Many of us, men and women, have a highly ‘romanticized’ view of adult sexual love. This view includes such beliefs as:

• Love cannot be defined or explained ‘rationally’.
• Love is ’spiritual’ and differentiates us from animals.
• Love will make you happy.
• ‘True love’ is forever.
• If a woman really loves you she would give up her job for you.
• If you really love her you would not think about other women.
• If you really love her you would ‘make a commitment’.
• If you really love each other you would not ‘cheat’ on each other.
• The purpose of love is marriage.
• Marriage is a ’sacred institution’.
• Marriage is the primary goal of adult sexual relationships.
• Once you are married you should be ‘partners’.
• Men and women have the same goals in a relationship.
• Somewhere ‘out there’, you have a ’soul-mate’.
• You and your soul-mate are destined to meet.
• Blah, blah, blah, and other equally silly stuff…

All of these notions promote an idealized romanticized version of love and sexually-related behaviour that is very ‘nice’, and may even help to sell Hollywood ‘feel good’ movies, but they don’t help to understand and explain adult behaviour in a way that makes sense or helps you function in the real world.

In fact, these are ‘dinosaur’ notions, handed down culturally from one generation to the next. The strange thing is how tenaciously some of us cling to such notions in complete contradiction with known science, logic, and observable reality. Mostly such notions are so distanced from reality that they get in the way of clear thinking. It’s not at all surprising that we don’t understand women. Our common observations of real-life behaviours are not consistent with such logically flawed preconceptions.

In stark contrast to the romanticized view, read the following and decide if it seems to make more sense…

The Definition of Romantic Love:

Romantic (or sexual) love is an attachment between sexually mature adults that results from a symphony of chemical neurotransmitters emitted by the bodies, which have evolved specifically to help two adults stay attached long enough to support each other and rear the offspring resulting from sex!

There may be many kinds of ‘love’, but romantic love is a bond between sexually mature; and mating adults. This ‘love’ bond has a specific purpose; to create enough ‘togetherness‘ between the mating adults so that they will remain together to successfully rear their children. Throughout most of human evolution, such a bond between the parents long enough to maximize the survivability of the offspring, was a strong advantage. Without such a bond to keep both parents together, the children would not have good chances for survival, so parents without such bonding did not pass on their genes. In most animal species, sexually mature adults develop similar bonds (if they need them to support child rearing) for exactly the same reasons.

The particular character of ‘romantic‘ love, it’s ‘quality’, is most affected, (logically enough given its primary purpose) by the presence, absence (or perceived quality) of a) Sex, and b) Children. Check this against your own experience. Without good sex, or children, romantic love loses its strength and can quickly dissipate. Unrequited love can rapidly become hostility.
Actually ‘romantic‘ love is not selfless and can make you miserable! It is really a desire for exclusive mating and/or childrearing partnership and is basically selfish, and self-serving. If you doubt this try to remember how you feel when your ‘love interest’ wavers or even looks like wavering from the exclusive arrangement. If you cannot ‘possess’ her/him it quickly turns to something far less romantic. The presence of children, however, can produce strong bonds with even incompatible couples, keeping them together, happily or otherwise, for years.

The love ‘bond’ is created by chemicals in the body and the perception of, or mental reaction to, those chemicals by the individuals mating. The ‘romantic model‘ of love provides no mechanism for explaining the observed fact that love obviously fluctuates and changes over time. The fact that we know body chemistry fluctuates so much over time, makes this model particularly consistent with observed reality.

Actually according to biologists the releases of these neurotransmitters of love typically have a limited duration up to 3-7 years at best (check this against your experience). Not coincidentally, this range is consistent with the amount of time it might have taken (for most of human history); to have and rear one to three children to an age of ‘decreased vulnerability’.

Coincidence? No, logic!

You might also enjoy reading:-

• Four Types of ‘Love’
• Why Do Women ‘Tease’?
• Mate Love
• Mating motives can shape friendships (and attract trouble)
• Stubble: The way to win a woman’s heart

Posted by Scott in Psychology, Sociobiology

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