Where Does Romantic Love Come From?
Just as we might like to believe that our human sexuality is 'natural',so we usually assume that 'falling in love' comes naturally. But historical investigation has discovered that what we know as romantic love is only about 800 years old.
This seems shocking and impossible to us as first,since we know that people have been mating and reproducing for millions of years.
But if we clearly separate lust from love,we can see that lust might have accounted for the sexual behavior of our ancestors even if they could never have understood a romantic Hollywood movie.
Romantic love is a cultural construct,
which has been spread over the whole Earth by the mass media. Before radio, television, and movies—100 years ago— large parts of the world had never heard of 'falling in love'. They still had sexual relationships and families, of course,but the fantasy of romantic love did not run their relationships.
Romantic love is basically an emotional story we tell ourselves. By means of the mass media, we have been programmed so that we 'fall in love' following the patterns prescribed in the Hollywood script. We try to reproduce a fantasy feeling. We 'fall in love' with the Dream Lover inside our own heads when we set out to find "someone to love".
Just as we might like to believe that our human sexuality is 'natural',so we usually assume that 'falling in love' comes naturally. But historical investigation has discovered that what we know as romantic love is only about 800 years old.
This seems shocking and impossible to us as first,since we know that people have been mating and reproducing for millions of years.
But if we clearly separate lust from love,we can see that lust might have accounted for the sexual behavior of our ancestors even if they could never have understood a romantic Hollywood movie.
Romantic love is a cultural construct,
which has been spread over the whole Earth by the mass media. Before radio, television, and movies—100 years ago— large parts of the world had never heard of 'falling in love'. They still had sexual relationships and families, of course,but the fantasy of romantic love did not run their relationships.
Romantic love is basically an emotional story we tell ourselves. By means of the mass media, we have been programmed so that we 'fall in love' following the patterns prescribed in the Hollywood script. We try to reproduce a fantasy feeling. We 'fall in love' with the Dream Lover inside our own heads when we set out to find "someone to love".
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