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Give your definition of "Love" and "Romance"


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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Romance is attraction. It can happen anywhere, anytime, with anyone. It is spontaneous, random, out of control. It is all about euphoria, adrenaline rush. It is shallow. It ends just under the same circumstances as it can start. Out of the blue.

 

Love is a bond. Born out of friendship. It doesn't "happen", it grows. Over time. It comes out of knowing the person well. Out of knowing that the person deserves it. It never ends. If you truly love someone, you won't feel differently one day on some supid chemical whim because true love has nothing to do with chemicals. 

 

 

Long-lasting relationships are mostly true love with some romance added. A small percentage of them are just love with no romance, these are the aromantic ones. 

 

Romance alone, however, is nothing. 

Posted

pretty much what @Ice Queen has said. (I use a water depth metaphor for love though)

 

Romance - An attraction that may or may not trigger limerance. It can by itself connect two people for a period of time but it usually has an expiry, another connection must be made for a couple to stay together. Generally romance seems to require high levels of contact to be maintained/fulfilled. Romantic attraction may grow into awareness or be spontaneous, maybe - I am iffy on this point because I never felt it.

 

Love - A bond that can take many forms and be of many depths. Though it can grow quickly it is never spontaneous, even if it seems spontaneous it is likely you already had feelings for an abstract idea that prepared you for loving something (such as with pregnant women and their subsequent baby). Love begins shallow and can grow deeper over time or stall, creating a type of love hierarchy within your life. Different loves can deepen at different speeds depending on interpersonal actions and experiences either helping or hindering the love bond. Love generally doesn't require constant contact to be maintained, allowing disparate people to still be bonded with love.

Posted

PROSTRATE YOURSELVES BEFORE THE ALMIGHTY TEXT WALL

 

Romance is a sensation produced by both evolutionary selection pressure and self-reinforcing social construction.

 

This sensation rewards participants for selecting a specific mate (you don't actually have to literally mate to experience it though). Many people experience profound emotional connections to others, but romance is a specific flavor of connection that usually forms only during partner selection, and the maintenance of a relationship with that partner.

 

People experiencing romantic attraction report a powerful urge to spend time in the presence of a specific other person. Certain bonding activities (often varying between cultures) become charged with romantic feeling by association. Such activities in European cultures might include (but are not limited to) hand-holding, kissing, and candlelit dinners at expensive restaurants. Other, more specific rituals may produce this emotion as well, especially depending on the individual. 

 

Romance's evolutionary function (note the absence of the word "purpose") is to keep parents together. This constant closeness (emotionally and physically) allows them to divide the labor of child-rearing, leading to greater reproductive success in the wild.

The genetic and/or epigenetic operons responsible for the romantic trait have not been identified yet, but the reason for their existence is clear.

 

However, evolution isn't some monolithic system that makes every member of a species behave according to some optimized model of success. Not everyone is born with the ability to express the romantic trait. That's where we aromantics come in.

 

Different developmental and prenatal chemical factors may influence our ability to express the romantic genes most people carry from birth. Aromanticism is almost certainly not just genetic in origin, though genetic factors may play a role in its expression.

 

Love?

I haven't devoted as much effort to figuring out what that is since it isn't absent from my genome or epigenome. Have fun dissecting that one.

Posted
53 minutes ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

@James you just had to say "PROSTRATE YOURSELVES BEFORE THE ALMIGHTY" and 'monolithic' in the same text wall

I reply: This is romance:

https://artificialorder.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/08_monolith-2.jpg

Also sprach Zarathustra

On 28/11/2017 at 1:32 AM, sarcastic kitten said:

Romance is one of the many sides that 'Love' can take, and it's one of the shortest. Like one of the firsts steps of a never-ending stairs.

It's also an oddity in that whilst other forms of love have been known since prehistory romance has only appeared in the Modern era.

  • 1 month later...
Posted
On 27/11/2017 at 11:38 PM, Ice Queen said:

Romance is attraction. It can happen anywhere, anytime, with anyone. It is spontaneous, random, out of control. It is all about euphoria, adrenaline rush. It is shallow. It ends just under the same circumstances as it can start. Out of the blue.

 

Love is a bond. Born out of friendship. It doesn't "happen", it grows. Over time. It comes out of knowing the person well. Out of knowing that the person deserves it. It never ends. If you truly love someone, you won't feel differently one day on some supid chemical whim because true love has nothing to do with chemicals. 

 

Long-lasting relationships are mostly true love with some romance added. A small percentage of them are just love with no romance, these are the aromantic ones. 

 

Romance alone, however, is nothing. 


I partly agree - and this is where I get confused.
Yes, the romantic dream is spontaneous, out of control, euphoria and andrenali
This is the part I never experienced .. and the part, I think, to most people is the way to start a relationship (the romantic dream)

However, it is to me ceartainly NOT the same as attraction.
I find that I can often experience attraction - both physical and emotional - to a woman, but without the 'out-of-control' euphoria etc. you describe ...
So I can feel attraction.
But I do not "fall in love" ...

In my view, it could be a good way to start a relationship based on physical and emotional attraction, but WITHOUT the "falling in love" romantic emotions.
I sometimes try to talk to people about it .. NOT a good idea ... ;)  :D
It is like discussing ateism with people in the Bible Belt

 

About love, I totally agree with your definition ..
I think one of the big problems is that it is very hard to 'transform' from romantic passion, from "falling in love" to the feelings of 'real love' ...
In many ways, "falling in love"-feelings, and "deeper love" feelings are total opposites ...

  • 1 year later...

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