Romantic love is a modern concept, despite the fact that many scholars still believe it was invented by medieval troubadours.
Throughout the world, people fall in love and often express their affections through physical intimacy. However, despite the fact that romantic love is a universal human experience, it can also differ from culture to culture and even from generation to generation.
The ideal of romantic love was later adopted by Aristotle, who defined it as one soul and two bodies that are able to harmonize with each others virtues, a form of beauty and symmetry not based on mere sexual attractiveness.You can learn sex on .
As modern Western theorists began to understand the psychological, cognitive, and behavioral processes that occur in relation to romantic love, they discovered that it was a complex and intricate concept that had a wide range of meanings within different cultures.
Some of these concepts included the idea that love involves a sense of selflessness, altruism and the ecstasy that comes from being able to serve another. Moreover, love can lead to the discovery of an almost mystical sense of oneself, and of ones place in the cosmos.
The concept of love is also a source of conflict for philosophers, particularly in relation to questions of identity and personhood. This was explored by
Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Freud and is reflected in the modern interpretation of romantic love as a quest for deeper love.
These modern conceptions of love are a product of the kin selection theory that suggests the feelings associated with romantic relationships function to ensure the greater reproductive fitness of the individual in question. It is a powerful emotional response to the presence of a potential mate that serves to ward off predators and preserve the pairs bond.
In addition to ensuring the greater reproductive fitness of the individual, love is an important part of social structure and can shape the way we live our lives. It can also help us form meaningful and fulfilling relationships with others, which is an essential aspect of human well-being.
Among the most significant of these aspects are that love can be deeply spiritual, and it can be a form of altruism, whereby the persons devotion to the other goes beyond self-serving interests, to something much more meaningful and lasting.
It is possible for a person to develop an intense and prolonged sense of romantic love, if that person is willing to be vulnerable and to make themselves available for the other person. In such cases, a person may be able to discover their own true potential and realize their fullest potential as an individual.