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| Anne-Catherine de Ligniville Helvétius by Louis-Michel van Loo. |
In 1779 Benjamin Franklin, when serving as the U.S. envoy to
France, fell in love with Anne Catherine Helvétius, the widow of the
Swiss-French philosopher, Claude-Adrien Helvétius.
Nicknamed
"Minette", she maintained a renowned salon in Paris using her dead
husband’s accumulated wealth and among its habitués were France’s leading
politicians, philosophers, writers and artists.
In courting her
attention, he sent her many letters expressing his love, admiration, and
passion.
In one, he claimed that he had dream that their dead spouses had
married in heaven and that they should avenge their union by doing
the same on earth!
In another passionate plea, he wrote:
“If that Lady likes to pass her Days with him, he in turn would like to
pass his Nights with her; and as he has already given her many of his days…she
appears ungrateful never to have given him a single one of her nights.”
Boris Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago comes on strong when he writes
to Lara saying;
“Don't be upset. Don't
listen to me. I only meant that I am jealous of a dark, unconscious element,
something irrational, unfathomable. I am jealous of your toilet articles, of
the drops of sweat on your skin, of the germs in the air you breathe which could
get into your blood and poison you. And I am jealous of Komarovsky, as if he
were an infectious disease. Someday he will take you away, just as certainly as
death will someday separate us. I know this must seem obscure and confused, but
I can't say it more clearly. I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely.”
I think you'll agree that's powerful stuff but how would you feel if you got a letter like that? Would it
please you or make you run a mile? I think I'd make a run for it. So what should you write to your love? Well if want to woo your love successfully science has some
tips for you.
Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg’s theory of love,
suggests that the ideal love letter should include the following components—intimacy,
passion, and commitment.
To test this hypothesis Donelson Forsyth and Kelli
Taylor constructed a number of letters and asked people what they thought of
them.
They discovered that, when it comes to love letters,
commitment conquered all.
The letter that proclaimed, “I know we will be happy
together for the rest of our lives” and “I couldn’t imagine a world without you
in it,” was rated much higher, in terms of expressing love, than one that made
no mention of commitment.
Adding language that spoke of closeness and caring
increased the letter’s good impression with readers, but it was commitment that
left readers feeling loved and in love.
As to expressing passion in a letter; frisky letters, which
went on for too long about the sender’s sexual passions, were viewed generally
negatively by both genders; perhaps because they were more about lust than
love.
They also discovered that a message of commitment need not be delivered
in a traditional love letter or a card; a simple email will do which is lucky
as so many of us have lost the art of putting pen to paper.
However, research
shows that people think that letters are more trustworthy, and a hand written
letter shows effort and care too.
Therefore, if you want your love letter to get results you need to write it yourself, show your commitment to the relationship and put it in an
envelope. Call me old fashioned but a bunch of flowers wouldn’t go amiss
either.
For more see:
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
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