The most powerful force driving us as human beings — most of us, anyway — is love.

We need water, food and shelter, but we’re living in an age where those basic needs are available in this country to those who want them. Once those needs are satisfied, the thing that fulfills humans the most is love.

This love is between spouses, family and friends. Love continues past the death of a partner, relative or neighbor. Many people feel that once they’ve opened their heart to someone, that love continues forever.

That’s not to say that love is without change.

In regard to romantic love, it’s rare when two partners fall in love at first sight and love each other for the rest of their lives. It happens, but the odds of such a relationship are astronomical.

A study by the University of California-Davis found that long-term relationships succeed due to a fulfilling sex life. That’s humanity and no surprising. The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, said long-term relationships — like most relationships — start out with a high level of excitement and then grow into something stable and lasting. Some relationships start out with a high level of excitement, but plateau quickly, or partners have different expectations. Many things can lead a relationship to fall apart. There are more causes to bring about failures for planned long-term relationships than ever before.

Divorce rates seem, in some ways, connected with the expectations people have put upon them by the outside world. According to the American Psychological Association, as our consumerism has grown, our relationships have suffered. 

We work harder for more things, but things, or possessions, don’t bring us happiness. 

The theory of a picture-perfect life is skewed when viewed through the lens of our materialistic society. Consumerism is often shown as an expression of love. Think of vehicle advertisements during the holidays that show a shiny, new $75,000 sedan with a red bow on it as a Christmas gift. Is that an expression of love? In some relationships it is. It goes back to maintaining the level of excitement. If one’s lifestyle is based on materialism, such a gift may be the expected spark necessary to maintain or boost a level of excitement.

It’s difficult, with all the messages thrown at us, to avoid making consumerism or materialism a cornerstone of a relationship. A Brigham Young University study from 2011 showed that materialism harms marriages. 

As the Beatles sang, “Money can’t buy me love.”

Long-lasting love and satisfaction regarding personal relationships involves sharing love by sharing time and kindness between people. Love is a connection between people and not things. As romantic love moves from excitement to stability and nurturing love, it involves many factors, such as the growth of children, interpersonal connections between people of multiple generations and a greater quantity of loving connections between people.

George Burns famously said that happiness is having a large, loving family — in another city. But as one’s life progresses, having a large, loving family proves to be one of the keys to happiness.

A 2016 Harvard study showed parents who grow warm relationships with their children in early childhood allow those children to have greater success when attaching to a partner as adults. 

Furthermore, as those children move through all the stages of their lives, they rely on close personal relationships to bring them love and happiness.

This expands further as uncles and aunts bond with nieces and nephews, cousins of the same generation bond and a family becomes a greater circle of love. 

This is not to say that family relationships, even with a great deal of love, can’t become strained. However, a greater amount of individual happiness can be realized if people look for their reassurance, positivity and self-worth from those whom they are closest to: their family and friends.

Materialism sneaks its way into this, as keeping up economically with those who you’re closest to can be one of life’s pressures.

Consumerism isn’t all bad. In fact, attraction is partly based on the ability for partners to provide for each other’s needs. We live in a world where quality of life, to some degree, is related to financial factors.

As people age, especially in the golden years, they share some of aging’s telltale signs - gray hair, wrinkled skin, age spots, additional weight and all sorts of physical maladies - while people may generally begin to look somewhat alike. A person can rarely change who they are on the inside. Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is such a good story because it details something fantastic — someone who changes for the better overnight. What a rare thing.

Someone who has always been dramatic, conflictual, stubborn and unloving will continue to be so. Someone who has been calming, nurturing, compromising and loving will continue to be so. Although a person can’t choose their family, they can choose the people with whom to surround themselves. Life is much easier when surrounded by positivity and love. These are things that cannot be purchased.

— Matt Johnson is publisher of the Monroe Times. His column is published Wednesdays.