the statements using a 7-point Likert scale (from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). This scale showed reliability and validity in the Portuguese population (Neto, 1993;Muñoz Sastre et al., 2003). On this sample, the Cronbach standardized alpha was .82.
c. Positive and negative affect were assessed through the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson et al., 1988) and adapted to the Portuguese population by Simões (1993). This is a measure of positive and negative affectivity that includes 22 emotion adjectives. Respondents are asked to use a 5-point scale to  Neto (2005). This a five-item scale and an example item is: "The conditions of my love life are excellent." Respondents were asked to rate their degree of agreement with the statements using a 7-point Likert scale (from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). The reliability and the validity of this scale have been previously demonstrated (Neto, 2005). On this sample, the Cronbach standardized alpha was .90.
e. Satisfaction with Sex Life Scale was previously developed and its reliability and validity demonstrated (Neto, 2012a). This scale includes five items, such as "So far I have got the important things I want in sex life." Respondents were asked to rate their degree of agreement with the statements using a 7-point Likert scale (from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). On this sample, the Cronbach standardized alpha was .88.

Procedure
Data was collected by psychology researchers and respondents were contacted in a range of venues, such as, universities, shopping centers, and community groups. The response rate was high (71%). The questionnaire was completed in less than 30 minutes. The survey was conducted in accordance with the legal and ethical norms in the country and all participants were unpaid volunteers.

Background Variables and Compassionate Love for a Romantic Partner
The mean score for the Compassionate Love Scale was 5.16, with a standard deviation of .89. Mean values for Compassionate Love Scale were calculated separately for each gender and for each age group. As previously said, participants were classified into three age groups (Table 1). The young adults ranged in age from 26 to 30, adults from 31 to 59, and elderly from 60 to 90 years old. The data were analyzed by means of a 2 x 3, Gender   The greater the mean, the greater was the CL score. Within each column, for each variable, means with no superscripts in common differed at the 0.05 level, either by F test directly for a pair of means or by Scheffe test for three or more means.

Correlations With Other Variables
It was expected that the CLS would correlate with other psychological measures in predictable ways (Table 2).
In the three age groups CL scores correlated significantly with Eros, Ludus, Pragma, and Mania. CL was positively and significantly correlated with Eros and Agape, and negatively with Ludus and Pragma. The only exception to this pattern was the non-significant correlation between CL and Pragma among older adults.
As predicted, all three satisfaction scores were significantly associated with CL scores, except satisfaction with sex life among older adults. CL was also positively and significantly correlated with positive affect and negatively with negative affect across the three age groups.
As the pattern of correlations in the three age groups was quite similar, multiple regression models were employed to identify the relative strength of the variables in predicting CL for the whole sample. On the first step socio-demographic variables (gender, age, religion, and love status) were entered into the model. On the second step the love styles were entered, and on the third step the well-being variables were added.  As shown in Table 3, the first set of socio-demographic variables predicted only 3 per cent of the variance in CL scores. By adding the love styles variables, Agape, Pragma, Eros and Ludus emerged as significant predictors of CL scores. In addition, being in love remained a significant predictor. These variables predicted 21 per cent of the variance in CL scores. When the well-being variables were included in the final model, positive affect, negative affect, and satisfaction with life emerged as significant predictors. Moreover, Agape, Pragma, being in love and Eros remained significant predictors. Overall, the variables predicted 35 percent of the variance in CL scores.

Discussion
This work extends the investigation on CL to the entire adult life span. The CLS was presented as regards to a specific close other, most often a dating or marital partner. There are individual features that favor the expression of CL in individuals (Underwood, 2009), and in this study individual differences were explored in relation to the propensity to experience CL by focusing on age, gender, religion, love status, love styles, and subjective well-being.
In what concerns age variations in CL, the research reported here shows similarities over the adult life span.
This result indicates that, rather than being a phenomenon largely confined to a specific age group, CL encompasses the entire life span. Hence, CL for a romantic partner is similar through life, which suggests that this construct, rather than being specific to a certain age, may represent a more universal standard.
No gender differences were found among people ranging from 26 to 90 years old in CL for a specific romantic partner. This finding is not consistent with previous research, which revealed gender differences across targets (romantic partner, friends, and strangers/humanity) (Sprecher & Fehr, 2005;Sprecher, Fehr, & Zimmerman, 2007). However, we must keep in mind that past research has been conducted among college students (Neto, 2012b), in contrast to the present research that covers the adult life span. Future investigation is needed to clarify whether gender differences in CL are specific to young people.
As expected, religion influenced positively CL, and believers experienced greater CL than non-believers. This finding is in accord with other studies. For instance, Oman, Thoresen, and Hedberg (2010) show that spiritual meditation encourages greater CL among health professionals, which in turn improves caregiving efficacy. This line of enquiry deserves attention due to its potentially important practical applications.
The study reported here also explored the relationship between CL and being in love, and it was expected that individuals in love would experience higher CL for a romantic partner than those who are not in love. The results confirm this expectation, which suggests that love status affects one's views and that lovers do wear rose-colored glasses (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1988).
Regarding CL and love styles, findings indicate that Eros was positively associated with CL. For Hendrick and Hendrick (1992), the erotic lover values a strong focus on the partner, and along similar lines Underwood (2009) argues that CL is not the same as "the often hormonally driven" romantic love. However, for Berscheid (2010), both kinds of love can be experienced in intimate relationships. Current findings are in accordance with Berscheid, and suggest that these two kinds of love overlap across the adult life span.
The agapic love style is defined as "an ethereal, altruistic love that takes no thought of the self but only of the beloved other" (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1987, p. 144). Altruism is an important characteristic for both Agape and CL, and in both constructs the partner's well-being is more important than one's own well-being. Agapic love has much in common with CL, raising the question of whether they are different constructs. Results reported here show that, although measures of the two constructs were associated, the associations were not so large as to suggest that they are redundant. Furthermore, the multiple regression analyses showed that four love styles (Agape, Pragma, Ludus, and Eros) emerged as significant predictors of CL, and not just of the agapic love style, and thus support the claim that CL is not synonymous with Agape. These results indicate that CL is related to, but distinct from, Agape.
Ludus is a manipulative, game-playing love and the ludic lovers are frequently reluctant "to commit themselves to love" (Lee, 1988, p. 50). Therefore, it was expected that a game-playing approach to love should be negatively correlated with CL. This prediction was confirmed. Similarly, CL was negatively related to pragma.
The "shopping-list lover" has a pragmatic approach to love and selects a partner according to required attributes (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1992, p. 66). In this study, CL scores were not related to Mania and to Storge and therefore, the pattern of correlations previously found among college students (Neto, 2012b) seem to be generalizable across the adult life span. In sum, different love styles such as Eros, Ludus, Pragma and Agape were found to be significantly correlated with CL. This is not surprising given that different kinds of love are likely to co-occur in relationships (Berscheid, 2010).
As previously thought, subjective well-being was significantly associated with CL. Past research shows that the experience of CL for others has positive benefits for the self (Sprecher & Fehr, 2006), and the current findings confirm the positive benefits for the subjective well-being across the adult life span. The more CL individuals experienced for a romantic partner, the higher their levels of global, sex and love satisfaction. The emotional components of subjective well-being (positive affect and negative affect) were also correlated with CL, and positive affect was the strongest predictor of CL. Hence, experiencing subjective well-being can be beneficial to CL for a romantic partner.
In sum, this study evidenced more similarities than differences between older partners and young partners regarding CL. First, no differences were found for CL across the adult life span. Second, generally the constellations of correlations between CL and love styles, and subjective well-being were similar across the adult life span. Only two differences were found: Among older partners no associations were found between CL and pragma, and satisfaction with sex life. These findings may be interpreted as reflecting the pragmatism of older lovers (Neto, 2001), who may be slightly less satisfied with sex life (Sprecher & Cate, 2004)