How to Think Differently About Love

Metadata

• Author: Arina Pismenny
• Full Title: How to Think Differently About Love
• URL: https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-critique-stories-about-the-nature-of-romantic-love?utm_source=rss-feed

Highlights

• in Plato’s Symposium. Aristophanes, a comic poet, claims that humans used to be spherical, with four arms, four legs and two faces. Some had genitals of the same kind on both sides, while others had male on one side and female on the other. Zeus, king of the gods, angered by these creatures’ pride, set out to humble them. He used his thunderbolt to split each human in half. Each of us is one of these halves, longing now to find the half that will complete us. Thus, love came to be, according to Aristophanes (complete with an explanation for two types of sexual orientation). (View Highlight)
• The puzzle of exclusivity Aristophanes’ myth suggests that, for each person, there is only one special someone – their other half – meant to complete them. This implies that love is inherently exclusive: you can love only one person. This expectation is reinforced by the jealousy often associated with romantic love’s demand for singular devotion. Yet this requirement of exclusivity is puzzling. Why does it apply only to romantic love? A parent’s love for their children is no less powerful, yet no one thinks you cannot love more than one child. Is there something intrinsic to romantic love that demands exclusivity? (View Highlight)
• The puzzle of eternal love Aristophanes’ story also posits that love, once found, will never change. In its early, passionate stages, love can indeed feel boundless and enduring. But reality often disappoints this expectation. Relationships evolve, and the intensity of love may fade over time. Why do we hold on to the belief that true love is eternal, even when experience shows otherwise? (View Highlight)
• The puzzle of unrequited love If love involves finding your ‘other half’, true love must be reciprocal, as each requires the other to be whole. Yet love is sometimes unrequited. Can it then still be meaningful or authentic? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s provocative statement ‘If I love you, what business is that of yours?’ captures this tension beautifully. It suggests that love, in its essence, might not depend on the beloved’s reciprocation, but it clashes with the deep longing for recognition and mutuality that typically characterises romantic love. (View Highlight)
• Unrequited love highlights an inconsistency between the autonomy of love as an emotional experience and its relational nature as a bond. It also challenges the idealised view that love should always lead to unity and fulfilment. Instead, it raises the possibility that love’s value might lie as much in its ability to transform the lover as in its ability to create a shared connection. (View Highlight)
• The puzzle of reasons for love When you fall in love, what are your reasons for loving this particular person? Can there be reasons for love? We sometimes hear: ‘I love you for who you are, for yourself alone.’ As William Yeats lamented: ‘only God, my dear, / could love you for yourself alone / and not your yellow hair.’ It’s hard to say what it could really mean to love someone ‘for themselves’. To make sense of it, we quickly turn to the beloved’s lovable properties as reasons that explain and justify love. I love you because you are good, beautiful, or smart, or kind; or perhaps it’s your smile, your joie de vivre, your yellow hair. (View Highlight)
• But there is a puzzle here. These reasons don’t tell us why you fell in love with this particular person rather than someone else who possesses the same properties, perhaps even to a greater degree. If love is based on properties – kindness, beauty, intelligence, or charm – then why does it feel so uniquely directed? Reasons, after all, are generalisable; they apply to anyone who fits the description. Yet love is intensely personal, seeming to defy this generality. Why does love focus so singularly on one individual, even when others might share or surpass the very qualities we claim to love? It seems that without a great deal more explanation we have left out the very target of our quest. (View Highlight)
• As we shall see in this Guide to thinking about love, modern science tells some more plausible stories than Aristophanes’ myth. But they too, no less than Aristophanes, implicitly characterise the purpose of love, and thereby encourage a judgmental attitude towards it. (View Highlight)
• Let’s begin with your brain on love. When you fall in love, your brain experiences a flurry of chemical activity that contributes to the emotional and physiological upheavals associated with romance. Key players in this process are dopamine, often referred to as the ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitter, as well as norepinephrine and serotonin. The hormone oxytocin, often dubbed the ‘love hormone’ or ‘cuddle hormone’, floods the brain during intimate moments promoting bonding, trust and attachment, and fostering feelings of closeness and emotional intimacy. (View Highlight)
• This neurochemical focus might offer insight into the puzzle of exclusivity, as the brain’s fixation on one person during this stage could make the idea of loving others unimaginable. Indeed, this chemical cocktail of love is akin to being on drugs such as cocaine – a booster of mood and motivation. Some researchers have drawn parallels between the brain chemistry characteristic of romantic love and that of obsessive-compulsive disorder. (View Highlight)
• This neurochemical profile could also shed light on the puzzle of unrequited love, as the brain’s obsessive tendencies can amplify the pain of unreciprocated feelings. The low serotonin levels observed in the early stages of love might explain why those feelings persist even when love is unreturned. In light of these considerations, expressions such as ‘madly in love’ or ‘head over heels’ make sense as lovers sometimes really do lose their wits. (View Highlight)
• Note, however, the difference between being in love and loving. The former refers to the initial stages of love, sometimes pejoratively referred to as ‘infatuation’. The latter denotes a less volatile, calmer state that you might settle into after the initial fever subsides. Infatuation is inherently unsustainable, which is why love must either fade away or transition into this quieter, more enduring form. Alternatively, you might skip the madness altogether, going directly for the tender affection that feels soothing and safe. This distinction between infatuation and long-term love also speaks to the puzzle of eternal love, highlighting how early intensity can create the illusion of unchanging passion, even though love evolves into a more enduring state over time. (View Highlight)
• While brain chemistry offers insight into the mechanisms that drive the emotions of love, it provides only a partial answer to the question ‘What is love?’ It helps explain why we feel euphoric or obsessive in the early stages, but it doesn’t fully capture the subjective, deeply personal experience of love or the myriad emotions it encompasses. Why does your brain perform these somersaults when your heart skips a beat? Why does love evoke not only joy but also vulnerability, longing and even despair? (View Highlight)
• In the African grasslands 3.5 million years ago, a hominin species called Australopithecus afarensis left the forest for the savannah, where they supplemented their diet by scavenging the flesh of the prey left behind by predators. As they walked upright, females had to carry their babies in their arms, unlike other primates whose infants clung to their bodies. This burden made it harder for females to gather food and protect themselves. To ensure safety and resources, fathers needed to be brought in to help in raising offspring. (View Highlight)
• According to this picture, three distinct emotion systems came to drive human reproduction: lust, attachment and romantic love. Lust, with its aim of sexual gratification, evolved to motivate sexual intercourse. Attachment, the deep emotional bond that forms between a caregiver and child, keeps romantic partners together. This is vital for a species whose earliest stages of life leave them so utterly helpless. Romantic love bridges the gap between lust and attachment by fixing your attention on your beloved at least until your offspring become self-sufficient. Romantic love is an adaptation that facilitates reproduction and childrearing. (View Highlight)
• This evolutionary perspective may also shed light on the puzzle of exclusivity, by suggesting that pair bonding arose to ensure mutual commitment and shared resources for offspring. This may explain why exclusivity feels so natural to many. Interestingly, this view challenges the puzzle of eternal love, as it suggests that romantic bonds are evolutionarily designed to fade once their reproductive and child-rearing purposes are fulfilled. The evolutionary focus on practical outcomes explains the impermanence of love’s intensity. It also raises questions about the puzzle of unrequited love, as the anguish of loving without reciprocity might stem from its failure to fulfil the adaptive purposes of mutual care and reproduction. (View Highlight)
• While it provides evolutionary ‘reasons’ for love – such as enhancing offspring survival – it doesn’t resolve the puzzle of reasons for love, as the personal reasons people fall in love rarely, if ever, align with the evolutionary imperatives of reproduction or child-rearing. As the poet Edna St Vincent Millay wryly observes: ‘Whether or not we find what we are seeking / Is idle, biologically speaking.’ (View Highlight)
• This picture conveniently supports the ideal of the nuclear family grounded in a monogamous heterosexual relationship with the emphasis on fidelity. It suggests that our humanoid ancestors operated as a mother-father-child unit optimised for parenting. It also posits an important gender difference when it comes to jealousy. For men, the sexual fidelity of their female partner is crucial because of the uncertainty of paternity. For women, it is emotional fidelity that matters most: they need the father to provide essential resources for mother and child. This picture seems to show that gendered patterns of jealousy are fine-tuned by Mother Nature to favour the nuclear family. (View Highlight)
• There are, however, compelling reasons to be sceptical of this view. The American anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Hrdy shows in her book Mothers and Others (2009) that early humans, much like other great apes, lived in small groups, travelling, hunting, and gathering food together. These groups had strong communal bonds, raising offspring collectively, like many Indigenous communities that exist today. As an African proverb says, it takes a village to raise a child. (View Highlight)
• This communal approach also undermines the idea that jealousy is tied to a nuclear family setup. Some contemporary Amazon societies believe that many men contribute to the creation of a single child. This is called partible paternity. These societies share parenting responsibilities among all adults, which strengthens communal bonds, instead of creating antagonism and competition characteristic of jealousy. If the Pleistocene societies were anything like the hunter-gatherer societies we see today, the exclusive involvement of fathers in rearing only their own children is unlikely. (View Highlight)
• Second, the supposition that monogamous pair-bonding was the norm in prehistoric times appears even more far-fetched when we look at marriage arrangements throughout human history. (View Highlight)
• According to Stephanie Coontz, an American historian, given that polygyny (one husband, many wives) and group marriages are prevalent forms of marriage in contemporary hunter-gatherer communities alongside monogamy, it is likely that these forms of marriage have been common throughout human history. (View Highlight)
• Monogamy became more widespread with the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, possibly due to the creation of private property and the need to control its inheritance. The rise of monogamous marriage might be a better explanation for the purported gender difference in jealousy. Interestingly, gender differences in jealousy vary widely crossculturally, and, although the evidence is equivocal, some research has suggested that the gender difference in what triggers jealousy diminishes in more egalitarian societies. (View Highlight)
• Although Frank Sinatra once crooned that ‘love and marriage … go together like a horse and carriage’, the history of marriage tells us otherwise. Historically, romantic love was mostly shunned as too fickle a basis for the serious purposes of marriage. Marrying for love is as recent as the 18th century. Industrialisation is what has given rise to the nuclear family, rather than the need for paternal investment in the prehistoric savannah. (View Highlight)
• Are the reasons I’ve just presented enough to show that romantic love is not an evolutionary adaptation evolved to help perpetuate the human species together with lust and attachment? Unlikely. But I hope to have made clear that the origin stories provided by science do not dispel love’s mysteries. (View Highlight)
• The nuclear family is a modern invention, not a prehistoric structure. Placing monogamy into its historical context shows that it is not hardwired into human nature. But even if the evolutionary story presented were true, we wouldn’t be justified in concluding that monogamy, the nuclear family or jealousy are inherently good or morally praiseworthy. This would be an example of the naturalistic fallacy, where one mistakenly assumes that what is natural is necessarily good. (View Highlight)
• The 17th-century French essayist François de La Rochefoucauld wrote that ‘People would never fall in love if they hadn’t heard love talked about.’ This suggests that romantic love is a social construct – a set of norms and expectations regarding when and for whom love should be felt, and how it should be expressed. You learn these rules from songs, movies and the approving or disapproving tone of gossip. (View Highlight)
• Some scholars, such as the 20th-century Swiss writer Denis de Rougemont, trace the emergence of romantic love to the Middle Ages as a response to the forbidding attitudes of the Church towards sex. Troubadours, poet-musicians in the courts of southern France during the 12th and 13th centuries, shaped the concept of courtly love. Their songs celebrated idealised, often unrequited romantic passion. Unable to consummate their forbidden love due to its extramarital nature, they worshipped their beloveds as pure and virtuous while saturating their songs with erotic longing. (View Highlight)
• became influential in Europe, embedding these ideals into the cultural consciousness. Its legacy can still be seen today: the motif of a knight in shining armour rescuing a damsel in distress is alive and well. Gender roles prescribed by the romantic script subsist: men should make the first move, buy flowers, and plan dates. Women must play hard to get, discern men’s true intentions, and secure exclusive long-term commitment. (View Highlight)
• More generally, the ‘relationship escalator’ – our dominant romantic script – looks something like this: two people meet, they go on dates, fall in love, move in together, get engaged, get married, have children. While the sequence of these steps can vary, the expectation is that a romantic relationship should progress along this socially prescribed path. (View Highlight)
• Was romantic love really invented in the Middle Ages? Probably not. Crosscultural studies suggest that romantic love existed in cultures untouched by Western influence. But it did begin to take centre stage in Europe, inspiring an abundance of art and literature. (View Highlight)
• If romantic love is a social construct, does it mean it is not real? Consider that money, time, class, gender, race, marriage, family are all social constructs. Yet they are very real: they shape our perceptions, behaviours and interactions in significant and often indispensable ways. And yet, you might wonder, how can love be a social construct given the neural profile discussed above? Doesn’t the possibility that romantic love is an evolutionary adaptation preclude the possibility of its being socially constructed? (View Highlight)
• These questions presuppose the old nature-nurture distinction: the idea that human capacities are produced either by our genes, or by our environment. But that is a false dichotomy: genes and environment interact in dynamic ways, so that certain genetic predispositions manifest only in specific environmental contexts (consider your capacity to read or to cook). Thus, if your brain goes haywire when you see that enchanting barista making your latte with flair, that is entirely compatible with romantic love having both biological and social bases. (View Highlight)
• One well-known critic of romantic love was the French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. In her book The Second Sex (1949), she argued that romantic love reinforces women’s dependency and passivity, encouraging them to derive their identity and value from their relationships with men. Quoting Byron, she observed that: ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, / ’Tis woman’s whole existence.’ By positioning men as the primary actors in both the public and private spheres, traditional romantic scripts perpetuate power inequality between the sexes. (View Highlight)
• the persistence of gendered expectations in romantic relationships confirms that Beauvoir’s analysis remains all too relevant. Despite advances in gender equality, societal norms still often pressure women to prioritise romantic relationships and family life over personal ambitions and career goals. (View Highlight)
• Women are still widely expected to be the primary caretakers and emotional supporters within a relationship. The idolisation of romantic love as essential to a good and happy life is yet another trap in the path of women’s liberation. Recalling Carol Hanisch’s slogan ‘The personal is political,’ we see that personal experiences such as romantic love are deeply entrenched in larger social and political structures. (View Highlight)
• Beauvoir herself thought that:

  Authentic love must be founded on reciprocal recognition of two freedoms … For each of them, love would be the revelation of self through the gift of self and the enrichment of the universe. (View Highlight)

• Love is a complex idea with different origin stories. These carry implications for our understanding of love’s function and role in individuals’ lives. They do little or nothing, however, to shed light on some of the philosophical conundrums raised by love’s contradictions. (View Highlight)
• Neuroscience explains the brain mechanisms behind the excitement and longing of romantic love. But it leads us to ask more questions about the ways in which biology and culture interact to create the unique experience we call romantic love. (View Highlight)
• The dominant evolutionary story views romantic love as an adaptation. Its best-known hypotheses, however, are grounded in a parochial paradigm of 20th-century nuclear families with rigid gender roles assigned to just two sexes. (View Highlight)
• Recognising love as a social construct suggests that it’s not an immutable human experience. It frees you to deconstruct your own beliefs about love and think creatively about the kinds of romantic relationships that will allow you to thrive. (View Highlight)
• Our dominant love script reinforces gender roles and power inequality. The feminist critique encourages a rethinking of romantic love as potentially liberating rather than oppressive, when grounded in a mutual recognition of each other’s freedom. (View Highlight)
• Thinking critically about romantic love is not something people often do. Our cultural scripts are powerful, and we internalise them early in our lives. These scripts are invisible to us, as we take them to be determined by biology and inherent to the nature of love itself. Recall Aristophanes’ story in which each of us must find our other half to be whole again. The desire to find your one true soulmate is very much a part of many people’s conception of love. This cultural script reinforces the puzzle of exclusivity: why should love be reserved for only one partner? (View Highlight)
• In her book Minimizing Marriage (2012), the American philosopher Elizabeth Brake coined the term ‘amatonormativity’ to designate ‘the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship.’ This assumption is also integral to the view that such love is forever – so, once you find it, you should be set for life. (View Highlight)
• Amatonormativity also leads to the puzzle of eternal love, the belief that romantic love should remain unchanging and constant over time. While love often feels boundless in its early, passionate stages, the reality is that relationships evolve, and love must adapt to survive. When love transitions into a calmer, more enduring state – or fades altogether – does it fail to meet the ideal? Or does this evolution reveal something deeper about love’s nature? (View Highlight)
• As we have seen, the myth of unchanging true love tends to be rationalised by origin stories – some of which stem from popularised versions of science or pseudoscience. These narratives are harmful when they lead you to expect your lover to satisfy all your sexual, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual, as well as financial needs. They set up romantic relationships for failure. (View Highlight)
• Some of these narratives also bear on the puzzle of unrequited love: why do we yearn so deeply for reciprocation? If love is a gift freely given, why should it depend on the beloved’s response? Yet, the pain of unrequited love suggests that we crave reciprocation. Love’s autonomy remains in conflict with its relational nature, feeding love’s power to both enrich and devastate. (View Highlight)
• These tensions, combined with the challenges of sustaining exclusivity and permanence in a relationship, have led many to explore alternatives to monogamy. Most humans experience sexual attraction to people besides their partners. Although their monogamous commitment forbids them to act on those attractions, many cheat. Cheating causes feelings of betrayal and serves as grounds for breakup and divorce. (View Highlight)
• Different forms of ethical nonmonogamy solve this problem by accepting various degrees of sexual and emotional openness. This kind of nonmonogamy is ethical because there is no deception or coercion. While in open relationships partners typically grant each other permission for sexual exploration and freedom, polyamory is based on both sexual and emotional openness. (View Highlight)
• Polyamorous relationships can take many forms from solo-poly, when a person has multiple intimate relationships but has an independent or ‘single’ lifestyle, to polyamorous households where all or many people are in relationships with one another, living together, sharing house chores and financial burdens, and jointly raising children. (View Highlight)
• Polyamorist ideology is intersectional, queer and feminist because it rejects gender roles, heteronormativity and monogamous marriage. Polyamorists also commit to unlearning the dominant cultural script of jealousy, insecurity and possessiveness. While feelings of jealousy are bound to come up for many, polyamorists do not take them at face value, seeing them instead as a remnant of the ideology they are choosing to leave behind. Instead, they cultivate compersion – the joy you feel when your lover is made happy by their other lover. (View Highlight)
• To fully reject amatonormativity, however, we must broaden our conception of meaningful relationships beyond just romantic partnerships. Centring other forms of connection, such as friendships, chosen families and community bonds, can provide a more inclusive and diverse understanding of what constitutes a fulfilling life. Even unrequited love can enrich an individual’s life, just as art and literature provide opportunities to commune with the great minds of persons we will never meet. (View Highlight)
• By revisiting the puzzles of love, we see that our expectations of romantic love are deeply shaped by cultural norms and ingrained societal narratives. Whether addressing exclusivity, permanence, unrequited feelings or the reasons for love, these puzzles invite us to question our assumptions and explore new possibilities for connection. From ethical nonmonogamy to chosen families, rethinking love can liberate us from restrictive scripts and open the door to more authentic, fulfilling relationships. (View Highlight)
• To take a deeper dive into the interdisciplinary study of romantic love, check out the anthology The Moral Psychology of Love (2022) edited by me and Berit Brogaard, to which philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists contributed some of their latest work on this subject. (View Highlight)
• Ronald de Sousa’s book Love: A Very Short Introduction (2015) is a great concise introduction of the key philosophical puzzles about the nature of romantic love. For an additional, comprehensive overview of these puzzles and various philosophical views of love, see the article on love by by Bennett Helm in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (View Highlight)
• Elizabeth Brake provides an excellent critical examination of marriage and monogamy in her now classic book, Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law (2012). Brake challenges traditional views on marriage, advocating for the recognition of diverse relationship forms, and critiquing the legal and moral privileging of monogamous marriage. (View Highlight)
• Carrie Jenkins’s two books, What Love Is: And What It Could Be (2017) and Sad Love: Romance and the Search for Meaning (2022), are both excellent. The former provides a critical examination of science, history and cultural analyses of romantic love, inviting us to reimagine what love could be. The latter reexamines the relationship between love and happiness, developing a new account of love that is a better fit for a good life. (View Highlight)
• Luke Brunning’s book Romantic Agency: Loving Well in Modern Life (2024) is an insightful philosophical exploration of how to enhance the freedom experienced in romantic relationships. Brunning considers a wide spectrum of relationship styles, showing how to overcome internal and external constraints on romantic agency. (View Highlight)