How To Maintain A Relationship
Romantic love can be returned or unrequited. In the former case, the mutual expressions of love can lead to marriage or to the establishment of a permanent relationship, which in most cases will include passionate sexual love. Where the love is one-sided (unrequited), damage to the esteem and/or the psychological welfare of the spurned lover can result.
One aspect of romantic love is the randomness of the encounters which lead to love. It may be for this reason that some in Western society have historically emphasized romantic love far more than other cultures in which arranged marriages are the rule. However, the globalization of Western culture has spread Western ideas about love and romance.
Romantic love became a recognized passion in the Middle Ages, when in some cases insurmountable barriers of morality or convention separated the lovers. The effect of physical attraction and impossibility of intimacy resulted in an excessive regard of the beloved as extremely precious. Winning the love, or at least the attention, of the beloved, motivated great efforts of many kinds, such as poetry, song or feats of arms.
In more modern times romantic love has been the theme of art and entertainment in all its forms. Some of the greatest poetry (e.g. Shakespeare's sonnets), opera (e.g. La Boheme), and literature (e.g. Pride and Prejudice) have romantic love as the main theme. Similarly much of more popular culture from theatre to film to popular music has romantic love at its heart.
Properties of romantic love purported by Western culture that might or might not appear elsewhere include:
* It must take you by surprise (the result of a random encounter).
* It cannot be easily controlled.
* It is not overtly (initially at least) predicated on a desire for sex as a physical act.
* If requited it may be the basis for a lifelong commitment.
* It is the highest form of self-fulfillment.