Romance or romantic love is a feeling of strong attraction towards another person, the mental state of being "in love" focused towards forming 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 (but related to) the concept of attachment.[6][1][7]
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."[8] 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.[8] The terms "romance" and "romantic love" are used with multiple definitions, which can be contradictory at times.[4][9][10][11][12]
People who experience little to no romantic attraction are referred to as aromantic.
General definitions
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.[10][11] 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.[13][14] According to the psychotherapistRobert 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.[15]
The term is often used to distinguish from other types of interpersonal relationships (conjugal, parental, friendship), and in contrast to the modern interpretation of platonic love (which precludes sexual relations).[16] The notion that romantic love only occurs within a relationship of some kind, however, has been called a misconception.[17] 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.[18][19]
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).[10][20][4] The psychologist Dorothy Tennov once criticized the reactions to romantic love in the scientific literature as "confused and contradictory".[21]
The literary tradition
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 (from Romanus) became used to mean "in the vernacular" to identify languages which were derivatives of Latin, when Latin itself 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. In the Middle Ages, this romans/romanz took on a meaning as referring specifically to a type of narrative verse about chivalry and love (called chivalric romance).[23][24] Some of the earliest literature containing themes considered "romantic" in a more modern sense was written by French poets known as troubadours—exploring a kind of thematic love for a "cold, cruel mistress".[25][26][27] These poets, like Chrétien de Troyes, were being encouraged by royalty to compose works exemplifying certain ideals (now called "courtly love"),[note 1] principally in the town of Poitiers, where Andreas Capellanus also came to write The Art of Courtly Love.[29] Courtly love then became emphasized as a theme for chivalric romance.[27][24]
The French romans was anglicized into "romance",[30] and initially the term "romantic love" referred to those attitudes and behaviors of courtly love.[31][note 2] Courtly love involved themes elevating the status of the woman, of passionate suffering and separation, and a transformation of the lovers to another plane of existence.[31] This is said to have originated from the troubadour poetry and the work by Capellanus, although they were also influenced by even earlier works. Often, stories inspired by 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.[34][note 3] The modern romance novel as it's known today (e.g. by Jane Austen) emerged during the 18th-century period of this movement.[44][45]
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.[52][53][note 4] 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".[55][56] 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."[57][note 5]
The sociological phenomenon
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".[62][63][note 6] 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][67][62] 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.[62] Romantic love in this sense is contrasted with rational, practical or pragmatic love.[4][68]
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:[20]
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.
Romantic love in this sense might also be referred to as "being in love", passionate love, infatuation, limerence, obsessive love, eros (ancient Greek) or eros/mania (love styles).[20][70][71][72] 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.[17][73] 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][74][75] 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".[74][76]
Some authors also consider companionate love and attachment to be romantic love, or consider romantic love to be an attachment process.[17][77][7][78] 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.[7] The attachment system has been associated with oxytocin, which has been found circulating in people experiencing romantic love.[7][69] 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.[79][69]Endogenous opioids are also believed to be involved with romantic love, associated with the hedonic (or "liking") aspect of rewarding experiences.[7][80][75]
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 were 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).[81][82][83] Usually romantic love inside a relationship lasts for just about a year or 18 months.[84][74]
One of the problems with "love" is that the word can be used to refer to so many different things.[70][85] 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.[86][85] 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.[87][88][89]
Lee has stated that the elements of romantic love may actually correspond to several of his love styles: eros (erotic love, or love of beauty), mania (compared to limerence, obsessive love or love addiction), and ludus (game-playing, non-committal love).[90][91][92][93] Of these, eros and mania most correspond to the experience of "falling" in love.[94] 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.[95][96][97] 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.[98] Eros is considered to be more positive than mania.[99] 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.[100][53][59] 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 medievalChristian doctrine that marriage should focus on family values and child care.[53][59]
Limerence
"Crystallization" was coined by the 19th-century French writer Stendhal to refer to the tendency of a person in love to overemphasize the positive aspects of their loved one and overlook the negative ("love is blind"). This idealization is now considered positive illusions, and significant scientific evidence has shown that it contributes to relationship satisfaction, long-term well-being and decreased risk for relationship discontinuation.
uncertain reciprocation intensifying the feeling and causing emotional volatility.
According to Tennov's research, limerence is normal (despite being a madness); however, she also encountered people who had not experienced it (whom she calls "nonlimerent") and were in fact unaware the stories depict a real phenomenon.[117][91][118] Tennov indicated limerence may be experienced by 50% of women and 35% of men,[119] and a 2025 survey found that 64% of people had experienced it and 32% "found it so distressing that it was hard to enjoy life".[120] In Tennov's conception, limerence can be reciprocated and result in a relationship, but there must be obstacles (as in Romeo and Juliet) for a mutual preoccupation to intensify.[121][111]
Tennov complains in her book (and as recently as 2005) that not only are some people unaware the phenomenon is real, but that the scientific community does not properly distinguish it either.[122][123] Terms like "romantic love", "passionate love" and "being in love" are all used to refer to limerence, but also to other things.[124][123] Another type of attraction pattern frequently described to her by informants (who also felt they were "in love") was a more companionate style she calls "affectional bonding", which emphasizes compatibility of interests, mutual preferences, ability to work together and pleasurable sex.[125] Some informants would also speak of "obsession", yet not report intrusive (unwanted) thoughts, only "frequent and pleasurable" ones.[126]
The sociologistJohn Alan Lee has also commented on semantic issues, like how mania & eros are frequently confused, being lumped together as "romantic love".[98][127][128] Lee complains that his research was reviewed by Elaine Hatfield in A New Look at Love inside her chapter on passionate love, when several love styles 'are not "passionate" at all!'[128] Limerence has been compared to Lee's mania, with both Tennov & Lee having taken inspiration from courtly love.[91][129][59]
In her 1988 book chapter, "Passionate and Companionate Love", Hatfield considers a litany of concepts ("being in love", limerence, Lee's mania & eros, and so on) together under "passionate love", and this more general idea became accepted in love research.[130][131] Later research, however, showed that the Passionate Love Scale has overly broad questions, measuring both obsessive and non-obsessive components.[83][132] It is possible to experience love feelings either with or without the obsessive element, and both ways have different trajectories in a relationship. Passionate love with obsession is only associated with satisfaction in short-term relationships, whereas love without obsession may sustain over a longer period.[83][133]
A 2013 study found that unrequited (unequal) love was four times more frequent than equal love, although little research has attempted to study or differentiate it.[73]
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.[7][20] It has been associated with a suite of psychological characteristics, and brain scan experiments using fMRI have shown that it activates reward areas in the brain.[134][135][74] One prominent evolutionary theory developed by the anthropologistHelen 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][7] In most species, courtship attraction is only brief (lasting minutes, hours, days or weeks), but Fisher believed that over the course of evolutionary time, it became prolonged and intensified in humans.[2][74] 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.[7][20][19]
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.[136][137][138] For example, the anthropologistAudrey 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?"[139]Margaret Mead studied the Samoans, and also believed that deep attachments between individuals were a foreign idea to such societies:[136] "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."[140] 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.[136]
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.[138][137][141] 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 is therefore argued that although not everyone falls in love, it is the case that in almost every culture some people do, even in those cultures where romantic love is muted or repressed.[138]
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 type of romantic fiction
Despite being evolved and a cross-cultural experience then, the phenomenon is still influenced or constrained by culture in a variety of ways.[145][146][147][138] The attitudes towards it and specific practices can vary drastically from culture to culture.[148][149][147]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.[150][151] The puritanical injunctions have long since been dismantled, however, a shyness remained in the culture, which is not identical to that of the West.[152]Divorce is allowed, but arrangement is more common, and there's much talk of "protecting the family".[153] 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.[149]
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).[154] A twin study has investigated genetic and environmental influences using the Love Attitudes Scale, developed to measure Lee's love styles.[155][156][157] 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.[155] According to Lee's earlier observations, typical eros lovers recall a happy childhood, while typical manic lovers recall an unhappy one.[158]
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).[159][99] The formation of attachment styles is complicated, often being attributed to childhood, but with twin studies finding both genetic and environmental contributions.[160][161] 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.[162][78] 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).[163]
Romance and sexuality
In the Western tradition of ideas, romantic love and sexual desire have been closely linked, although still considered separate.[164] Many writers have used terms like "romantic love", "erotic love" and "sexual love" interchangeably, without the relation being made clear.[165] In the 2000s, a scientific consensus emerged that romantic love and sexual desire are actually functionally-independent systems, with distinct neural substrates.[166][7][71] 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.[167][7] This theory originally by the psychologistLisa 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.[167]
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.[166][167] 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").[167][166][168][110]
Barriers to fulfillment
It has been reported by many theorists (and even agreed) that adversity actually tends to heighten romantic passion.[169][107] Obstacles like rejection, parental, spousal or other interference, physical separation, temporary breakups, or uncertain situations spark interest and emotional volatility.[169][107][170][171] Ambivalence is "potent fuel for passion", and an unobtainable person makes the feeling all the more powerful.[171][111] The curious phenomenon has been called "the Romeo and Juliet effect", or "frustration attraction".[170] 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."[169]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."[172]
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.[173][111][169] 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.[174] Uncertain reciprocation has also been interpreted in terms of attachment anxiety.[175]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.[170]
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.[176][107][169]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".[107]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".[107]Andreas Capellanus: "The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized."[177]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."[178]
Sigmund Freud believed that romantic love was generated by suppressed (or repressed) sexual desire:[179][note 8] "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".[183][107]
Romance and commitment
"Why does romantic love leave us bewitched, bothered, and bewildered? Could it be another paradoxical tactic like handcuffing oneself to railroad tracks?" —Steven Pinker
It has been argued that romantic love—in the sense of "being in love", or passionate love—evolved as a "commitment device" which overrides rationality to suppress the search for alternative mates.[20][185][186] This ensures one is committed to their partner, even if a more desirable mate becomes available.[185][186] Commitment would have been adaptive in our evolutionary past because of concealed ovulation, where a man can't easily tell when a woman is ovulating, requiring sex throughout the entire menstrual cycle.[185] Romantic love also lasts long enough to keep a couple together while a mother cares for an infant.[187] Romantic love might therefore be the reward one experiences when this problem of commitment is being solved.[185]
The intensity of romantic love—why we become "fools for love"—can also be explained using the handicap principle, which solves a contention between "honest" and "fake" signaling.[188][189] When real emotions evolve, a niche is created for sham emotions which are less risky to express (like fake facial expressions). An honest signal can evolve without becoming worthless (because of competing fakers) only if it's too expensive to fake. One example in nature is the peacock's tail: a cumbersome display which consumes nutrients. Only a healthy peacock can afford it, so it may have evolved because it was a handicap, signaling health to females of the species. According to the psychologistSteven Pinker, the way to a person's heart is to declare you're in love "because you can't help it", so romantic love might have evolved to signal true commitment.[188]
Tristan and Isolde (Death), by Rogelio de Egusquiza."Tristan and Iseult do not love one another. They say they don't and everything goes to prove it. What they love is love and being in love. They behave as if aware that whatever obstructs love must ensure and consolidate it in the heart of each and intensify it infinitely in the moment they reach the absolute obstacle, which is death." —Denis de Rougemont
However, "romance" should be distinguished from "commitment", when "commitment" is meant in the sense of a continued willful involvement after passionate feelings fade.[191][192] According to the psychotherapistRobert Johnson, Western culture has these two things "completely confused", because "If we are committed only to follow where passion leads, then there can be no true loyalty to an individual person." The values of romance—that "passion" and being "in love" are the most important, and ought to be sought after—therefore tend to be in conflict with the values of commitment.[191]
A deceived spouse is said to be one intensifier of love madness (i.e. limerence), and this has a tendency to pull people out of their committed relationship when it happens.[193][194][110]Helen Fisher believes that a brain architecture contributes to this, where a person can feel deep attachment for a spouse while simultaneously feeling intense romantic love for somebody else, just as sexual desire can be felt for still others.[195][71][147][110]Infidelity is normally forbidden in the West, but some other cultures are more tolerant, or they define infidelity differently.[147]John Alan Lee defines some love styles as "mixtures" (ludic eros & storgic ludus) where partners are allowed sexual liaisons, which he attributed to preference.[196][88]
In Robert Sternberg'striangular theory of love, "romantic love" refers to passion plus intimacy, but without commitment.[197] Sternberg defines this in reference to Tristan and Iseult: a tragic love story, said to be the quintessential courtly romance of the Middle Ages, and the source from which all romantic literature has sprung.[197][198][199][200] In this story, the two drink a love potion by mistake when Iseult is due to be married to Tristan's uncle, a king, and they become clandestine lovers. A drama ensues when their affair is discovered, Tristan is exiled, and eventually they die. Tristan (which means "child of sadness") is royalty himself, and kills a relative of Iseult's earlier in the story; Tristan and Iseult claim not to even "love" each other, aside from the potion. Iseult exclaims: "You know that you are my lord and my master, and I your slave."[199][200][190]
Critics of romance have claimed that Tristan and Iseult have a kind of "love of death" (or "liebestod"), rather than loving each other, and use the story as an allegory to claim that passion leads to suffering.[190][199][200][54]Irving Singer, a philosophy professor, has stated that the legend was not intended by its original authors to be interpreted this way, but that "only an inveterate optimist could fail to recognize the devious ways in which reality destroys love (and sometimes lovers as well)".[54]
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.[201] In ancient Greece and Rome, they did not marry for love, and both cultures saw passion as a kind of madness.[202][203] 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.[204][205] 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.[206][207] 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.[208][209]
It was not until the 18th century that people began to marry for romance.[201][210] 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.[211] New norms were adopted, but romantic attitudes later waned and became tame throughout the Victorian era in Europe.[212] During the 18th and 19th centuries, Puritanism also dominated the culture in post-revolutionaryAmerica, with an anti-romantic tradition.[213] 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.[214]
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.[215] 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.[216] The sociologistAnthony 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.[217][218] 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.[219] 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.[220] Much of the discourse also focused on communication as a means to intimacy and a cure for conflict.[221] According to David Shumway, a professor of cultural studies, one of the problems is that as with "romance", "intimacy" is elusive to define.[222] 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.[223][224]
The clinical psychologistFrank Tallis has criticized the romantic tradition as a disappointment, citing studies which actually show higher satisfaction among arranged marriages than marriages for love.[225] 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.[226][227] About half of arranged couples claim to stay together for love, albeit probably not for romantic love.[228]
Bertrand Russell, a philosopher considered influential in the 20th century,[229] 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.[230] 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."[231] 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".[232] 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".[233]
The anthropologist and renowned[234] 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.[235]
Modern romance
Susan & Clyde Hendrick studied college students in 1993, and found that a friendship love style was more common than they anticipated. When asked to write about their closest friendship, 44% of participants spontaneously wrote about their significant other. The storgelove style (friendship love) was also the most common love style among people who were asked to tell a story about the relationship they're currently in. The Hendricks believe their data suggests that friendship can be present as a component in the early stage of a relationship for many couples (rather than developing more slowly), and can actually precede love feelings in some cases.[236]
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.[77] 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).[77]
In his 2008 book, 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."[237]
There will be more, but these are the first:
try to assess your own feelings towards someone else in reasonable time;
empathize with others to assess your mutual suitability;
don't flirt with someone unless you might mean it, and reject unwanted advances politely but clearly;
do not pursue people you are not interested in, or who are clearly not interested in you;
underrepresent your affection to someone only if you think doing so will foster the relationship; and
in general, express your affection, uncertainty or disinterest clearly, unless there is a special reason not to.
Helen Fisher has advocated personality matches and online dating services for introductions, which she believed are effective.[238] 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.[239]
Roman copy of a Greek sculpture by Lysippus depicting Eros, the Greek personification of romantic love
Plato
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 deityEros. 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.[240]
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
The process of courtship contributed to Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimism, despite his own sexual success,[241][original research?] 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[242]
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.
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.[243] 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.[244]
Relationship maintenance
Daniel Canary from the International Encyclopedia of Marriage[245] 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".[246]
Furthermore, Canary also uses the source from Stafford and Canary,[247] 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.
↑ The term "courtly love" (French: "amour courtois") was coined by the French medievalist Gaston Paris, in 1883.[28][27]
↑ 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.[32][33]
↑ Strictly speaking, "courtly love" originally referred to the cultural phenomenon which flourished in 12th-century France, although the meaning of the term is imprecise.[27][28] The literary style spread to other areas, such as Britain, where Arthurian legend was created, which has also been called courtly love.[35]Italian Renaissance writers in the 13th and 14th centuries (e.g. Dante and Petrarch) were influenced by the tradition.[36][37][38]Shakespeare (16th–17th centuries) and other writers in his time advocated for love to be a basis for marriage.[39][40]Goethe and Romanticism later came in the 18th century with a literary tradition resembling courtly love, but with modified ideals.[41][42] The entire historical movement has been referred to as "romantic love", or "romantic tradition".[43]
↑ 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".[54]
↑ Denis de Rougemont is a notable 20th-century theorist who argued that the medieval troubadours were secretly Cathars, and that romantic love sprung forth from this as a kind of religiousheresy (against Christianity) "by people whose spirit, whether naturally or by inheritance, was still pagan".[58][54][59]Irving Singer has called de Rougemont's version of history a kind of "propagandistic inaccuracy".[54] An alternative theory is that troubadour poetry was influenced by Arab works, like Layla and Majnun.[60][59][61]
↑ 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.[64][65] "Romanticism" is another term which is complicated to define.[66]
↑ Tennov's research study (published in her 1979 book) has been credited as largely marking the start of modern romantic love science.[20][105] 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.[106][107][108]
↑ 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.[180] 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.[181] 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.[182]
1 2 3 4 5 6 Karandashev, Victor (12 March 2022). "What Is Romantic Love?". The Diversity of Love Journal. Archived from the original on 7 January 2025. Retrieved 7 January 2025.
1 2 3 Tallis 2005, pp.87–88, 106: "The cultural history of 'romance' and various meanings of the word 'romantic' make it extremely difficult to define 'romantic love'. Academic psychology—usually quite pedantic about its terminology—has been unable to establish a consensus. Some psychologists use the term in accordance with its courtly origins, whereas others use it interchangeably with 'passionate love'. As a culture, we seem to have settled on the latter usage, viewing 'romantic love' and 'falling in love' as much the same thing."
↑ Singer 2009, pp.283–284: "I shall not be offering a definition of romanticism, though I recognize that seeking one can be a worthy pursuit for scholars. Like other portmanteau words—the Renaissance, for instance—the term can be useful for demarcating a major occurrence in history; but no definition will ever encompass the complexity of similarities and differences that constitute so massive a phenomenon."
↑ Tennov 1999, pp.x, 16, 116, 161, 172: "The phenomenon that provides the subject of much romantic poetry and fiction has been called an addiction, an indication of low self-esteem, irrational, neurotic, erotomanic, and delusional." (p. x); "Limerence has been called 'romantic love' as opposed to 'real love' because to a vocal and often very articulate segment of the population it is unreal. But even when limerence is not believed in, or believed in only secretly, it still makes a good tale." (p. 161); "Writers have been philosophizing, moralizing, and eulogizing on the subject of 'erotic,' 'passionate,' 'romantic' love (i.e. limerence) since Plato (and surely long before that). [...] Limerent persons, sufferers of an unallowable condition, find themselves speechless save for the ambiguity of 'poetic' expression." (p. 172)
↑ Frankel, Valerie (2002). "The Love Drug"(web). Oprah. Archived from the original on 20 March 2024. Retrieved 19 March 2024.
↑ Tennov 1998, p.79: "When that one person [LO] fails to reciprocate, the result may be long hours of sustained lovesickness that is relieved, and then only slightly, by achieving the limerence goal in imagination. There may come a time when the sufferer has had enough and wants to end the painful prepossession, when all bases for hope have been exhausted and it is time to abandon ship, only to find—and this is the madness of it—that these thoughts cannot be turned off and on at will as can most thoughts."
↑ Money 1997, pp.132–133: "Unrequited love is a synonym for unrequited limerence. It leaves a person vulnerable to an attack of lovesickness."
↑ Tennov 1999, pp.23–24, 31–33, 40–41, 42, 44–46, 57, 119–120: "[T]o the degree that your reaction to a person is limerent, you respond to your construction of LO's qualities." (p. 33); "Limerence's most reliable attribute [...] is the intrusiveness of the preoccupation with LO." (p. 42); "Uncertainty about LO's true reaction is an essential aspect of your own limerence." (p. 57)
↑ Tallis 2005, pp.47–48: "The terms passionate and companionate are intentionally broad headings, and both subsume many of the more precise varieties of love that can be found in the taxonomies of Lee and Sternberg."
↑ Baumard, Nicolas; Huillery, Elise; Hyafil, Alexandre; Safra, Lou (2022). "The cultural evolution of love in literary history". Nature Human Behaviour. 6 (4): 506–22. doi:10.1038/s41562-022-01292-z. PMID35256800. At the other end of Eurasia, the Chinese caizi-jiaren and scholar-beauty stories ... are also characteristically romantic: "A caizi-jiaren romance is a romantic story about an idealized couple. Attracted by each other's physical [beauty] and literary talent, the protagonists fall in love with each other at first sight. They manage to overcome all obstacles and marry each other at the end."
↑ Wallace, John R. (2019). Interpreting Love Narratives in East Asian Literature and Film. Berkeley, California: berkeley.pressbooks.pub. pp.221, 419. ISBN978-0-9997970-0-6. This scholar-beauty (caizi-jiaren) storyline was particularly common, almost cliché, in China's Ming dynasty (14th-17th centuries) love stories. ... (The Chinese caizi-jiaren narrative model which has wide distribution in East Asia ...)
↑ Tallis 2005, p.110: "Has the Western romantic tradition made us blind to love's madness? China has no equivalent tradition. In fact, during the Cultural Revolution, 'romantic love' was outlawed - considered by the communist elite to be a 'bourgeois' indulgence. [...] It would seem that for many Chinese students, they would as much want to fall in love as develop a psychiatric illness."
↑ Karandashev 2017, p.133: "In the late 1920s and 1930s, however, free love was under attack from radical quarters for its bourgeois limitations and from conservative quarters for eroding social morality and the institution of marriage and family. In this period, sexuality came out of the shadow of romantic love and became an acceptable social topic. Nevertheless, more and more voices emerged to condemn free love/free sex as the threat to social mores. Political ideologues called for a total commitment to the nation by subordinating the romantic love to imperative of revolution. The attitudes toward love and sex became conservative and restrictive. In the People's Republic of China, established in 1949, Communist officials imposed strong controls on love and 'inappropriate' sexual activity. A puritanical sexual 'primness' became definitely established. The new values denied romantic love and affirmed the importance of the collective over the individual."
↑ Hendrick & Hendrick 2006, pp.149–150, 152: "[Lee] complained about the ahistorical nature of [most research based on his ideas] and the limited information that he felt could be derived from a rating scale: "There are no satisfactory shortcuts[.] Only elaborate instruments such as the Love Story Card Sort can distinguish between [rich] ideologies[.]" [...] Needless to say, Lee lost his argument against the use of rating scales. [...] Sometime after completing the writing of his chapter for The Psychology of Love, but before its publication, Lee apparently accepted the ubiquity of rating scales, as witnessed by a gracious and complimentary letter to us[.]"
↑ Aron, Arthur; Aron, Elaine N. (1986). Love and the expansion of self: Understanding attraction and satisfaction. New York: Hemisphere. ISBN9780891164593.[pageneeded]
↑ Aron, A.; Paris, M.; Aron, E. N. (1995). "Falling in love: Prospective studies of self-concept change". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 69 (6): 1102–1112. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.69.6.1102.
↑ Clover, David (June 2003). "International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family (2nd edition)". Reference Reviews. 17 (6): 28–29. doi:10.1108/09504120310490570.
Fraley, Chris; Shaver, Phillip (5 August 2008). "Attachment Theory and Its Place in Contemporary Personality Theory and Research". Handbook of Personality, Third Edition: Theory and Research (3rded.). Guilford Press. pp.518–541. ISBN9781606237380.
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