Romance


Romance and romantic love came to encompass a number of ideas about love, which are interrelated for historical and cultural reasons:
In psychology, romantic love is considered to be a motivation or drive, which is distinct from the concept of attachment.
The terms "romance" and "romantic love" are used with multiple definitions, which can be contradictory at times. The philosopher Arthur Lovejoy once wrote that "The word 'romantic' has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing."
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." 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.
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. 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, although "romance" and "love" are distinguishable concepts. 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.
The term is often used to distinguish from other types of interpersonal relationships, and in contrast to the modern interpretation of platonic love. The notion that romantic love only occurs within a relationship of some kind, however, has been called a misconception. 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.
In academic fields of psychology, the term "romantic love" might be used in reference to any of the common definitions. The psychologist Dorothy Tennov once criticized the reactions to romantic love in the scientific literature as "confused and contradictory".

The literary tradition

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 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, 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.
Some of the earliest literature containing themes considered "romantic" in a more modern sense was written by French poets known as troubadours—initially often exploring themes of unrequited love, and emphasizing the worship of a lady. Poets like Chrétien de Troyes were encouraged by royalty to compose works exemplifying certain ideals, particularly in the town of Poitiers, where Andreas Capellanus also came to write The Art of Courtly Love. Courtly love then became emphasized as a theme for chivalric romance. The French romans was anglicized into "romance", and initially the term "romantic love" referred to those attitudes and behaviors of courtly love.
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. 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, Tristan and Iseult, Dante and Beatrice, Romeo and Juliet and The Sorrows of Young Werther. Rather than always being pessimistic, however, others expressed an early "humanistic" perspective on passion—that is, idealizing "human love" in contradiction to religious ideals or social interference—as in the happy ending found in Aucassin and Nicolette. The modern romance novel as it's known today emerged during the 18th-century period of the larger movement.
Modern depictions of this type of love story are in Twilight, and Star Wars.
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. The cultural movement is critiqued for promising a kind of "story-book" or "fairy-tale" love when the stories themselves actually involve depictions of suffering and tragedy, perhaps making the culture "blind to love's madness". 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."

Romantic beliefs

In the social sciences, the term "romantic love" has been used to refer to the idealization of a love relationship, reminiscent of the attitudes depicted in the literary tradition. The set of beliefs associated with the phenomenon is also called "romanticism". 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. 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. Romantic love in this sense is contrasted with rational, practical or pragmatic love.
Stanton Peele, who pioneered the concept of "love addiction", has criticized the romantic cultural ideal as being "less critical and evaluative"—therefore underlying "unhealthy extremes" he says of addictive relationships, lovesickness, and limerence.
Peele adopts the view of Eric Fromm, that love "chiefly engages a person's concern for others".

The biological definition

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:
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 or eros/mania. 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. People in love experience motivational salience for a loved one, which is mediated by dopamine activity in the brain's reward system. Because of this and other similarities, it has been argued that romantic love is an addiction, but academics do not agree on when this is the case, or on a definition of "love addiction".
Some authors also consider companionate love and attachment to be romantic love, or consider romantic love to be an attachment process. 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. The attachment system has been associated with oxytocin, which has been found circulating in people experiencing romantic love. 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. Endogenous opioids are also believed to be involved with romantic love, associated with the hedonic aspect of rewarding experiences.
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, but also in an area rich with opiate receptors. 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. Usually romantic love inside a relationship lasts for just about a year or 18 months.