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I contacted Jonathan Haidt, the psychology who drew the passionate/companionate love graphs, and asked what he thought...
There are two ways of thinking of satisfaction. One is the passionate/companionate love hedonic view, that the best life would be the one with the most passion in it. The other is a narrative view, that the best life is about building a story...
If you take a narrative view, there are different things to accomplish at different stages of life. Dating and having these passionate flings are perfect when you're younger, but some of the greatest joys of life come from nurturing and from what's called "generativity." People have strong strivings to build something, to do something, to leave something behind. And of course having children is one way of doing that. My own experience having children was that I discovered there were rooms in my heart that I didn't even know were there. And if I had committed to a life of repeated sexual flings, I never would have opened those doors.
If you think the whole point of life is to gaze into your lover's eyes all day until you die - well, then, I wouldn't want your life.
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