Romantic love
Romantic love is a form of
love that is often regarded as different from mere needs driven by
sexual desire, or
lust. Romantic love generally involves a mix of emotional and sexual desire, as opposed to
Platonic love. There is often, initially, more emphasis on the emotions than on physical pleasure.
Romantic love can be returned or unrequited. In the former case, the mutual expressions of love can lead to
marriage or to the establishment of a permanent relationship, which in most cases will include passionate
sexual love. Where the love is one-sided (unrequited), the result can be damage to the esteem and/or the psychological welfare of the spurned lover.
One aspect of romantic love is the randomness of the encounters which lead to love. It may be for this reason that some in
Western society have historically emphasized romantic love far more than other cultures in which
arranged marriages are the rule. However, the
globalization of Western culture has spread Western ideas about love and romance.
Romantic love became a recognized passion in the
Middle Ages, when in some cases insurmountable barriers of morality or convention separated the lovers. The effect of physical attraction and impossibility of intimacy resulted in an excessive regard of the beloved as extremely precious. Winning the love, or at least the attention, of the beloved, motivated great efforts of many kinds, such as
poetry,
song or feats of arms.
In more modern times romantic love has been the theme of art and entertainment in all its forms. Some of the greatest poetry (e.g.
Shakespeare's sonnets),
opera (e.g.
La Boheme), and literature (e.g.
Pride and Prejudice) have romantic love as the main theme. Similarly much of more
popular culture from
theatre to
film to
popular music has romantic love at its heart. However, it has not been without its critics.
Virginia Woolf called
Middlemarch one of the few English
novels for "grown up people" given its pessimistic portrayal of marriage.
Properties of romantic love purported by Western culture that might or might not appear elsewhere include:
* It must take you by surprise (the result of a random encounter).
* It cannot be easily controlled.
* It is not overtly (initially at least) predicated on a desire for sex as a physical act.
* If requited it may be the basis for a lifelong commitment.
While romantic love as discussed above is a dream of many, some claim that such love as is depicted in books and movies rarely, if ever, occurs. They point to the modern practice of
dating, where often the goal is to have
sexual intercourse as soon as possible instead of building a lasting relationship. Often, the rigorous demands of careers in the modern world rob people of the time to find such ideal companions, and mental disorders such as
social anxiety disorder prevent people from approaching others.
*
Courtship*
Marriage*
Romance novels
*
Courtly love*
Erotomania*
Erotophobia*
Limerence*
Love-shyness*
Personal relationship*
Romanticism*Denis de Rougemont,
Love in the Western World. Pantheon Books, 1956.
*
Francesco Alberoni,
Falling in love, New York, Random House, 1983
*
Love Quotes*
Romantic Gifts*
Romantic Love Letters at RomanceForEveryone.com
