Romantic love combines intimacy, passion, and commitment and tends to occur in phases. Infatuation is often followed by disillusionment and challenges before a mature type of romantic love takes hold.
Mature love (or consummate love, in Sternberg's theory) is the kind of devotion found in long-term relationships and successful marriages. In mature love, two people are together because they want to be together and not just because they feel an irrational desire or need to be with one another.
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Romantic love may mean different things to different people. What's most important is that you and your partner are on the same page. Shared intimacy and passion can often lead to a strong, shared commitment to another person and to a lasting relationship.
Though heartbreak to some degree is unavoidable, I felt there was much to learn about romantic love, particularly from a spiritual perspective. And there was. What I learned and have since practiced has been of huge value to me, and I believe it can be of huge value to you. But before we break down romantic love and all its imperfections, I want to share my story.
Nothing erodes ego boundaries so ferociously as falling in love. The collapse of ego boundaries creates the illusion of your beloved becoming a part of you. Loneliness becomes a thing of the past as two become one (as cultural sages The Spice Girls acknowledge). Everything seems possible, every experience shared in blissful union. To your brain, the feeling of ecstasy created by falling in love is a real as, well, ingesting ecstasy or snorting cocaine.
Prominent anthropologist Helen Fisher has spent her career exploring what happens to the brain when falling in love. Her 2005 study used an functional MRI scanner to analyse the brains of people who were wildly in love. The study concluded that romantic love is not an emotion but a motivation system, distinct from the sex drive, aiding mate-choice. Whereas the sex drive applies to multiple partners, the romantic love drive focuses all of our energies onto one lucky partner.
Regardless of the concept of the one, the components of the myth and the way it has permeated our culture is responsible for creating unrealistic expectations of what romance is. I know my expectations have been high in the past. I watch too many movies. As Peck says:
Like you, I chased romantic love for years to eventually realize it is a myth. That true love is a choice and something we deepen into when the circumstances are right. These days, I mistrust those feelings of instant connection and instead look from the Heart to guide me forward. Not always easy and definitely still unwinding these myths we grew up on. Thanks for sharing this post!
Romance or romantic love is a feeling of love for, or a strong attraction towards another person,[1] and the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those overall feelings and resultant emotions.[2]
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies states that "Romantic love, based on the model of mutual attraction and on a connection between two people that bonds them as a couple, creates the conditions for overturning the model of family and marriage that it engenders."[3] This indicates that romantic love can be the founding of attraction between two people. This term was primarily used by the "western countries after the 1800s were socialized into, love is the necessary prerequisite for starting an intimate relationship and represents the foundation on which to build the next steps in a family."
Alternatively, Collins Dictionary describes 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."[4]
Although the emotions and sensations of romantic love are widely associated with sexual attraction, they could also exist without sexual attraction. In certain cases, romance could even be interpreted as a normal friendship. Historically, the term romance originates with the medieval ideal of chivalry as set out in the literature of chivalric romance.
Bode & Kushnick undertook a comprehensive review of romantic love from a biological perspective in 2021.[5] 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:[5]
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.[5]
Anthropologist Charles Lindholm defined love as "any intense attraction that involves the idealization of the other, within an erotic context, with expectation of enduring sometime into the future".[6]
The word "romance" comes from the French vernacular where initially it indicated a verse narrative. The word was originally an adverb of Latin origin, "romanicus", meaning "of the Roman style". European medieval vernacular tales, epics, and ballads generally dealt with chivalric adventure, not bringing in the concept of love until late into the seventeenth century. The word romance developed other meanings, such as the early nineteenth century Spanish and Italian definitions of "adventurous" and "passionate", which could intimate both "love affair" and "idealistic quality".[citation needed]
Anthropologists such as Claude Lvi-Strauss show that there were complex forms of courtship in ancient as well as contemporary primitive societies. There may not be evidence, however, that members of such societies formed loving relationships distinct from their established customs in a way that would parallel modern romance.[7] Marriages were often arranged, but the wishes of those to be wed were considered, as affection was important to primitive tribes.[8]
In the majority of primitive societies studied by the anthropologists, the extramarital and premarital relations between men and women were completely free. The members of the temporary couples were sexually attracted to each other more than to anyone else, but in all other respects their relationships had not demonstrated the characteristics of romantic love. In the book of Boris Shipov Theory of Romantic Love[9] the corresponding evidences of anthropologists have been collected. Lewis H. Morgan: "the passion of love was unknown among the barbarians. They are below the sentiment, which is the offspring of civilization and super added refinement of love was unknown among the barbarians."[10] Margaret Mead: "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."[11] Bronislaw Malinowski: "Though the social code does not favour romance, romantic elements and imaginative personal attachments are not altogether absent in Trobriand courtship and marriage."[12]
The phenomenon which B. Malinowski calls love, actually has very little in common with the European love: "Thus there is nothing roundabout in a Trobriand wooing; nor do they seek full personal relations, with sexual possession only as a consequence. Simply and directly a meeting is asked for with the avowed intention of sexual gratification. If the invitation is accepted, the satisfaction of the boy's desire eliminates the romantic frame of mind, the craving for the unattainable and mysterious."[13] "an important point is that the pair's community of interest is limited to the sexual relation only. The couple share a bed and nothing else. ... there are no services to be mutually rendered, they have no obligation to help each other in any way..."[14]
The aborigines of Mangaia island of Polynesia, who mastered the English language, used the word "love" with a completely different meaning as compared to that which is usual for the person brought up in the European culture. Donald S. Marshall: "Mangaian informants and co-workers were quite interested in the European concept of "love". English-speaking Mangaians had previously used the term only in a physical sense of sexual desire; to say, "I love you" in English to another person was tantamount to saying, "I want to copulate with you." The components of affection and companionship, which may characterize the European use of the term, puzzled the Mangaians when we discussed the term."[15] "The principal findings that one can draw from an analysis of emotional components of sexual relationship feelings on Mangaia are:
The earliest recorded marriages in Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, and among Hebrews were used to secure alliances and produce offspring. It was not until the Middle Ages that love began to be a real part of marriage.[19] The marriages that did arise outside of arranged marriage were most often spontaneous relationships. In Ladies of the Leisure Class, Rutgers University professor Bonnie G. Smith depicts courtship and marriage rituals that may be viewed as oppressive to modern people. She writes, "When the young women of the Nord married, they did so without illusions of love and romance. They acted within a framework of concern for the reproduction of bloodlines according to financial, professional, and sometimes political interests."[20][21]
Anthony Giddens, in The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Society, states that romantic love introduced the idea of a narrative to an individual's life, and telling a story is a root meaning of the term romance. According to Giddens, the rise of romantic love more or less coincided with the emergence of the novel. It was then that romantic love, associated with freedom and therefore the ideals of romantic love, created the ties between freedom and self-realization.[22][23] 152ee80cbc