Arthur C. Brooks says couples need to shift from passion to companionate love around years 2 to 5, building a deep friendship that still contains desire. Many breakups happen because partners discover they aren't compatible as friends, despite shared intimacy and experiences.
You establish a relationship. What do you want it to be? What's the goal? And the answer is generally between 2 and 5 years after the initiation of the relationship, you don't want passionate love, you want companionate love. Which sounds— my kids have heard me say this, they're like, Dad, that's not hot. Exactly right. Companionate love has tons of passion in it, but companionate love is based on best friendship. That's what it's based on. The foundation is friendship. The foundation of enduring love, enduring romantic love, is friendship. Here's the reason that people will fall in love and then will break up and realize they hate each other. They don't just like, whatever, they hate each other. The reason is because they're disappointed about the fact that they actually were incompatible as friends, and they've slept together, well, they've traveled together, they've done all this stuff, they told each other their secrets, and they're not even friends. They don't even like each other.
