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Romance (love)

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(Redirected from Romantic love)
"In love" redirects here. For other uses, see In Love.
Not to be confused with Romance languages.
For the identity, see Romantic orientation.
Romeo and Juliet by Frank Dicksee, 1884, considered to be the archetypal romantic couple, depicting the play's iconic balcony scene
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Romance or romantic love is a feeling of strong attraction towards another person, a mental state of being "in love" directed towards having a relationship (or pair bond),[1][2] the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those feelings and resultant emotions,[2][3] and the practice of initiating relationships based on passionate feelings over more practical or ordinary concerns.[4][5] Romantic love is considered to be a motivation or drive, which is distinct from the concept of attachment.[6][1]

Collins Dictionary defines romantic love as "an intensity and idealization of a love relationship, in which the other is imbued with extraordinary virtue, beauty, etc., so that the relationship overrides all other considerations, including material ones."[7] The concept of romantic love also came to represent the idea of individualistic choice in marriage and sexual partners, although it's rarely realized fully and can be a source of both gratification and disappointment in relationships.[7] The terms "romance" and "romantic love" are used with multiple definitions, which can be contradictory at times.[4][8][9][10][11]

People who experience little to no romantic attraction are referred to as aromantic.

General definitions

[edit]

The meaning of the term "romantic love" has changed considerably throughout history, making it difficult to easily define without examining its cultural origins. The term is used with multiple definitions by academics.[9][10] In Western culture, the term may be used indiscriminately to refer to almost any attraction between men and women or which includes a sexual component (heterosexual, homosexual, or otherwise), although "romance" and "love" are distinguishable concepts.[12][13] According to the psychotherapist Robert Johnson, the conflation is based on a kind of confusion over terms, with a cultural history of idealizing falling in love and passion-seeking over more ordinary concerns like affection and commitment.[14]

The term is often used to distinguish from other types of close relationships (conjugal, parental, friendship), and in contrast to the modern interpretation of platonic love (which precludes sexual relations).[15] The notion that romantic love only occurs within a relationship of some kind, however, has been called a misconception.[16] It has also been argued that romantic love can actually be "platonic" in some cases, for example, as in the case of a romantic friendship which involves passionate feelings without sexual desire.[17][18]

In academic fields of psychology, the term "romantic love" might be used in reference to any of the definitions given below (courtly love; romanticism and unrealistic, idealized love; or the state of being in love).[9][19][4] The psychologist Dorothy Tennov once criticized the reactions to romantic love in the scientific literature as "confused and contradictory".[20]

The literary tradition

[edit]

From all ills mine differs;
It pleasures me;
    I rejoice in it;
My illness is what
    I want
And my pain is my health!
I don't see, then,
    of what I complain,
For my illness comes to
    me of my own will;
It is my own wish
    that becomes my ill,
But I find so much
    pleasure in wishing thus
That I suffer
    agreeably,
And so much
    joy with my pain
That I am sick
    with delight

The word "romance" is derived from the Latin word Romanus, meaning "Rome" or "Roman". In the modern day, the word is used with multiple connotations, but its history has a connection to the telling of love stories. After the fall of the Roman Empire, a Latin adverb Romanice (a derivative of Romanus) became used to mean "in the vernacular" to distinguish languages which were derivatives of Latin from Latin itself, which was used in more formal contexts at the time. In Old French (one of the Latin derivatives), this later became romans or romanz, which referred both to the language itself, and also to works composed in it.[22] In the Middle Ages, poets known as the troubadours wrote some of the earliest literature containing themes considered "romantic" in a more modern sense, exploring themes of spiritual inaccessibility and unhappy love for a "cold, cruel mistress".[23][24] It was during this time period that romans/romanz in Old French took on a meaning as referring specifically to narrative verse about love and chivalry.[22] French poets like Chrétien de Troyes were being encouraged by royalty to compose works exemplifying certain ideals, principally in the town of Poitiers, where Andreas Capellanus also came to write The Art of Courtly Love.[25]

Initially, the term "romantic love" was then coined to refer to certain attitudes and behaviors described in a body of literature now referred to as "courtly love".[26][note 1] Courtly love (also called amour courtois) involved themes elevating the status of the woman, of passionate suffering and separation, and a transformation of the lovers to another plane of existence.[26] This is said to have originated from troubadour poetry and the work by Capellanus, although they were also influenced by even earlier works. Often, stories which came out of this tradition are depictions of tragic or unfulfilled love. Some examples of romantic love stories in this vein are Layla and Majnun, works of Arthurian legend (i.e. Lancelot and Guinevere), Tristan and Iseult, Dante and Beatrice (from La Vita Nuova), Romeo and Juliet and The Sorrows of Young Werther.[29][note 2] The modern romance novel as it's known today (e.g. by Jane Austen) emerged during the 18th-century period of this movement.[39][40]

The courtly and romantic traditions are said to have influenced attitudes towards love in Western culture, attitudes which continue to be present in the modern day.[41][42][note 3] The cultural movement is critiqued for promising a kind of "story-book" or "fairy-tale" love when the stories themselves are actually depictions of suffering and tragedy, perhaps making the culture "blind to love's madness".[44][45] According to the cultural critic Denis de Rougemont, "Happy love has no history—in European literature. And a love that is not mutual cannot pass for a true love."[46]

The sociological phenomenon

[edit]

In the social sciences, the term "romantic love" has been used to refer to an unrealistic, irrational and idealized kind of love, reminiscent of the attitudes depicted in the literary tradition.[4] The set of beliefs associated with the phenomenon is also called "romanticism".[47][48][note 4] Lovers with romantic beliefs and attitudes tend to idealize their loved one and live in a world of fantasy. They believe in a "soul mate" or "one true love", and believe that "true love" will last forever.[4][52][47] They believe that "true love" will overcome all obstacles, that love is the only legitimate basis for selecting a mate, and that one should "follow their heart" and reject reason and rationality.[47] Romantic love in this sense is contrasted with rational, practical or pragmatic love.[4]

The biological definition

[edit]
Dopamine is produced in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain, and projected to the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Dopamine activity in the NAc is key to the attribution of salience.[53]
Further information: Biology of romantic love § Definition of romantic love

Bode & Kushnick undertook a comprehensive review of romantic love from a biological perspective in 2021. They considered the psychology of romantic love, its mechanisms, development across the lifespan, functions, and evolutionary history. Based on the content of that review, they proposed a biological definition of romantic love:[19]

Romantic love is a motivational state typically associated with a desire for long-term mating with a particular individual. It occurs across the lifespan and is associated with distinctive cognitive, emotional, behavioral, social, genetic, neural, and endocrine activity in both sexes. Throughout much of the life course, it serves mate choice, courtship, sex, and pair-bonding functions. It is a suite of adaptations and by-products that arose sometime during the recent evolutionary history of humans.[19]

Romantic love in this sense might also be referred to as "being in love", eros, passionate love, infatuation, limerence or obsessive love.[19][54][55] Romantic love is not necessarily "dyadic", "social" or "interpersonal", despite being related to pair bonding. Romantic love can be experienced outside the context of a relationship, as in the case of unrequited love where the feelings are not reciprocated.[16][56] People in love experience motivational salience for a loved one (focused attention, associated with "wanting" a rewarding experience), which is mediated by dopamine activity in the brain's reward system.[1][57][58] Because of this and other similarities, it has been argued that romantic love is an addiction (which can be positive when reciprocated), but academics do not agree on when this is the case, or on a definition of "love addiction".[57][59]

Some authors also consider companionate love and attachment to be romantic love, or consider romantic love to be an attachment process.[16][60][61][62] According to a contemporary model of the brain systems involved with romantic love, the attachment system is active during the early stage of romantic love, in addition to the later stages of a relationship.[61] The attachment system has been associated with oxytocin, which has been found circulating in people experiencing romantic love.[61][53] Oxytocin may be a source of salience for a loved one, due to its activity in motivation pathways in the brain. Oxytocin is projected from the hypothalamus to reward areas, which is believed to modulate salience in response to social stimuli.[63][53] Endogenous opioids are also believed to be involved with romantic love, associated with the hedonic (or "liking") aspect of rewarding experiences.[61][64][58]

An fMRI experiment of people who were in happy, long-term relationships but professed to still be "madly" in love with their partners found that the participants showed brain activations in dopamine-rich reward areas (interpreted as "wanting" or "desire for union"), but also in an area rich with opiate receptors ("liking"). Unlike people who are newly in love, these participants also did not show activity in areas associated with anxiety and fear, and reported far less obsessional features (intrusive thoughts about a loved one, uncertainty and mood swings—features which are compared to infatuation or limerence).[65][66][67] Usually romantic love inside a relationship lasts for just about a year or 18 months.[68][57]

Love styles

[edit]

One of the problems with "love" is that the word can be used to refer to so many different things.[54] Terms like "romantic love", "passionate love" and "being in love" can also refer to attraction patterns and mental states which can actually be quite different once properly distinguished.[69][70] The sociologist John Alan Lee invented the concept of a "love style" to distinguish between different types of "love stories", or the plethora of possible ways to love another person.[71][70] People usually have a preferred or "favorite" love style, but this can change over a lifetime, and they can also have different love styles with different people.[72][73][74]

Lee has stated that the elements of romantic love may actually correspond to several of his love styles: eros (love of beauty, or erotic love), mania (compared to limerence, obsessive love or love addiction), and ludus (game-playing, non-committal love).[75][76][77][78] Of these, eros and mania most correspond to the experience of "falling" in love.[79] A manic lover falls in love with somebody inappropriate in many cases (a stranger, or even somebody they don't actually like), and tends to experience relationship difficulties.[80][81][82] Mania is most closely compared to eros, the romantic style in search of an ideal physical type. Eros lovers are more self-assured and tend to fall in love in a less chaotic way.[83] Eros is considered to be more positive than mania.[84] The most common romantic theme in the literary tradition is tragedy or self-destruction, and Lee has associated the ideology of courtly love with the mania love style in particular.[85][42] According to Lee, Western culture came to view mania as a legitimate basis for mate selection through the courtly and romantic traditions. This replaced the medieval Christian doctrine that the focus of marriage should be on family values and child care.[42][86]

The origin of romantic love

[edit]
La Belle Dame sans Merci 1893, by John William Waterhouse
Further information: Biology of romantic love § Evolution of systems

Romantic love is believed to have evolved in hominids about 4.4 or 2 million years ago (depending on the theory), although the exact time has not been identified yet.[61][19] It's been associated with a constellation of psychological characteristics, and brain scan experiments using fMRI have shown that it activates reward areas in the brain.[87][88][57] One prominent evolutionary theory developed by the anthropologist Helen Fisher states that romantic love is a brain system evolved for mammalian mate choice (also called courtship attraction), an aspect of sexual selection, for focusing energy on a preferred mating partner.[2][1][61] In most species, courtship attraction is only brief (lasting minutes, hours, days or weeks), but Fisher believes that over the course of evolutionary time, it became prolonged and intensified in humans.[2][57] Another prominent theory states that romantic love re-purposed brain systems which were originally for mother-infant bonding, via an evolutionary process called co-option (or exaptation). Both types of love share similar features (preoccupation, exclusivity of focus, longing for reciprocity and idealization), and brain scans have shown overlapping areas.[61][19][18]

It has been claimed on the basis of certain ethnographic reports that romantic love is limited to Western culture, and does not exist in tribal societies throughout the world.[89][90][91] For example, the anthropologist Audrey Richards lived among the Bemba people in the 1930s, and once told them a folk story about a young prince who "climbed glass mountains, crossed chasms, and fought dragons, all to obtain the hand of a maiden he loved". The Bemba, however, became bewildered by the story, prompting an old chief to ask the question "Why not take another girl?"[92] Margaret Mead studied the Samoans, and also believed that deep attachments between individuals were a foreign idea to such societies:[89] "Romantic love as it occurs in our civilisation, inextricably bound up with ideas of monogamy, exclusiveness, jealousy and undeviating fidelity does not occur in Samoa."[93] The tribal mentality, according to Nathaniel Branden, is that the family ought to exist for the optimization of physical survival. The individual is subordinate to the tribe "in virtually every aspect of life", with emotional attachments given little importance.[89]

A 1992 cross-cultural study by William Jankowiak and Edward Fischer, however, found that the experience of passionate love was in fact universal, or near-universal.[91][90][94] This study looked at 166 cultures with relevant ethnographic reports, folklore and other available material from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. Romantic love was indicated as present in a culture if at least one account was found of either personal anguish and longing, love songs or folklore highlighting romantic involvement, elopement due to mutual affection, a native's affirmation of passionate love, or an ethnographer's affirmation of romantic love. On that basis, passionate love was documented in 88.5% of cultures. For the other 11.5%, the authors believed the lack of record was probably due to ethnographic oversight rather than a genuine absence. It's therefore argued that although not everyone falls in love, it's the case that in almost every culture some people do, even in those cultures where romantic love is muted or repressed.[91]

Cover of Zhuchun yuan (The Garden of Spring Residence) written by Wuhang Yeke, an 18th-century Chinese caizi jiaren ("scholar and beauty") romantic novel, a representative type of romantic fiction[95][96][97]

Despite being evolved and a cross-cultural experience then, the phenomenon is still influenced or constrained by culture in a variety of ways.[98][99][100][91] The attitudes towards it and specific practices can vary drastically from culture to culture.[101][102][100] Chinese culture, for example, does not have a "romantic love" culture equivalent to the United States. It was considered "bourgeois", and even outlawed during the Cultural Revolution.[103][104] The puritanical injunctions have long since been dismantled, however, a shyness remained in the culture, which is not identical to that of the West.[105] Divorce is allowed, but arrangement is more common, and there's much talk of "protecting the family".[106] A cross-cultural survey in the early 1990s found that Chinese people thought Western ideas about love were inaccurate, and that Chinese participants linked "passionate love" to concepts like "infatuation", "unrequited love", "sorrow" and "nostalgia". Many seemed to as much want to "fall in love" as to develop a mental illness.[102] Romantic love also plays a role in infidelity, normally forbidden in the West, and differences have been observed in its treatment between cultures. Helen Fisher believes that a brain architecture evolved to contribute to the phenomenon, where a person can feel deep attachment for a spouse while simultaneously feeling intense romantic love for somebody else. Different cultures treat this differently, with some being more tolerant, or defining adultery differently from how Westerners define it today.[100][107] John Alan Lee attributes this kind of thing to a personal preference, and defines some love styles as "mixtures" (ludic eros & storgic ludus) where the partners are allowed sexual liaisons on the side.[73][108]

In behavioral genetics, one tool which is valuable for determining genetic influence is the twin study, which compares identical twins (monozygotic, who are genetically identical) and fraternal twins (dizygotic, who are only 50% genetically related, like other siblings). The differences between the two types of twins are used to estimate how much of a given trait is heritable (how much the individual differences in a group, i.e. variance, can be accounted for by genetic differences between individuals), and how much is environmental. Environmental contribution is further split between shared environment (which makes family members more similar) and nonshared environment (which makes them different, but for mathematical reasons also includes measurement error).[109] A twin study has investigated genetic and environmental influences using the Love Attitudes Scale, developed to measure Lee's love styles.[110][111][112] This study found that individual differences in love attitudes are almost exclusively due to environmental influence, with genetic factors having very little influence for most love attitudes (from most-to-least heritable: mania, storge, pragma & eros), and even no influence at all for others (ludus & agape). The authors interpret the result as meaning that love styles may be influenced by one's childhood familial environment (for shared environment) and unique experiences with parents, peers, adolescent and adult lovers, and so on (for nonshared environment). Of these, the influence from the nonshared environment was larger than the shared environment.[110] According to Lee's earlier observations, typical eros lovers recall a happy childhood, while typical manic lovers recall an unhappy one.[113]

Using the Love Attitudes Scale, romantic love styles have also been correlated with different personality measures: eros (with agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion & secure attachment), mania (with neuroticism & anxious attachment), and ludus (with avoidant attachment). For other love styles: storge (friendship love, with agreeableness & insecure attachment), pragma (practical love, with conscientiousness & insecure attachment), and agape (selfless love, with secure attachment).[114][84] The formation of attachment styles is complicated, often being attributed to childhood, but with twin studies finding both genetic and environmental contributions.[115][116] There's also a problem called a person–situation debate, where people can have different attachment styles with different people, for example, an avoidant partner can make a secure partner feel and act anxious.[117][62] Lee identified a kind of transitional love style he called "manic eros", where the lover is "moving either toward a more stable eros or toward full-blown mania". Some are typical erotic lovers under a temporary strain (moving toward mania), while others are typical manic lovers with a self-confident and helping partner (moving toward eros).[118]

Romance and sexuality

[edit]

In the Western tradition of ideas, romantic love and sexual desire have been closely linked, although still considered separate.[119] Many writers have used terms like "romantic love", "erotic love" and "sexual love" interchangeably, without the relation being made clear.[120] In the 2000s, a scientific consensus emerged that romantic love and sexual desire are actually functionally-independent systems, with distinct neural substrates.[121][61][55] On the basis of the evolutionary theory that romantic love co-opted mother-infant bonding for some of its underlying brain systems, it has been argued that it's possible to fall in love without experiencing sexual desire.[122][61] This theory originally by the psychologist Lisa Diamond states that it would not have been adaptive for a parent to only be able to bond with an opposite sex child, so the systems must have evolved independently from sexual orientation. For this reason, it's even possible sometimes for people to fall in love in contradiction to their usual orientation.[122]

The theory is used to explain the phenomenon of romantic friendships which involve passionate feelings without sexuality, and other instances of "platonic" attachments and infatuations.[121][122] Some documented examples are intense, but non-sexual bonds between Native American men, schoolgirls falling "violently in love with each other, and suffering all the pangs of unrequited attachment, desperate jealousy etc." (historically called a "smash"), and women who considered themselves to be otherwise heterosexual experiencing limerence for an older woman (a love madness compared to "hero worship").[122][121][123][124]

Barriers to fulfillment

[edit]

It has been reported by many theorists (and even agreed) that adversity actually tends to heighten romantic passion.[125][126] Obstacles like rejection, parental, spousal or other interference, physical separation, temporary breakups, or uncertain situations spark interest and emotional volatility.[125][126][127][128] Ambivalence is "potent fuel for passion", and an unobtainable person makes the feeling all the more powerful.[128][129] The curious phenomenon has been called "the Romeo and Juliet effect", or "frustration attraction".[127] According to Dorothy Tennov, "The recognition that some uncertainty must exist has been commented on and complained about by virtually everyone who has [seriously studied] romantic love."[125][note 5] Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Hatfield observed that passion is associated with a "hodgepodge of conflicting emotions": "It is true that some practical people manage to fall passionately in love with beautiful, wise, entertaining, and wealthy people who bring them unending affection and material rewards. Other people, however, with unfailing accuracy, seem to fall passionately in love with people who are almost guaranteed to bring them suffering and material deprivation."[133]

Passionate or infatuated love is said to thrive under the uncertainty of intermittent reinforcement, in situations with only irregular meetings between lovers, or with ambiguous and changing perceptions over whether one's love is returned.[134][129][125] This type of situation resembles a slot machine, for example, where the rewards are designed to be always unpredictable so the gambler cannot understand the pattern. Unable to habituate to the experience, for some people the exhilarating high from the unexpected wins leads to gambling addiction and compulsions. If the machine paid out on a regular interval (so that the rewards were expected), it would not be as exciting.[135] Uncertain reciprocation has also been interpreted in terms of attachment anxiety.[130] Helen Fisher believed that obstacles and confusion heighten romantic ardor (as in Romeo and Juliet) because dopamine neurons fire in anticipation of an expected reward which is delayed.[127]

The "cold, cruel mistress" or "hard-to-get girl" is a recurring theme in the history of love literature, with the observations sometimes cynical or satirical.[136][126][125] Socrates: "you must not offer it to them when they have had enough—be a show of reluctance to yield, and by holding back until they are as keen as can be for then the same gifts are much more to the recipient than when they are offered before they are desired".[126] Ovid: "if you feel no need to guard your girl for her own sake, see that you guard her for mine, so I may want her the more".[126] Andreas Capellanus: "The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized."[137] Bertrand Russell: "The belief in the immense value of the lady is a psychological effect of the difficulty of obtaining her, and I think it may be laid down that when a man has no difficulty in obtaining a woman, his feeling toward her does not take the form of romantic love."[138]

Sigmund Freud believed that romantic love was generated by suppressed (or repressed) sexual desire:[139][note 6] "It can easily be shown that the psychical value of erotic needs is reduced as soon as their satisfaction becomes easy. An obstacle is required in order to heighten libido; and where natural resistances to satisfaction have not been sufficient men have at all times erected conventional ones so as to be able to enjoy love. This is true both of individuals and of nations. In times in which there were no difficulties standing in the way of sexual satisfaction, such as perhaps during the decline of the ancient civilizations, love became worthless and life empty".[143][126]

Romance and marriage

[edit]
La Promenade, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Marriage as a cultural practice may only be about 4,350 years old, and historically it did not exist to bind couples for love or companionship. Especially in patriarchal societies, its original purpose was to ensure the transfer of wealth and responsibilities to a man's true biological children.[144] In Ancient Greece and Rome, they did not marry for love, and both cultures saw passion as a kind of madness.[145][146] Despite the Greeks having many depictions of love in their art and mythology, if Greek men were to fall in love, it would have likely been extramarital with courtesans, or homosexual love between men. Women were subservient, segregated, and mostly kept inside and isolated.[147][148] In the Middle Ages, after the fall of Rome, marriage in Europe was also regarded as economic and political. By the 6th century, it was regulated by the Catholic Church in all respects, which declared passionate love and sex to be mortal sin for any other purpose than procreation.[149][150] In the 11th and 12th centuries, the phenomenon of courtly love emerged to idealize a precursor to romantic love, but only when unconsummated or in the form of adultery, not as a basis for marriage itself. At this point, marriage and love were still believed to be incompatible, and additionally the ideals of courtly love only applied to nobility.[151][152]

It was not until the 18th century that people began to marry for romance.[144][153] During this period, Romanticism emerged with new perspectives on individuality and egalitarianism, and through the 19th century it became a cultural question whether passion, love and companionship could become a basis for marriage.[154] New norms were adopted, but romantic attitudes later waned and became tame throughout the Victorian era in Europe.[155] During the 18th and 19th centuries, Puritanism also dominated the culture in post-revolutionary America, with an anti-romantic tradition.[156] Romantic love really only flourished as a basis for marriage at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, when men and women socialized more equally, when dating replaced other structured courtship practices, and romance became more secular and consumerist.[157]

During the 20th century, a "transformation of intimacy" occurred, where intimate relationships became less restricted by laws, customs and morals, and feminism paved the way for new kinds of relations between men and women.[158] The rise of the romantic marriage also coincided with the rise of divorce then, due to this heightened expectation, sensitivity to incompatibility, and increasing legal freedom.[159] The sociologist Anthony Giddens calls a major development of this period the "pure relationship": where a relationship is entered for its own sake based on emotional communication, and only continued for as long as both parties are satisfied with the rewards derived from it.[160][161] A "discourse of intimacy" emerged in the 1960s and '70s, promoted in self-help books as an attempt to ameliorate problems which were a consequence of the restructuring of personal relationships on marriage.[162] Previously, marriage was a contractual obligation which only required adherence to law (and "romance" is seen as something one "falls" into, not an act of will); therefore, a new concept of "commitment" emerged, with the "pure relationship" marriage requiring a new kind of willful involvement previously unconceived of.[163] Much of the discourse also focused on communication as a means to intimacy and a cure for conflict.[164] According to David Shumway, a professor of cultural studies, one of the problems is that as with "romance", "intimacy" is elusive to define.[165] This new conception meant something more than "companionship": it also came to entail emotional, economic, and political equality of the partners, or what Giddens calls a "democratization" of personal life and emotions.[166][167]

The clinical psychologist Frank Tallis has criticized the romantic tradition as a disappointment, citing studies which actually show higher satisfaction among arranged marriages than marriages for love.[168] In Asian and other Eastern cultures where arrangement is preferred, it's assumed that a couple will fall in love, but after their marriage, and often they do.[169][170] About half of arranged couples claim to stay together for love, albeit probably not for romantic love.[171]

Bertrand Russell, a philosopher considered influential in the 20th century,[172] has been critical, but also optimistic about the prospects of romantic love. Despite his assertion that romantic love is only found in the difficulty of its obtainment, he also called it "the source of the most intense delights that life has to offer", and thought it important that it was socially permitted.[173] Russell, however, critiqued the cultural movement that romance ought to be essential for marriage: "Whether the effect has been as good as the innovators hoped may be doubted. [...] In America, where the romantic view of marriage has been taken more seriously than anywhere else, and where law and custom alike are based upon the dreams of spinsters, the result has been an extreme prevalence of divorce and extreme rarity of happy marriages."[174] According to Russell, "it should be understood that the kind of love which will enable a marriage to remain happy and to fulfil its social purpose is not romantic but is something more intimate, affectionate, and realistic".[175] In his view, it's good that romance can lead to marriage, but as a necessity it's "too anarchic", and "forgets that children are what make marriage important".[176]

The anthropologist and renowned[177] love researcher Helen Fisher believed the current drive for a more passionate romance in Western partnerships (what she called a return to an "antique habit"—something she believed is natural and evolved) is good news. However, she argued in favor of a longer, more drawn out "pre-commitment" stage prior to marriage, which she called "slow love", for the purpose of becoming familiar before making a lifelong commitment.[178]

Modern romance

[edit]

In 2016, Victor de Munck and David Kronenfield proposed a cultural model for romantic love in the United States, developed with studies of people in upstate New York and New York City.[60] The authors believe the cultural model is used as a reference standard for relationships by their informants: "People do not fit the model as much as our model can be used to explain and predict what people think, feel, and do." The American model "is unique in that it combines passion with comfort and friendship": "For successful romantic love relations, a person would feel excited about meeting their beloved; make passionate and intimate love as opposed to only physical love; feel comfortable with the beloved, behaving in a companionable, friendly way with one’s partner; listen to the other’s concerns, offering to help out in various ways if necessary; and, all the while, keeping a mental ledger of the degree to which altruism and passion are mutual." It's not claimed by the authors that everyone holds this model or that everyone opts for this type of relationship, only that the model is common or prototypical and most people know it at least implicitly. The model is tested with two case studies of informants who describe their difficulties finding a partner who meets all of these different criteria (passion, plus comfort and friendship).[60]

Hendrick and Hendrick studied college students who were in the early stages of a relationship and found that almost half reported that their significant other was their closest friend, providing evidence that both passionate and companionate love exist in new relationships.[179]

In his 2008 book How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time, British writer Iain King tried to establish basic rules for the early stage of romance, as an improvement over the old maxim "all's fair in love (and war)". He concludes on six initial rules, inspired by what he calls the "Help Principle", which he argues is one good basis for a mutual relationship: "Help someone if your help is worth more to them than it is to you."[180]

There will be more, but these are the first:
  1. try to assess your own feelings towards someone else in reasonable time;
  2. empathize with others to assess your mutual suitability;
  3. don't flirt with someone unless you might mean it, and reject unwanted advances politely but clearly;
  4. do not pursue people you are not interested in, or who are clearly not interested in you;
  5. underrepresent your affection to someone only if you think doing so will foster the relationship; and
  6. in general, express your affection, uncertainty or disinterest clearly, unless there is a special reason not to.

— Iain King, How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time

Helen Fisher has advocated personality matches and online dating services for introductions, which she believed are effective.[181] Contrary to previous research, however, a 2025 study found that couples who met online were actually less satisfied than those who met offline. The difference could be explained by the people meeting online tending to be less similar, or the overabundance of choice in online environments leading to less confident selections, or because of the proliferation of so-called "swipe culture", which focuses more on gamified appearance-based interactions over actual matching algorithms and profile preparation.[182]

Philosophy

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Roman copy of a Greek sculpture by Lysippus depicting Eros, the Greek personification of romantic love

Plato

[edit]

Greek philosophers and authors have had many theories of love. Some of these theories are presented in Plato's Symposium.[non-primary source needed] Six Athenian friends, including Socrates, drink wine and each give a speech praising the deity Eros. When his turn comes, Aristophanes says in his mythical speech that sexual partners seek each other because they are descended from beings with spherical torsos, two sets of human limbs, genitalia on each side, and two faces back to back. Their three forms included the three permutations of pairs of gender (i.e. one masculine and masculine, another feminine and feminine, and the third masculine and feminine) and they were split by the gods to thwart the creatures' assault on heaven, recapitulated, according to the comic playwright, in other myths such as the Aloadae.[183]

This story is relevant to modern romance partly because of the image of reciprocity it shows between the sexes.[original research?] In the final speech before Alcibiades arrives, Socrates gives his encomium of love and desire as a lack of being, namely, the being or form of beauty.

Arthur Schopenhauer

[edit]

The process of courtship also contributed to Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimism, despite his own romantic success,[184] and he argued that to be rid of the challenge of courtship would drive people to suicide with boredom. Schopenhauer theorized that individuals seek partners looking for a "complement" or completing of themselves in a partner, as in the cliché that "opposites attract", but with the added consideration that both partners manifest this attraction for the sake of the species:

But what ultimately draws two individuals of different sex exclusively to each other with such power is the will-to-live which manifests itself in the whole species, and here anticipates, in the individual that these two can produce, an objectification of its true nature corresponding to its aims. —World as Will and Representation, Volume 2, Chapter XLIV[185]

Other philosophers

[edit]

Later modern philosophers such as La Rochefoucauld, David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau also focused on morality, but desire was central to French thought and Hume himself tended to adopt a French worldview and temperament. Desire in this milieu meant a very general idea termed "the passions", and this general interest was distinct from the contemporary idea of "passionate" now equated with "romantic". Love was a central topic again in the subsequent movement of Romanticism, which focused on such things as absorption in nature and the absolute, as well as platonic and unrequited love in German philosophy and literature.

French philosopher Gilles Deleuze linked this concept of love as a lack mainly to Sigmund Freud, and Deleuze often criticized it.

Psychology

[edit]

Martie Haselton, a psychologist at UCLA, considers romantic love a "commitment device" or mechanism that encourages two humans to form a lasting bond. She has explored the evolutionary rationale that has shaped modern romantic love and has concluded that long-lasting relationships are helpful to ensure that children reach reproductive age and are fed and cared for by two parents. Haselton and her colleagues have found evidence in their experiments that suggest love's adaptation. The first part of the experiments consists of having people think about how much they love someone and then suppress thoughts of other attractive people. In the second part of the experiment the same people are asked to think about how much they sexually desire those same partners and then try to suppress thoughts about others. The results showed that love is more efficient in pushing out those rivals than sex.[186]

The self-expansion theory of romantic love

[edit]

Researchers Arthur and Elaine Aron theorized that humans have a basic drive to expand their self-concepts. Further, their experience with Eastern concepts of love caused them to believe that positive emotions, cognitions, and relationships in romantic behaviors all drive the expansion of a person's self-concept.[187] A study following college students for 10 weeks showed that those students who fell in love over the course of the investigation reported higher feelings of self-esteem and self-efficacy than those who did not.[188]

Relationship maintenance

[edit]

Daniel Canary from the International Encyclopedia of Marriage[189] describes relationship maintenance as "At the most basic level, relational maintenance refers to a variety of behaviors used by partners in an effort to stay together." Maintaining stability and quality in a relationship is the key to success in a romantic relationship. He says that: "simply staying together is not sufficient; instead, the quality of the relationship is important. For researchers, this means examining behaviors that are linked to relational satisfaction and other indicators of quality." Canary suggests using the work of John Gottman, an American physiologist best known for his research on marital stability for over four decades, serves as a guide for predicting outcomes in relationships because "Gottman emphasizes behaviors that determine whether or not a couple gets divorced".[190]

Furthermore, Canary also uses the source from Stafford and Canary,[191] a journal on Communication Monographs, because they created five great strategies based on maintaining quality in a relationship, the article's strategies are to provide:

  • Positivity: being joyful and optimistic, not criticizing each other.
  • Assurances: proving one's commitment and love.
  • Openness: to be honest with one another according to what they want in the relationship.
  • Social networks: efforts into involving friends and family in their activities.
  • Sharing tasks: complementing each other's needs based on daily work.

See also

[edit]
Romantic practices
  • Flirting – Social behavior that suggests interest in a deeper relationship with the other person
  • Fraternizing – Establishment of personal relations
  • Gift-giving – Item given to someone without the expectation of anything in return
    • Flowers – Reproductive structure in flowering plants
    • Candy – Sweet confection
    • Jewellery – Items of personal adornment
      • Promise ring – Ring symbolizing intent to wed
      • Engagement ring – Ring indicating that the person wearing it is engaged to be married
      • Wedding ring – Finger ring which indicates that its wearer is married
  • Courtship – Period in a couple's relationship which precedes their engagement and marriage
  • Pet names – Phrase expressing affection
  • Baby talk – Type of speech associated with an older person speaking to a child
  • Intimacy – Physical or emotional intimacy
    • Eye contact – Form of nonverbal communication
    • Hugging – Form of endearment
    • Holding hands – Form of physical intimacy
    • Kissing – Touch with the lips, usually to express love, affection or greeting
  • Love letter – Expression of love in written form
  • Dating – Meeting socially intending a future relationship
    • Couple – Physical or emotional intimacy
    • Movies – Social norms observed by patrons of a movie theater
    • Serenade – Musical composition or performance

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ One early reference (1700) to the phrase "romantic love" is made in reference to the novel Don Quixote, about a knight driven mad by reading chivalric romance.[27][28]
  2. ^ Strictly speaking, "courtly love" originally referred to the cultural phenomenon which flourished in 12th-century France. The literary style then spread to other areas, such as Britain, where Arthurian legend was created, which has also been called courtly love.[30] Italian Renaissance writers in the 13th and 14th centuries (e.g. Dante and Petrarch) were influenced by the tradition.[31][32][33] Shakespeare (16th–17th centuries) and other writers in his time advocated for love to be a basis for marriage.[34][35] Goethe and Romanticism later came in the 18th century with a literary tradition resembling courtly love, but with modified ideals.[36][37] The entire historical movement has been referred to as "romantic love", or "romantic tradition".[38]
  3. ^ Some authors have considered the "courtly" and "romantic" ideas of love to be identical, but this direct connection through history has been overstated. According to Irving Singer, "Concepts of courtly and Romantic love belong to disparate (though intersecting) philosophical traditions", and the modern idea of romantic love largely originates from around the time of David Hume and other contemporaneous developments. Hume was an 18th-century philosopher who argued that "reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions".[43]
  4. ^ This is only partially connected to Romanticism, the movement which came out of Germany near the end of the 18th century. The Romantic movement had some origins in a classic romantic novel by Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and went on to affect cultural attitudes towards love and marriage, but it also had wider concerns.[49][50] "Romanticism" is another term which is complicated to define.[51]
  5. ^ Uncertainty is associated with Dorothy Tennov's theory of "limerence", a term she invented to refer to a love madness commonly felt for an unreachable person.[130][124][129] Tennov's research study (published in her 1979 book) has been credited as largely marking the start of modern romantic love science.[19][131] The researchers Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Hatfield made important early contributions to the field as well, and their tentative theory of passionate love is cited by Tennov in a discussion of the Romeo and Juliet effect.[132][126][125]
  6. ^ Sigmund Freud's views on love have been dismissed as superficial or cursory, given his reduction of the phenomenon to sex and sexuality. However, Freud has also been praised as being insightful for his time, representing an important development between ancient models like humorism and a more modern psychology.[140] Freud identified the sometimes troubling or primitive nature of attachments, disguised under the cosmetic of "romance" and "romantic love", and the influence of prior experience (e.g. childhood) on falling in love.[141] Freud championed reason, but had a personal run-in himself with madness after falling in love during his courtship of Martha Bernays, when acute jealousy nearly brought him to violence. Writing in hindsight, Freud implied that he viewed even normal jealousy as a semi-delusional state.[142]

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[edit]
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Sources

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Further reading

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  • Loudin, Jo, The Hoax of Romance. New York: Prentice Hall, 1980.
  • Young-Eisendrath, Polly, You're Not Who I Expected. William Morrow & Company, 1993.
  • Kierkegaard, Søren. Stages on Life's Way. Transl. Walter Lowrie, D.D. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940.
  • Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. London: Allen Lane, 1968; New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Structural Anthropology. (volume 2) London: Allen Lane, 1977; New York: Peregrine Books 1976.
  • Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human. Transl. R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2nd Edition, 1996.
  • Francesco Alberoni, Falling in love, New York, Random House, 1983.
  • Novak, Michael. Shaw, Elizabeth (editor) The Myth of Romantic Love and Other Essays Transaction Publishers (23 January 2013).
  • Wexler, Harry K (31 August 2009). "The Romantic Hoax". Psychology Today.
  • The Journal of Popular Romance Studies, that publishes academic research on romantic love.
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  •  Quotations related to Romance at Wikiquote
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