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Sure, your heart thumps, but let’s look at what’s happening physically and psychologically

“They gave each other a smile with a future in it.” — Ring Lardner

Love’s warm squishiness seems a thing far removed from the cold, hard reality of science. Yet the two do meet, whether in lab tests for surging hormones or in austere chambers where MRI scanners noisily thunk and peer into brains that ignite at glimpses of their soulmates.

When it comes to thinking deeply about love, poets, philosophers, and even high school boys gazing dreamily at girls two rows over have a significant head start on science. But the field is gamely racing to catch up.

One database of scientific publications turns up more than 6,600 pages of results in a search for the word “love.” The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is conducting 18 clinical trials on it (though, like love itself, NIH’s “love” can have layered meanings, including as an acronym for a study of Crohn’s disease). Though not normally considered an intestinal ailment, love is often described as an illness, and the smitten as lovesick. Comedian George Burns once described love as something like a backache: “It doesn’t show up on X-rays, but you know it’s there.”

Richard Schwartz , associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and a consultant to McLean and Massachusetts General (MGH) hospitals, says it’s never been proven that love makes you physically sick, though it does raise levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that has been shown to suppress immune function.

Love also turns on the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is known to stimulate the brain’s pleasure centers. Couple that with a drop in levels of serotonin — which adds a dash of obsession — and you have the crazy, pleasing, stupefied, urgent love of infatuation.

It’s also true, Schwartz said, that like the moon — a trigger of its own legendary form of madness — love has its phases.

“It’s fairly complex, and we only know a little about it,” Schwartz said. “There are different phases and moods of love. The early phase of love is quite different” from later phases.

During the first love-year, serotonin levels gradually return to normal, and the “stupid” and “obsessive” aspects of the condition moderate. That period is followed by increases in the hormone oxytocin, a neurotransmitter associated with a calmer, more mature form of love. The oxytocin helps cement bonds, raise immune function, and begin to confer the health benefits found in married couples, who tend to live longer, have fewer strokes and heart attacks, be less depressed, and have higher survival rates from major surgery and cancer.

Schwartz has built a career around studying the love, hate, indifference, and other emotions that mark our complex relationships. And, though science is learning more in the lab than ever before, he said he still has learned far more counseling couples. His wife and sometime collaborator, Jacqueline Olds , also an associate professor of psychiatry at HMS and a consultant to McLean and MGH, agrees.

Spouses Richard Schwartz and Jacqueline Olds, both associate professors of psychiatry, have collaborated on a book about marriage.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

More knowledge, but struggling to understand

“I think we know a lot more scientifically about love and the brain than we did a couple of decades ago, but I don’t think it tells us very much that we didn’t already know about love,” Schwartz said. “It’s kind of interesting, it’s kind of fun [to study]. But do we think that makes us better at love, or helping people with love? Probably not much.”

Love and companionship have made indelible marks on Schwartz and Olds. Though they have separate careers, they’re separate together, working from discrete offices across the hall from each other in their stately Cambridge home. Each has a professional practice and independently trains psychiatry students, but they’ve also collaborated on two books about loneliness and one on marriage. Their own union has lasted 39 years, and they raised two children.

“I think we know a lot more scientifically about love and the brain than we did a couple of decades ago … But do we think that makes us better at love, or helping people with love? Probably not much.” Richard Schwartz, associate professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

“I have learned much more from doing couples therapy, and being in a couple’s relationship” than from science, Olds said. “But every now and again, something like the fMRI or chemical studies can help you make the point better. If you say to somebody, ‘I think you’re doing this, and it’s terrible for a relationship,’ they may not pay attention. If you say, ‘It’s corrosive, and it’s causing your cortisol to go way up,’ then they really sit up and listen.”

A side benefit is that examining other couples’ trials and tribulations has helped their own relationship over the inevitable rocky bumps, Olds said.

“To some extent, being a psychiatrist allows you a privileged window into other people’s triumphs and mistakes,” Olds said. “And because you get to learn from them as they learn from you, when you work with somebody 10 years older than you, you learn what mistakes 10 years down the line might be.”

People have written for centuries about love shifting from passionate to companionate, something Schwartz called “both a good and a sad thing.” Different couples experience that shift differently. While the passion fades for some, others keep its flames burning, while still others are able to rekindle the fires.

“You have a tidal-like motion of closeness and drifting apart, closeness and drifting apart,” Olds said. “And you have to have one person have a ‘distance alarm’ to notice the drifting apart so there can be a reconnection … One could say that in the couples who are most successful at keeping their relationship alive over the years, there’s an element of companionate love and an element of passionate love. And those each get reawakened in that drifting back and forth, the ebb and flow of lasting relationships.”

Children as the biggest stressor

Children remain the biggest stressor on relationships, Olds said, adding that it seems a particular problem these days. Young parents feel pressure to raise kids perfectly, even at the risk of their own relationships. Kids are a constant presence for parents. The days when child care consisted of the instruction “Go play outside” while mom and dad reconnected over cocktails are largely gone.

When not hovering over children, America’s workaholic culture, coupled with technology’s 24/7 intrusiveness, can make it hard for partners to pay attention to each other in the evenings and even on weekends. It is a problem that Olds sees even in environments that ought to know better, such as psychiatry residency programs.

“There are all these sweet young doctors who are trying to have families while they’re in residency,” Olds said. “And the residencies work them so hard there’s barely time for their relationship or having children or taking care of children. So, we’re always trying to balance the fact that, in psychiatry, we stand for psychological good health, but [in] the residency we run, sometimes we don’t practice everything we preach.”

“There is too much pressure … on what a romantic partner should be. They should be your best friend, they should be your lover, they should be your closest relative, they should be your work partner, they should be the co-parent, your athletic partner. … Of course everybody isn’t able to quite live up to it.” Jacqueline Olds, associate professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

All this busy-ness has affected non-romantic relationships too, which has a ripple effect on the romantic ones, Olds said. A respected national social survey has shown that in recent years people have gone from having three close friends to two, with one of those their romantic partner.

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“Often when you scratch the surface … the second [friend] lives 3,000 miles away, and you can’t talk to them on the phone because they’re on a different time schedule,” Olds said. “There is too much pressure, from my point of view, on what a romantic partner should be. They should be your best friend, they should be your lover, they should be your closest relative, they should be your work partner, they should be the co-parent, your athletic partner. There’s just so much pressure on the role of spouse that of course everybody isn’t able to quite live up to it.”

Since the rising challenges of modern life aren’t going to change soon, Schwartz and Olds said couples should try to adopt ways to fortify their relationships for life’s long haul. For instance, couples benefit from shared goals and activities, which will help pull them along a shared life path, Schwartz said.

“You’re not going to get to 40 years by gazing into each other’s eyes,” Schwartz said. “I think the fact that we’ve worked on things together has woven us together more, in good ways.”

Maintain curiosity about your partner

Also important is retaining a genuine sense of curiosity about your partner, fostered both by time apart to have separate experiences, and by time together, just as a couple, to share those experiences. Schwartz cited a study by Robert Waldinger, clinical professor of psychiatry at MGH and HMS, in which couples watched videos of themselves arguing. Afterwards, each person was asked what the partner was thinking. The longer they had been together, the worse they actually were at guessing, in part because they thought they already knew.

“What keeps love alive is being able to recognize that you don’t really know your partner perfectly and still being curious and still be exploring,” Schwartz said. “Which means, in addition to being sure you have enough time and involvement with each other — that that time isn’t stolen — making sure you have enough separateness that you can be an object of curiosity for the other person.”

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What is love? Stanford researchers and scholars examine matters of the heart

From the fields of science to sociology, politics and philosophy, here is what Stanford research says about love and romance, in the past and present day.

For centuries, people have tried to understand the behaviors and beliefs associated with falling in love. What explains the wide range of emotions people experience? How have notions of romance evolved over time? As digital media becomes a permanent fixture in people’s lives, how have these technologies changed how people meet?

Examining some of these questions are Stanford scholars.

From the historians who traced today’s ideas of romance to ancient Greek philosophy and Arab lyric poetry, to the social scientists who have examined the consequences of finding love through an algorithm, to the scientists who study the love hormone oxytocin, here is what their research reveals about matters of the heart.

The evolution of romance

How romantic love is understood today has several historical origins, says Robert Pogue Harrison , the Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature and a scholar of romance studies.

For example, the idea of finding one’s other half dates back to ancient Greek mythology, Harrison said. According to Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium , humans were once complete, “sphere-like creatures” until the Greek gods cut them in half. Ever since, individuals have sought after their other half.

Here are some of those origin stories, as well as other historical perspectives on love and romance, including what courtship looked like in medieval Germany and in Victorian England, where humor and innuendo broke through the politics of the times.

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Professor of Italian literature Robert Pogue Harrison talks about the foundations of romantic love and chivalry in Western civilization.

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Through a new translation of medieval songs, Stanford German studies Professor Kathryn Starkey reveals an unconventional take on romance.

The aesthetics of sexuality in Victorian novels

In Queen Victoria’s England, novelists lodged erotic innuendo in descriptive passages for characters to express sexual desire.

Getting to the ‘heart’ of the matter

Stanford Professor Haiyan Lee chronicles the Chinese “love revolution” through a study of cultural changes influenced by Western ideals.

Love in the digital age

Where do people find love today? According to recent research by sociologist Michael Rosenfeld , meeting online is now the most popular way to meet a partner.

“The rise of the smartphone took internet dating off the desktop and put it in everyone’s pocket, all the time,” said Rosenfeld. He found that 39 percent of heterosexual couples met their significant other online, compared to 22 percent in 2009.

As people increasingly find connections online, their digital interactions can provide insight into people’s preferences in a partner.

For example, Neil Malhotra , the Edith M. Cornell Professor of Political Economy, analyzed thousands of interactions from an online dating website and found that people seek partners from their own political party and with similar political interests and ideologies. Here is some of that research.

Online dating is the most popular way couples meet

Matchmaking is now done primarily by algorithms, according to new research from Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld. His new study shows that most heterosexual couples today meet online.

Cupid’s code: Tweaking an algorithm can alter the course of finding love online

A few strategic changes to dating apps could lead to more and better matches, finds Stanford GSB’s Daniela Saban.

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New research reveals that political affiliation rivals education level as one of the most important factors in identifying a potential mate.

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The science of love

It turns out there might be some scientific proof to the claim that love is blind. According to one Stanford study , love can mask feelings of pain in a similar way to painkillers. Research by scientist Sean Mackey found intense love stimulates the same area of the brain that drugs target to reduce pain.

“When people are in this passionate, all-consuming phase of love, there are significant alterations in their mood that are impacting their experience of pain,” said Mackey , chief of the Division of Pain Medicine. “We’re beginning to tease apart some of these reward systems in the brain and how they influence pain. These are very deep, old systems in our brain that involve dopamine – a primary neurotransmitter that influences mood, reward and motivation.”

While love can dull some experiences, it can also heighten other feelings such as sociability. Another Stanford study found that oxytocin, also known as the love hormone because of its association with nurturing behavior, can also make people more sociable. Here is some of that research.

Looking for love in all the wrong hormones

A study involving prairie vole families challenges previous assumptions about the role of oxytocin in prosocial behavior.

Give your sweetheart mushrooms this Valentine’s Day, says Stanford scientist

A romantic evening of chocolate and wine would not be possible without an assist from fungi, says Stanford biology professor Kabir Peay. In fact, truffles might be the ultimate romantic gift, as they exude pheromones that can attract female mammals.

Love takes up where pain leaves off, brain study shows

Love-induced pain relief was associated with the activation of primitive brain structures that control rewarding experiences.

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Love story: Australian researchers becoming world leaders in the study of romantic love

It feels instinctive but research reveals that many aspects of romantic love we take for granted are socially constructed

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Is romantic kissing a fetish? How long does love last? Are dick pics the modern-day version of showing off your hunting prowess with a bison carcass? What is love?

For all the books, poems and lyrics about it, we know very little about love, actually.

Love is an emotion; it can be thought of as a motivation (like hunger, or thirst); a product of evolution (all the better to reproduce); a hormonal, neural and chemical reaction (with dopamine, oxytocin and others lighting up the brain); it has a physical outcome (horniness, an adrenaline-fuelled heart rate increase). Its expression is culturally constructed (in different times and places); and it evolves (from being “gaga” in love to something more companionable).

Adam Bode, a love researcher, PhD student and biologist from Australian National University, says scientists have been “disinclined” to study it.

“There’s a feeling of being embarrassed about it, that you won’t be taken seriously,” he says. Despite that, he says, “Australia is fast becoming the world leader” in the study of “romantic love”.

Elizabeth Reid Boyd, a Edith Cowan University senior lecturer, co-edited Contemporary Love Studies in the Arts and Humanities: What’s love got to do with it?, which was published last year.

She says love was seen as “still a little cheesy, cringeworthy, intimate – a more intense thing to speculate about” than sexual desire, but that was changing along with expanding ideas about love and family.

“Particularly generation Z and the millennials, they’re very embracing of many different forms of love,” she says. “And also we’re widening our ideas of what’s possible with love … The love of the planet, love of humanity … all other kinds of love, new family forms, families chosen not by blood, but by friendship.”

Love studies is a relatively new field, but there are now dedicated conferences, journals and academics across more disciplines than you might think: philosophy, psychology, biology, literary studies, anthropology, law, social work and gender studies. It draws in robotics and popular culture and looks at a darker side – stalking, coercion, harassment and violence.

And yet, for something so complicated, it can feel entirely instinctive, natural, and for some, mystical.

“It’s an idea, as well as something we think is natural, something that is physical as well as psychological, spiritual and creative,” Reid says. “The creativity part of it is where social construction comes in – we’re creating ideas of love.”

Clare Davidson, an Australian Catholic University research fellow and author of Love in Late Medieval England, says historians of emotions also engage with the scientific aspects, while anthropologists canvass the spiritual and mystical dimensions. She takes any evolutionary perspectives on love “with a grain of salt”.

“There are biological aspects, things that can be imaged in the brain, but they have developed through someone’s life,” she says. “So someone in a different culture might not get the same images from the same stimulus.

“A fact I really love from the more anthropological comparative cultural perspective is that less than 50% of cultures in the world do romantic kissing.

“It makes kissing seem like a fetishistic thing … but [to us] it seems natural.”

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Bode says part of the reason Australia is ahead in the love studies stakes is that he and his colleague, associate professor Phil Kavanagh (from the University of South Australia and the University of Canberra), have the best data – by which he means the Romantic Love Survey 2022. It’s a longitudinal study of 1,556 young people in the first flush of love (which, for this purpose, is the first two years or less).

Bode was the lead researcher on a study recently published in Behavioral Sciences based on that data. It looked at the link between the behavioural activation system (BAS) and romantic love, using their survey. The BAS, he says, is an ancient “biopsychological system that’s deep at the bottom [of] our brain that directs our behaviour … It affects our behaviour by creating emotions, thoughts and movements to achieve goals”.

He speculates that the same system that once prompted men to demonstrate their hunting prowess might now lead them to send dick pics to the objects of their desire.

They have used the BAS to develop a tool to measure “specific bio-psychological mechanisms that likely contribute to romantic love”, which they hope can be used in future neurological and psychological studies.

The article speaks of the rosy nature of reciprocal love and of its potential darker side. The loved one is idealised and put on a pedestal. Lovers are willing “to expend effort to gain reward” through courtship, and to shift their appearances or behaviour to be more desirable – and they might obsessively monitor social media pages.

The researchers write that people in romantic love may have “learning deficits”.

“The most cogent example of this is the instances of obsessive pursuit (usually committed by men), which occurs in the absence of rewarding interaction from the loved one,” they write.

“Men, in particular, but not exclusively, have a tendency to misinterpret politeness or friendliness for sexual interest.”

Bode says it’s clear that feelings of love on one side can lead to unhealthy, harmful activities, including love-bombing and partner surveillance. Reid describes it as a “continuum”.

“Sometimes love can become tyrannical – that’s when it can go into those problematic issues around consent and interpersonal violence,” she says.

“That idea sits alongside the fact that many people would still describe romantic love as a mystical experience that alters their reality in some way. Those two things are happening at the same time.”

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Love is a Story: A New Theory of Relationships

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In this groundbreaking work, Robert Sternberg opens the book of love and shows you how to discover your own story—and how to read your relationships in a whole new light. What draws us so strongly to some people and repels us from others? What makes some relationships work so smoothly and others burst into flames? Sternberg gives us new answers to these questions by showing that the kind of relationship we create depends on the kind of love stories we carry inside us. Drawing on extensive research and fascinating examples of real couples, Sternberg identifies 26 types of love story—including the fantasy story, the business story, the collector story, the horror story, and many others—each with its distinctive advantages and pitfalls, and many of which are clashingly incompatible. These are the largely unconscious preconceptions that guide our romantic choices, and it is only by becoming aware of the kind of story we have about love that we gain the freedom to create more fulfilling and lasting relationships. As long as we remain oblivious to the role our stories play, we are likely to repeat the same mistakes again and again. But the enlivening good news this book brings us is that though our stories drive us, we can revise them and learn to choose partners whose stories are more compatible with our own. Quizzes in each chapter help you to see which stories you identify with most strongly and which apply to your partner. Are you a traveler, a gardener, a teacher, or something else entirely? Love is a Story shows you how to find out.

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What's Your Love Story?

In your relationship, are you a cop, a comedian, a prince or a martyr robert j. sternberg reveals how you can use your "love story" to find your perfect match..

By Robert J. Sternberg published July 1, 2000 - last reviewed on June 9, 2016

In your relationship, are you a cop, a comedian, a prince or a martyr? Robert J. Sternberg, Ph.D., reveals how you can use your "love story" to find your perfect match.

Relationships can be as unpredictable as the most suspense-filled mystery novel. Why do some couples live happily ever after, while others are as star-crossed as Romeo and Juliet? Why do we often seem destined to relive the same romantic mistakes over and over, following the same script with different people in different places, as if the fate of our relationships, from courtship to demise, were written at birth?

Perhaps because, in essence, it is. As much as psychologists have attempted to explain the mysteries of love through scientific laws and theories, it turns out that the best mirrors of the romantic experience may be Wuthering Heights, Casablanca and General Hospital. At some level, lay people recognize what many psychologists don't: that the love between two people follows a story. If we want to understand love, we have to understand the stories that dictate our beliefs and expectations of love. These stories, which we start to write as children, predict the patterns of our romantic experiences time and time again. Luckily, we can learn to rewrite them.

I came up with the theory of love as a story because I was dissatisfied not only with other people's work on love, but also with my own. I had initially proposed a triangular theory of love, suggesting that it comprises three elements: intimacy, passion and commitment. Different loving relationships have different combinations of these elements. Complete love requires all three elements. But the theory leaves an important question unanswered: What makes a person the kind of lover they are? And what attracts them to other lovers? I had to dig deeper to understand the love's origins. I found them in stories.

My research, which incorporates studies performed over the past decade with hundreds of couples in Connecticut, as well as ongoing studies, has shown that people describe love in many ways. This description reveals their love story. For example, someone who strongly agrees with the statement "I believe close relationships are like good partnerships" tells a business story; someone who says they end up with partners who scare them -- or that they like intimidating their partner -- enacts a horror story.

Couples usually start out being physically attracted and having similar interests and values. But eventually, they may notice something missing in the relationship. That something is usually story compatibility. A couple whose stories don't match is like two characters on one stage acting out different plays -- they may look fine at first glance, but there is an underlying lack of coordination to their interaction.

This is why couples that seem likely to thrive often do not, and couples that seem unlikely to survive sometimes do. Two people may have similar outlooks, but if one longs to be rescued like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and the other wants a partnership like the lawyers on the television show The Practice, the relationship may not go very far. In contrast, two people with a war story like the bickering spouses in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf may seem wildly incompatible to their friends, but their shared need for combat may be what keeps their love alive.

More than anything, the key to compatibility with a romantic partner is whether our stories match. To change the pattern of our relationships, we must become conscious of our love stories, seek people with compatible tales, and replot conclusions that aren't working for us.

The Beginning of the Story

We start forming our ideas about love soon after birth, based on our inborn personality , our early experiences and our observations of our parents' relationships, as well as depictions of romance in movies, television and books. We then seek to live out these conceptions of love ourselves.

Based on interviews I conducted in the 1990s, asking college students to write about their romantic ideals and expectations, I have identified at least 25 common stories which people use to describe love. (There are probably many more.)

Some stories are far more popular than others. In 1995, one of my students, Laurie Lynch, and I identified some of the most common tales by asking people to rate, on a scale of one to seven, the extent to which a group of statements characterized their relationships. Their highest-ranked statements indicated their personal love story. Among the most popular were the travel story ("I believe that beginning a relationship is like starting a new journey that promises to be both exciting and challenging"), the gardening story ("I believe any relationship that is left unattended will not survive") and the humor story ("I think taking a relationship too seriously can spoil it"). Among the least popular were the horror story ("I find it exciting when I feel my partner is somewhat frightened of me," or "I tend to end up with people who frighten me"), the collectibles story ("I like dating different partners simultaneously; each partner should fit a particular need") and the autocratic government story ("I think it is more efficient if one person takes control of the important decisions in a relationship").

Another study of 43 couples, conducted with Mahzad Hojji, Ph.D., in 1996, showed that women prefer the travel story more than men, who prefer the art ("Physical attractiveness is the most essential characteristic I look for in a partner"), collectibles and pornography ("It is very important to be able to gratify all my partner's sexual desires and whims," or "I can never be happy with a partner who is not very adventurous in his or her sex life") stories. Men also prefer the sacrifice story ("I believe sacrifice is a key part of true love"). Originally, we had expected the opposite. Then we realized that the men reported sacrificing things that women did consider significant offerings.

No one story guarantees success, our study showed. But some stories seem to predict doom more than others: the business, collectibles, government, horror, mystery, police ("I believe it is necessary to watch your partner's every move" or "My partner often calls me several times a day to ask what I am doing"), recovery ("I often find myself helping people get their life back in order" or "I need someone to help me recover from my painful past"), science fiction ("I often find myself attracted to individuals who have unusual and strange characteristics") and theater stories ("I think my relationships are like plays" or "I often find myself attracted to partners who play different roles").

How Stories Spin Our Relationships

When you talk to two people who have just split up, their breakup stories often sound like depictions of two completely different relationships. In a sense, they are. Each partner has his or her own story to tell.

Most important to a healthy, happy relationship is that both partners have compatible stories -- that is, compatible expectations. Indeed, a 1998 study conducted with Mahzad Hojjat, Ph.D., and Michael Barnes, Ph.D., indicated that the more similar couples' stories were, the happier they were together.

Stories tend to be compatible if they are complementary roles in a single story, such as prince and princess, or if the stories are similar enough that they can be merged into a new and unified story. For example, a fantasy story can merge with a gardening story because one can nourish, or garden, a relationship while dreaming of being rescued by a knight on a white steed. A fantasy and a business story are unlikely to blend,however, because they represent such different ideals -- fate-bound princes and princesses don't work at romance!

Of course, story compatibility isn't the only ingredient in a successful relationship. Sometimes, our favorite story can be hazardous to our well-being. People often try to make dangerous or unsatisfying stories come true. Thus, someone who has, say, a horror or recovery story may try to turn a healthy relationship into a Nightmare on Elm Street. People complain that they keep ending up with the same kind of bad partner, that they are unlucky in love. In reality, luck has nothing to do with it: They are subconsciously finding people to play out their love stories, or foisting their stories on the people they meet.

Making Happy Endings

Treating problems in relationships by changing our behaviors and habits ultimately won't work because crisis comes from the story we're playing out. Unless we change our stories, we're treating symptoms rather than causes. If we're dissatisfied with our partner, we should look not at his or her faults, but at how he or she fits into our expectations.

To figure out what we want, we need to consider all of our past relationships, and we should ask ourselves what attributes characterized the people to whom we felt most attracted, and what attributes characterized the people in whom we eventually lost interest. We also need to see which romantic tale we aim to tell -- and whether or not it has the potential to lead to a "happily ever after" scenario (see quiz below).

Once we understand the ideas and beliefs behind the stories we accept as our own, we can do some replotting. We can ask ourselves what we like and don't like about our current story, what hasn't been working in our relationships, and how we would like to change it. How can we rewrite the scenario? This may involve changing stories, or transforming an existing story to make it more practical. For example, horror stories may be fantasized during sexual or other activity, rather than actually physically played out.

We can change our story by experimenting with new and different plots. Sometimes, psychotherapy can help us to move from perilous stories (such as a horror story) to more promising ones (such as a travel story). Once we've recognized our story -- or learned to live a healthy one of our choosing -- we can begin to recognize elements of that story in potential mates. Love mirrors stories because it is a story itself. The difference is that we are the authors, and can write ourselves a happy ending.

Find Your Love Story

Rate each statement on a scale from 1 to 9, I meaning that it doesn't characterize your romantic relationships at all, 9 meaning that it describes them extremely well. Then average your scores for each story. In general, averaged scores of 7 to 9 are high, Indicating a strong attraction to a story, and 1 to 3 are low, indicating little or no interest in the story. Moderate scores of 4 to 6 Indicate some interest, but probably not enough to generate or keep a romantic interest. Next, evaluate your own love story. (There are 12 listed here; see the book for more.)

1. I enjoy making sacrifices for the sake of my partner.

2. I believe sacrifice is a key part of true love.

3. I often compromise my own comfort to satisfy my partner's needs.

Score: _____.

The sacrifice story can lead to happy relationships when both partners are content in the roles they are playing, particularly when they both make sacrifices. It is likely to cause friction when partners feel compelled to make sacrifices. Research suggests that relationships of all kinds are happiest when they are roughly equitable. The greatest risk in a sacrifice story is that the give-and-take will become too out of balance, with one partner always being the giver or receiver.

1. I believe that you need to keep a close eye on your partner.

2. I believe it is foolish to trust your partner completely.

3. I would never trust my partner to work closely with a person of the opposite sex.

1. My partner often calls me several times a day to ask exactly what I am doing.

2. My partner needs to know everything that I do.

3. My partner gets very upset if I don't let him or her know exactly where I have been.

Police stories do not have very favorable prognoses because they can completely detach from reality. The police story may offer some people the feeling of being cared for. People who are very insecure relish the attention that they get as a "suspect," that they are unable to receive in any other way. But they can end up paying a steep price. As the plot thickens, the suspect first begins to lose freedom, then dignity, and then any kind of self-respect. Eventually, the person's mental and even physical well-being may be threatened.

1. I believe that, in a good relationship, partners change and grow together.

2. I believe love is a constant process of discovery and growth.

3. I believe that beginning a relationship is like starting a new journey that promises to be both exciting and challenging.

Travel stories that last beyond a very short period of time generally have a favorable prognosis, because if the travelers can agree on a destination and path, they are already a long way toward success. If they can't, they often find out quite quickly that they want different things from the relationship and split up. Travel relationships tend to be dynamic and focus on the future. The greatest risk is that over time one or both partners will change the destination or path they desire. When people speak of growing apart, they often mean that the paths they wish to take are no longer the same. In such cases, the relationship is likely to become increasingly unhappy, or even dissolve completely.

1. The truth is that I don't mind being treated as a sex toy by my partner.

2. It is very important to me to gratify my partner's sexual desires and whims, even if people might view them as debasing.

3. I like it when my partner wants me to try new and unusual, and even painful, sexual techniques.

1. The most important thing to me in my relationship is for my partner to be an excellent sex toy, doing anything I desire.

2. I can never be happy with a partner who is not very adventurous in sex.

3. The truth is that I like a partner who feels like a sex object.

There are no obvious advantages to the pornography story. The disadvantages are quite clear, however. First, the excitement people attain is through degradation of themselves and others. Second, the need to debase and be debased is likely to keep escalating. Third, once one adopts the story, it may be difficult to adopt another story. Fourth, the story can become physically as well as psychologically dangerous. And finally, no matter how one tries, it is difficult to turn the story into one that's good for psychological or physical well-being.

Terrorizer:

1. I often make sure that my partner knows that I am in charge, even if it makes him or her scared of me.

2. I actually find it exciting when I feel my partner is somewhat frightened of me.

3. I sometimes do things that scare my partner, because I think it is actually good for a relationship to have one partner slightly frightened of the other.

1. I believe it is somewhat exciting to be slightly scared of your partner.

2. I find it arousing when my partner creates a sense of fear in me.

3. I tend to end up with people who sometimes frighten me.

The horror story probably is the least advantageous of the stories. To some, it may be exciting. But the forms of terror needed to sustain the excitement tend to get out of control and to put their participants, and even sometimes those around them, at both psychological and physical risk. Those who discover that they have this story or are in relationship that is enacting it would be well-advised to seek counseling, and perhaps even police protection.

Co-dependent :

1. I often end up with people who are facing a specific problem, and I find myself helping them get their life back in order.

2. I enjoy being involved in relationships in which my partner needs my help to get over some problem.

3. I often find myself with partners who need my help to recover from their past.

Person in recovery:

1. I need someone who will help me recover from my painful past.

2. I believe that a relationship can save me from a life that is crumbling around me.

3. I need help getting over my past.

The main advantage to the recovery story is that the co-dependent may really help the other partner to recover, so long as the other partner has genuinely made the decision to recover. Many of us know individuals who sought to reform their partners, only to experience total frustration when their partners made little or no effort to reform. At the same time, the co-dependent is someone who needs to feel he or she is helping someone, and gains this feeling of making a difference to someone through the relationship. The problem: Others can assist in recovery, but the decision to recover can only be made by the person in need of recovery. As a result, recovery stories can assist in, but not produce, actual recovery.

1. I believe a good relationship is attainable only if you spend time and energy to care for it, just as you tend a garden.

2. I believe relationships need to be nourished constantly to help weather the ups and downs of life.

3. I believe the secret to a successful relationship is the care that partners take of each other and of their love.

The biggest advantage of a garden story is its recognition of the importance of nurture. No other story involves, this amount of care and attention. The biggest potential disadvantage is that a lack of spontaneity or boredom may develop. People in garden stories are not immune to the lure of extramarital relationships, for example, and may get involved in them to generate excitement, even if they still highly value their primary relationship. In getting involved in other relationships, however, they are putting the primary relationship at risk. Another potential disadvantage is that of smothering -- that the attention becomes too much. Just as one can overwater a flower, one can overattend a relationship. Sometimes it's best to let things be and allow nature to take its course.

1. I believe that close relationships are partnerships.

2. I believe that in a romantic relationship, just as in a job, both partners should perform their duties and responsibilities according to their "job description."

3. Whenever I consider having a relationship with someone, I always consider the financial implications of the relation ship as well.

A business story has several potential advantages, not the least of which is that the bills are more likely to get paid than in other types of relationships. That's because someone is always minding the store. Another potential advantage is that the roles tend to be more dearly defined than in other relationships. The partners are also in a good position to "get ahead" in terms of whatever it is that they want. One potential disadvantage occurs if only one of the two partners sees their relationship as a business story. The other partner may quickly become bored and look for interest and excitement outside the marriage . The story can also turn sour if the distribution of authority does not satisfy one or both partners. If the partners cannot work out mutually compatible roles, they may find themselves spending a lot of time fighting for position. It is important to maintain the option of flexibility.

1. I think fairy tales about relationships can come true.

2. I do believe that there is someone out there for me who is my perfect match.

3. I like my relationships to be ones in which I view my partner as something like a prince or princess in days of yore.

The fantasy story can be a powerful one. The individual may feel swept up in the emotion of the search for the perfect partner or of developing the perfect relationship with an existing partner. It is probably no coincidence that in literature most fantasy stories take place before or outside of marriage: Fantasies are hard to maintain when one has to pay the bills, pack the children off to school and resolve marital fights. To maintain the happy feeling of the fantasy, therefore, one has to ignore, to some extent, the mundane aspects of life. The potential disadvantages of the fantasy relationship are quite plain. The greatest is the possibility for disillusionment when one partner discovers that no one could fulfill the fantastic expectations that have been created. This can lead partners to feel dissatisfied with relationships that most others would view as quite successful If a couple can create a fantasy story based on realistic rather than idealistic ideals, they have the potential for success; if they want to be characters in a myth, chances are that's exactly what they'll get: a myth.

1. I think it is more interesting to argue than to compromise.

2. I think frequent arguments help bring conflictive issues into the open and keep the relationship healthy.

3. I actually like to fight with my partner.

The war story is advantageous in a relationship only when both partners clearly share it and want the same thing. In these cases, threats of divorce and worse may be common, but neither partner would seriously dream of leaving: They're both having too much fun, in their own way. The major disadvantage, of course, is that the story often isn't shared, leading to intense and sustained conflict that can leave the partner without the war story feeling devastated much of the time. People can find themselves in a warring relationship without either of them having war as a preferred story. In such cases, the constant fighting may make both partners miserable. If the war continues in such a context, there is no joy in it for either partner.

1. I like a partner who is willing to think about the funny side of our conflicts.

2. I think taking a relationship too seriously can spoil it; that's why I like partners who have a sense of humor .

3. I like a partner who makes me laugh whenever we are facing a tense situation in our relationship.

1. I admit that I sometimes try to use humor to avoid facing a problem in my relationship.

2. I like to use humor when I have a conflict with my partner because I believe there is a humorous side to any conflict.

3. When I disagree with my partner, I often try to make a joke out of it.

The humor story can have one enormous advantage: Most situations do have a lighter side, and people with this story are likely to see it. When things in a relationship become tense, sometimes nothing works better than a little humor, especially if it comes from within the relationship. Humor stories also allow relationships to be creative and dynamic. But the humor story also has some potential disadvantages. Probably the greatest one is the risk of using humor to deflect important issues: A serious conversation that needs to take place keeps getting put off with jokes. Humor can also be used to be cruel in a passive-aggressive way. When humor is used as a means of demeaning a person to protect the comedian from responsibility ("I was only joking"), a relationship is bound to be imperiled. Thus, moderate amounts are good for a relationship, but excessive amounts can be deleterious.

1. I think it is okay to have multiple partners who fulfill my different needs.

2. I sometimes like to think about how many people I could potentially date all at the same time.

3. I tend and like to have multiple intimate partners at once, each fulfilling somewhat different roles.

There are a few advantages to a collection story. For one thing, the collector generally cares about the collectible's physical well-being, as appearance is much of what makes a collection shine. The collector also finds a way of meeting multiple needs. Usually those needs will be met in parallel -- by having several intimate relationships at the same time -- but a collector may also enter into serial monogamous relationships, where each successive relationship meets needs that the last relationship did not meet. In a society that values monogamy, collection stories work best if they do not become serious or if individuals in the collection are each viewed in different lights, such as friendship or intellectual stimulation. The disadvantages of this story become most obvious when people are trying to form serious relationships. The collector may find it difficult to establish intimacy, or anything approaching a complete relationship and commitment toward a single individual. Collections can also become expensive, time-consuming, and in some cases illegal (as when an individual enters into multiple marriages simultaneously).

Adapted from Love Is A Story

by Robert J. Sternberg. Ph.D.

Adapted by Ph.D.

Robert J. Sternberg is IBM Professor of Psychology and Education in the department of psychology at Yale University.

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Psychological Research on Love and Its Influence in Adult Human Relationships

Now, here is this topic about love. The subject without any movie, novel, poem and song cannot exist. The topic of love has fascinated scientists, philosophers, historians, poets, playwrights, novelists, and songwriters, as well as all other human beings.

I decided to look at this subject from a scientific point of view. It was very interesting to search and to write this article, and I hope that it will be interesting to you to read it. It is ironic, that as I am writing this article on Saturday in the empty Riordan Clinic, while drinking tea and eating chocolate that I found a love poem from “Romeo and Juliet” inside the wrapping.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON LOVE Whereas psychological science was slow to develop an active interest in love, the past few decades have seen considerable growth in research on the subject. The excellent review of the central and well-established findings from psychologically informed research on love and its influence in adult human relationships is presented in this article:

“Love. What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Does It Operate?” H Reis and A Aron. The brief summary of the ideas from this article is presented below.

On the other hand, four major intellectual developments of the 19th and 20th centuries provided key insights that helped shape the agenda for current research and theory of love.

The first major intellectual development was the work of Charles Darwin, who proposed that reproductive success was the central process underlying the evolution of species. Evolutionary theorizing has led directly to such currently popular concepts as mate preference, sexual mating strategies, and attachment, as well as to the adoption of a comparative approach across species.

A second development was the work of Sigmund Freud. Contemporary research and theory on love features many psychodynamic principles that were first introduced by Freud, such as the importance of early childhood experiences, the powerful impact of motives operating outside of awareness, the role of defenses in shaping the behavioral expression of motives, and the role of sexuality as a force in human behavior

A third historically significant development was the work of Margaret Mead. Mead’s vivid descriptions of cultural variations in the expression of love and sexuality led researchers to consider the influence of socialization and to recognize cultural variation in many aspects of love.

At the same time, social psychologists were beginning work that would show that adult love could be studied experimentally and in the laboratory.

Any history of psychological research on love would be incomplete without reference to “l’affaire Proxmire”. In March 1975, William Proxmire, a powerful U.S. Senator, gave the first of a series of so-called Golden Fleece Awards to Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Hatfield, the two most prominent love researchers of the time. They had recently received a federal grant for their work. To some, their work was a gross misuse of federal tax-payer dollars and a topic “better left to poets.” For the ensuing years, that ill-informed and ignoble proclamation cast a pall not only on Berscheid and Hatfield but on any scientist interested in studying love. To this day, politics occasionally obstructs funding for research on love.

Despite the political barrier to love research in the U.S., other countries, particularly Canada, have taken a more enlightened view, as have at least two private foundations.

Considerable evidence supports a basic distinction, first offered in 1978, between passionate love (“a state of intense longing for union with another”) and other types of romantic love, labeled companionate love (“the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined”). The evidence for this distinction comes from a variety of research methods, including psychometric techniques (e.g., factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, and prototype analysis), examinations of the behavioral and relationship consequences of different forms of romantic love, and biological studies, which are discussed in this article.

Most work has focused on identifying and measuring passionate love and several aspects of romantic love, which include two components: intimacy and commitment. Some scholars see companionate love as a combination of intimacy and commitment whereas others see intimacy as the central component, with commitment as a peripheral factor (but important in its own right, such as for predicting relationship longevity). In some studies, trust and caring were considered highly prototypical of love, whereas uncertainty and “butterflies in the stomach” were more peripheral.

Passionate and companionate love solves different adaptational problems. Passionate love may be said to solve the attraction problem—that is, for individuals to enter into a potentially long-term mating relationship, they must first identify and select suitable candidates, attract the other’s interest, engage in relationship-building behavior, and then go about reorganizing existing activities and relationships so as to include the other. All of this is effortful, time-consuming, and disruptive. Consequently, passionate love is associated with many changes in cognition, emotion, and behavior. For the most part, these changes are consistent with the idea of disrupting existing activities, routines, and social networks to orient the individual’s attention and goal-directed behavior toward a specific new partner.

Considerably less effort has been devoted toward understanding the evolutionary significance of the intimacy and commitment aspects of love. However, much evidence indicates that love in long-term relationships is associated with intimacy, trust, caring, and attachment, all factors that contribute to the maintenance of relationships over time.

More generally, the term companionate love may be characterized by a communal relationship: a relationship built on mutual expectations that one’s self and a partner will be responsive to each other’s needs.

It was speculated that companionate love, or at least the various processes associated with it, is responsible for the noted association between social relatedness and health and well-being. In a recent series of papers, it was claimed that marriage is linked to health benefits.

Having noted the positive functions of love, it is also important to consider the dark side. That is, problems in love and love relationships are a significant source of suicides, homicides, and both major and minor emotional disorders, such as anxiety and depression. Love matters not only because it can make our lives better, but also because it is a major source of misery and pain that can make life much worse.

One particularly timely prediction is that psychological theories of love are likely to become more biologically informed, in the sense that the psychological and behavioral phenomena associated with love will have clear, comprehensible, and distinguishable neural and hormonal substrates. This will be useful not so much for the intrinsic purpose of identifying the brain and body regions in which love occurs, but rather because the identification of neural and hormonal circuits corresponding to particular experiences and behaviors will allow researchers to sort the various phenomena associated with love into their natural categories.

It is also believed that research will address how culture shapes the experience and expression of love. Although both passionate and companionate love appears to be universal, it is apparent that their manifestations may be moderated by culture-specific norms and rules.

Passionate and companionate love have profoundly different implications for marriage around the world, considered essential in some cultures but contra-indicated or rendered largely irrelevant in others. For example, among U.S. college students in the 1960s, only 24% of women and 65% of men considered love to be the basis of marriage, but in the 1980s this view was endorsed by more than 80% of both women and men.

Finally, the authors believe that the future will see a better understanding of what may be the quintessential question about love: how this very individualistic feeling is shaped by experiences in interaction with particular others.

Why Love Has Wings and Sex Has Not: How Reminders of Love and Sex Influence Creative and Analytic Thinking (J.A. Forster). This article examines cognitive links between romantic love and creativity and between sexual desire and analytic thought based on construal level theory. It suggests that when in love, people typically focus on a long-term perspective, which should enhance holistic thinking and thereby creative thought, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters, they focus on the present and on concrete details enhancing analytic thinking. Because people automatically activate these processing styles when in love or when they experience sex, subtle or even unconscious reminders of love versus sex should suffice to change processing modes. Two studies explicitly or subtly reminded participants of situations of love or sex and found support for this hypothesis.

Passion, Intimacy, and Time: Passionate Love as a Function of Change in Intimacy (R.F. Baumeister, E. Bratslavsky) To build on existing theories about love, the authors propose that passion is a function of change in intimacy (i.e., the first derivative of intimacy overtime). Hence, passion will be low when intimacy is stable (either high or low), but rising intimacy will create a strong sense of passion. This view is able to account for a broad range of evidence, including frequency of sex in long-term relationships, intimate and sexual behavior of extraverts, gender differences in intimate behavior, gain and loss effects of communicated attraction, and patterns of distress in romantic breakups.

TO LOVE, OR NOT TO LOVE. Love Stories of Later Life: A Narrative Approach to Understanding Romance (Amanda Smith Barusch. Oxford University Press, 2008.) This book is a qualitative study employing in-depth interviews and an open-ended survey distributed on the Internet. Barusch (a professor of social work) focused her study on four research questions. They include, but are not limited to 1. How do older adults describe and experience romantic love? 2. How do gender, culture, and age influence the lived experience of romantic love? 3. Is it possible to fall in love at advanced ages? If so, how do adults describe this experience? Do their descriptions differ from those offered by younger people? 4. How do older adults interpret their lived experiences of romance?

Barusch writes with two different ‘voices’ for two different audiences. First, she writes for academic gerontologists who have an interest in the study of late relationships. Second, she writes for elders who want to gain insight into romantic and sexual relationships in later life. She hopes that this audience will gain strength and insight by reading her book. The book is delightful, hopeful and inspiring.

It is rare for an author to successfully address two such diverse audiences. We encourage you to read this fine work.

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Published: 07 March 2022

The cultural evolution of love in literary history

Nicolas Baumard ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1439-9150 1 ,
Elise Huillery 2 ,
Alexandre Hyafil ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0566-651X 3 &
Lou Safra ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7618-6735 1 , 4

Nature Human Behaviour volume 6 , pages 506–522 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Since the late nineteenth century, cultural historians have noted that the importance of love increased during the Medieval and Early Modern European period (a phenomenon that was once referred to as the emergence of ‘courtly love’). However, more recent works have shown a similar increase in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Indian and Japanese cultures. Why such a convergent evolution in very different cultures? Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, we leverage literary history and build a database of ancient literary fiction for 19 geographical areas and 77 historical periods covering 3,800 years, from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Modern period. We first confirm that romantic elements have increased in Eurasian literary fiction over the past millennium, and that similar increases also occurred earlier, in Ancient Greece, Rome and Classical India. We then explore the ecological determinants of this increase. Consistent with hypotheses from cultural history and behavioural ecology, we show that a higher level of economic development is strongly associated with a greater incidence of love in narrative fiction (our proxy for the importance of love in a culture). To further test the causal role of economic development, we used a difference-in-difference method that exploits exogenous regional variations in economic development resulting from the adoption of the heavy plough in medieval Europe. Finally, we used probabilistic generative models to reconstruct the latent evolution of love and to assess the respective role of cultural diffusion and economic development.

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Intersecting language and society: a prototypical study of Cinderella story translations in China

Yanjin Liu & Dechao Li

Exploring an extinct society through the lens of Habitus-Field theory and the Tocharian text corpus

Oliver Wieczorek & Melanie Malzahn

A decade of love: mapping the landscape of romantic love research through bibliometric analysis

Yixue Han, Yulin Luo, … Shen Liu

Data availability

The data, as well as the the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey and the Ancient World Values Survey ( Romantic Love and Attitudes toward Children ), are available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ).

Code availability

The code that supports the findings of this study is available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ). A detailed description of the model for study 4 as well as MATLAB code to fit and run such models can be found on https://github.com/ahyafil/Evoked_Transmitted_Culture .

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Boyer, C. Chevallier, L. Cronk, H. Mercier, O. Morin and M. Singh for their comments and feedback on the draft. We thank S. Joye, M. White-Le Goff, M. Daumas, W. Reddy, K. Zakharia, E. Feuillebois-Pierunek, D. Struve and C. Svatek for their feedback on the design of the project, and S. Joye for her help in kickstarting the project. We thank T. Ansart for his help and advice in designing the figures. For their expertise in history of literature and their reading the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey, we thank M. Balda-Tillier, G. Barnes, B. Brosser, S. Brocquet, J.-B. Camps, N. Cattoni, M. Childs, C. Cleary, B. Cook, H. Cooper, M. Eggertsdóttir, W. Farris, E. Francis, H. Frangoulis, H. Fulton, G. Fussman, D. Goodall, I. Hassan, L. Haiyan, D. Hsieh, A. Inglis, C. Jouanno, R. Keller Kimbrough, J. D. Konstan, R. Lanselle, R. Luzi, M. Luo, R. Martin, D. Matringue, K. McMahon, G. Nagy, P. Nagy, H. Navratilova, D. Negers, P. Orsatti, F. Orsini, S. Ríkharðsdóttir, F. Schironi, S. Valeria, C. Starr, R. Torrella and S. Torres Pietro. Funding: This study was supported by the Institut d’Études Cognitives (ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL) for N.B. and L.S., and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RYC-2017-2323) for A.H.

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Nicolas Baumard & Lou Safra

Laboratoire d’Economie de Dauphine, Université Paris Dauphine, PSL Research University, Paris, France

Elise Huillery

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Alexandre Hyafil

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N.B. conceived the project, supervised the creation of the Ancient Literary Fictions Database and wrote the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey. L.S. and A.H. designed the analyses for study 1. L.S. designed the analyses for study 2. E.H. designed the difference-in-difference for study 3. A.H. designed the latent probabilistic generative models for study 4. All authors wrote the paper.

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Baumard, N., Huillery, E., Hyafil, A. et al. The cultural evolution of love in literary history. Nat Hum Behav 6 , 506–522 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01292-z

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We must discover … the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this whole world a new world. But love, love is the only way.

In his spirited sermon at the 2018 wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, US Bishop Michael Curry , Primate of the Episcopal Church, quoted these words of Dr Martin Luther King. Dr Curry went on to describe love’s transformative power for humanity: “Think and imagine a world where love is the way,” he urged the congregation.

In universities across the world, academics are doing just that. Love Studies, a field newly emerged in the last couple of decades, is becoming an increasingly significant area of application and research.

There are journals and conferences on Love Studies, websites about popular romance such as Teach Me Tonight and a growing number of Phds in the field. But what exactly is it?

Love Studies emerged from discourse and analyses in popular romance, cultural and gender studies. In its first flush, it included a revaluing and deeper understanding of the complexity and sophistication of love, in particular romantic love, and how it has shaped our ways of being and knowing.

As academic Virginia Blum once put it when writing about the discipline:

While sex may indeed ‘sell’, love seems to trump sex every time when it comes to talking about the nature of individual autonomy and happiness.

Gradually, the idea of romantic love began to be explored in other subject areas: in philosophy, law, languages and literary studies, politics, anthropology and social science. Love Studies looked at desire, and intimate relationships, gender and power while retaining a critical wariness about the costs of love to women. Meanwhile, in psychology, there has been a renewed focus on happiness and loving-kindness .

Read more: What is this thing called love?

Today, Love Studies is becoming more clearly defined and developed. Last year, The Journal of Popular Romance Studies produced a special issue on Critical Love Studies. It looked at such things as the juxtaposition of popular romance and queer theory, “love migrants” who conduct much of their relationship long distance over Skype, “boy love” in Japanese romance fiction and masculinity in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels (The latter article was titled: Is Edward Cullen a good boyfriend? Young men talk about Twilight, masculinity and the rules of heteroromance).

This October, meanwhile, a global conference called LOVE, ETC will be held in Denmark. Situating love as the hot new topic in the academy, it will embrace issues such as how love is being transformed in the age of online dating and the challenging of gender and sexuality norms. How will love change in the technological future? (Will we come to love robots?) What’s the difference between love and caring?

At the same time, courses on popular romance are growing globally and romance research collections in libraries are expanding .

Some have suggested that in the 21st century, love is one of the existential goals of our lives. It can be both subversive or conservative, depending on your point of view.

Read more: There are six styles of love. Which one best describes you?

Indeed romantic love is no easy subject. It’s the front line: where our hearts, minds and bodies meet. For some, it’s a battlefield. Revenge porn. Intimate partner violence. Date rape. Sexual harassment. Online bullying. Abusive relationships. There’s a lot of damage done when we get up close and personal.

Some may call the study of love shallow, superficial too chocolatey and commercial. A bit like Valentine’s Day. While there has long been stigma and disdain for the area as lacking sufficient gravitas, for some academics, it’s the sweet spot.

As a romance novelist, Love Studies helps me to think through issues in my own writing. As an academic, I am working with colleagues in the fields of psychology, sexology and cultural studies, to explore issues of consent post #MeToo and how “civil rights” can be enacted in the bedroom, without repressing desire.

Love is as love does. It is not an end in itself, a happy ever after, but a creative process providing endless opportunities for thought and imagination. It remains to be seen if a new world, of which Martin Luther King dreamed, can be made of it.

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Proximate and Ultimate Perspectives on Romantic Love

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Romantic love is a phenomenon of immense interest to the general public as well as to scholars in several disciplines. It is known to be present in almost all human societies and has been studied from a number of perspectives. In this integrative review, we bring together what is known about romantic love using Tinbergen’s “four questions” framework originating from evolutionary biology. Under the first question, related to mechanisms, we show that it is caused by social, psychological mate choice, genetic, neural, and endocrine mechanisms. The mechanisms regulating psychopathology, cognitive biases, and animal models provide further insights into the mechanisms that regulate romantic love. Under the second question, related to development, we show that romantic love exists across the human lifespan in both sexes. We summarize what is known about its development and the internal and external factors that influence it. We consider cross-cultural perspectives and raise the issue of evolutionary mismatch. Under the third question, related to function, we discuss the fitness-relevant benefits and costs of romantic love with reference to mate choice, courtship, sex, and pair-bonding. We outline three possible selective pressures and contend that romantic love is a suite of adaptions and by-products. Under the fourth question, related to phylogeny, we summarize theories of romantic love’s evolutionary history and show that romantic love probably evolved in concert with pair-bonds in our recent ancestors. We describe the mammalian antecedents to romantic love and the contribution of genes and culture to the expression of modern romantic love. We advance four potential scenarios for the evolution of romantic love. We conclude by summarizing what Tinbergen’s four questions tell us, highlighting outstanding questions as avenues of potential future research, and suggesting a novel ethologically informed working definition to accommodate the multi-faceted understanding of romantic love advanced in this review.

Introduction

Romantic love is a complex suite of adaptations and by-products that serves a range of functions related to reproduction ( Fletcher et al., 2015 ; Buss, 2019 ). It often occurs early in a romantic relationship but can lead to long-term mating. It is a universal or near-universal ( Jankowiak and Fischer, 1992 ; Gottschall and Nordlund, 2006 ; Jankowiak and Paladino, 2008 ; Fletcher et al., 2015 ; Buss, 2019 ; Sorokowski et al., 2020 ) and is characterized by a range of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, social, genetic, neural, and endocrine activity. It occurs across the lifespan in both sexes. Romantic love serves a variety of functions that vary according to life-stage and duration, including mate choice, courtship, sex, and pair-bonding. Its evolutionary history is probably coupled with the emergence of pair-bonds relatively recently in human evolutionary history.

Romantic love has received attention from scholars in diverse fields, including neurobiology, endocrinology, psychology, and anthropology. Our review aims to synthesize multiple threads of knowledge into a more well-rounded perspective on romantic love. To accomplish this, we do the following: First, we lay out our analytical framework based on Tinbergen’s (1963) “four questions” for explaining a biological phenomenon. Second, using this framework as an organizing tool, we summarize what is known about the social mechanisms, psychological mate choice mechanisms, genetics, neurobiology, endocrinology, development across the lifetime of an individual, fitness-relevant functions, and evolutionary history of romantic love. Finally, we conclude by summarizing what Tinbergen’s four questions tell us, identifying areas for future research, and providing a new ethologically informed working definition of romantic love.

Analytical Framework

Much work has been done to examine romantic love as a biological characteristic. Numerous reviews have described the neurobiology and endocrinology of romantic love (e.g., Fisher, 2004 , 2006 ; Zeki, 2007 ; Hatfield and Rapson, 2009 ; Reynaud et al., 2010 ; Cacioppo et al., 2012b ; de Boer et al., 2012 ; Diamond and Dickenson, 2012 ; Dunbar, 2012 ; Tarlaci, 2012 ; Xu et al., 2015 ; Fisher et al., 2016 ; Zou et al., 2016 ; Tomlinson et al., 2018 ; Walum and Young, 2018 ; Cacioppo, 2019 ). Two meta-analyses ( Ortigue et al., 2010 ; Cacioppo et al., 2012a ) considered fMRI studies of romantic love. There have been some accounts of romantic love or love from an evolutionary perspective (e.g., Hendrick and Hendrick, 1991 ; Fisher, 1995 , 2016 ; Fisher et al., 2006 , 2016 ; Kenrick, 2006 ; Lieberman and Hatfield, 2006 ; Schmitt, 2006 ; Fletcher et al., 2015 ; Sorokowski et al., 2017 ; Buss, 2019 ).

No one, however, has addressed the full spectrum of approaches used in biology to provide a comprehensive account of romantic love. We fill this gap by framing our review of romantic love around Tinbergen’s (1963) “four questions” for explaining biological traits. It was developed in the context of trying to provide a holistic, integrative understanding of animal behavior, and is an extension of earlier explanatory frameworks, including Mayr’s (1961) distinction between proximate and ultimate explanations in biology ( Bateson and Laland, 2013 ). It includes two proximate explanations, mechanistic and ontogenetic, and two ultimate (evolutionary) explanations, functional and phylogenetic. To illustrate the use of this framework, we refer to elements of Zeifman’s (2001) analysis of infant crying as a biological trait using this framework. An outline of our use of this framework is presented in Table 1 .

Summary of romantic love using Tinbergen’s (1963) framework.

Proximate explanations focus on the workings of biological and social systems and their components, both on a short-term (mechanistic) and longer-term (ontogenetic) basis ( Tinbergen, 1963 ; Zeifman, 2001 ). Mechanistic explanations attempt to answer questions about how behavior is produced by an organism. It is about the immediate causation of the behavior. A baby’s cry, under this class of explanation, might be viewed as an expression of emotion regulated by the limbic system. In our analysis, we ask: “What are the mechanisms that cause romantic love?” Ontogenetic explanations attempt to answer questions about how the behavior develops over the life course. A baby’s cry, thus, might be viewed as a vocalization that changes in frequency and context over the first year of life, and then across the rest of childhood. In our analysis, we ask: “How does romantic love develop over the lifetime of an individual?”

Ultimate explanations focus on the application of evolutionary logic to understand behavior, both on a short-term (functional) and long-term (phylogenetic) basis ( Tinbergen, 1963 ; Zeifman, 2001 ). Functional explanations attempt to answer questions about the fitness consequences of behavior and how it functions as an adaptation. A baby’s cry, thus, might be viewed as an adaptation that enhances offspring survival by eliciting care or providing information about its state. As the fitness consequences may be negative as well, it might focus on both benefits and costs. For instance, the cry may decrease survival by attracting predators or depleting scarce energy reserves. In our analysis, we ask: “What are the fitness-relevant functions of romantic love?” Phylogenetic explanations attempt to answer questions about the evolutionary history of a behavior and the mechanisms that produce it. A baby’s cry, thus, might be understood from the perspective of whether similar behaviors are present in closely related species. In our analysis, we ask: “What is the evolutionary history of romantic love?”

Tinbergen’s (1963) framework has been a useful tool for organizing research and theory on behavior and other biological traits across all major kingdoms of life, from plants (e.g., Satake, 2018 ) to humans (e.g., Winterhalder and Smith, 1992 ; Zeifman, 2001 ; Stephen et al., 2017 ; Luoto et al., 2019 ). It allows us to build holistic explanations of biological phenomena by examining complementary, but often non-mutually exclusive, categories of explanation ( Bateson and Laland, 2013 ). We believe that this approach to understanding romantic love will clarify the usefulness and interdependence of the various aspects of the biology of romantic love without falling into the pitfalls of posing explanations for the phenomena that are in opposition rather than complementary ( Nesse, 2013 ).

Definitions

There are a number of definitions and descriptions of romantic love. These definitions and descriptions have different names for romantic love, but all are attempting to define the same construct. We present, here, four definitions or descriptions of romantic love that continue to have relevance to contemporary research.

Walster and Walster (1978) were among the first to scientifically define romantic love. They gave it the name “passionate love” and their definition has been revised several times (e.g., Hatfield and Walster, 1985 ; Hatfield and Rapson, 1993 ). A definition of passionate love is:

A state of intense longing for union with another. Passionate love is a complex functional whole including appraisals or appreciations, subjective feelings, expressions, patterned physiological processes, action tendencies, and instrumental behaviors. Reciprocated love (union with the other) is associated with fulfillment and ecstasy; unrequited love (separation) with emptiness, anxiety, or despair ( Hatfield and Rapson, 1993 , p. 5).

Hendrick and Hendrick (1986) propose a description of romantic love in the context of describing six different “love styles” ( Lee, 1976 ). They label it “eros.” It too has undergone some changes. A recent version of the description is:

Strong physical attraction, emotional intensity, a preferred physical appearance, and a sense of inevitability of the relationship define the central core of eros. Eros can “strike” suddenly in a revolution of feeling and thinking ( Hendrick and Hendrick, 2019 , p. 244).

Sternberg (1986) provides a description of romantic love based on three components of love in close relationships: intimacy, passion and commitment. He calls it “romantic love” and describes it as such:

This kind of love derives from a combination of the intimacy and passion components of love. In essence, it is liking with an added element, namely, the arousal brought about by physical attraction and its concomitants. According to this view, then, romantic lovers are not only drawn physically to each other but are also bonded emotionally ( Sternberg, 1986 , p. 124).

A more recent definition of romantic love informed by evolutionary theory has been proposed by Fletcher et al. (2015) . Rather than providing a discrete series of sentences, they propose a working definition of “romantic love” that is explained with reference to some of the psychological research on romantic love and by summarizing five distinct features of romantic love. These features are:

(1) Romantic love is a powerful commitment device, composed of passion, intimacy, and caregiving;
(2) Romantic love is universal and is associated with pair-bonding across cultures;
(3) Romantic love automatically suppresses effort and attention given to alternative partners;
(4) Romantic love has distinct emotional, behavioral, hormonal, and neuropsychological features; and
(5) Successful pair-bonding predicts better health and survival across cultures for both adults and offspring ( Fletcher et al., 2015 , p. 22).

Despite these attempts to define and describe romantic love, no single term or definition has been universally adopted in the literature. The psychological literature often uses the terms “romantic love,” “love,” and “passionate love” (e.g., Sternberg and Sternberg, 2019 ). Seminal work called it “limerence” ( Tennov, 1979 ). The biological literature generally uses the term “romantic love” and has investigated “early stage intense romantic love” (e.g., Xu et al., 2011 ), “long-term intense romantic love” (e.g., Acevedo et al., 2012 ), or being “in love” (e.g., Marazziti and Canale, 2004 ). In this review, what we term “romantic love” encompasses all of these definitions, descriptions, and terms. Romantic love contrasts with “companionate love,” which is felt less intensely, often follows a period of romantic love ( Hatfield and Walster, 1985 ), and merges feelings of intimacy and commitment ( Sternberg, 1986 ).

Psychological Characteristics

Hatfield and Sprecher (1986) theoretically developed the Passionate Love Scale to assess the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components of romantic love among people who are in a relationship. There are other ways of measuring romantic love ( Hatfield et al., 2012 ), and some, such as Sternberg’s Triangular Love Scale ( Sternberg, 1997 ; Sumter et al., 2013 ) or the Love Attitudes Scale ( Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986 ; Hendrick et al., 1998 ), measure the same constructs ( Masuda, 2003 ; Graham, 2011 ). The Passionate Love Scale is only valid in people who are in a romantic relationship with their loved one. Regardless, the Passionate Love Scale provides a particularly useful account of some of the psychological characteristics of romantic love. It has been used widely in research investigating romantic love in relationships ( Feybesse and Hatfield, 2019 ).

Cognitive components of romantic love include intrusive thinking or preoccupation with the partner, idealization of the other in the relationship, and desire to know the other and to be known. Emotional components include attraction to the other, especially sexual attraction, negative feelings when things go awry, longing for reciprocity, desire for complete union, and physiological arousal. Behavioral components include actions toward determining the other’s feelings, studying the other person, service to the other, and maintaining physical closeness ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ).

Romantic love shares a number of physiological and psychological characteristics with addiction. “[T]hey focus on their beloved (salience); and they yearn for their beloved (craving). They feel a “rush” of exhilaration when seeing or thinking about him or her (euphoria/intoxication). As their relationship builds, the lover experiences the common signs of drug withdrawal, too, including protest, crying spells, lethargy, anxiety, insomnia, or hypersomnia, loss of appetite or binge eating, irritability and chronic loneliness.” ( Fisher et al., 2016 , p. 2) A number of reviews have highlighted the behavioral and neurobiological similarities between addiction and romantic love (e.g., Reynaud et al., 2010 ; Fisher et al., 2016 ; Zou et al., 2016 ).

There is evidence that romantic love is associated with increased hypomanic symptoms (elevated mood, Brand et al., 2007 ; Bajoghli et al., 2011 , 2013 , 2014 , 2017 ; Brand et al., 2015 ), a change (increase or decrease) in depression symptoms ( Stoessel et al., 2011 ; Bajoghli et al., 2013 , 2014 , 2017 ; Price et al., 2016 ; Verhallen et al., 2019 ; Kuula et al., 2020 ), and increased state anxiety ( Hatfield et al., 1989 ; Wang and Nguyen, 1995 ; Bajoghli et al., 2013 , 2014 , 2017 ; Brand et al., 2015 ; Kuula et al., 2020 ). See Supplementary Table 1 for information about studies investigating hypomania, depression, and anxiety symptoms in people experiencing romantic love. Romantic love is also characterized by cognitive biases which resemble “positive illusions,” which are a tendency to perceive one’s relationship and one’s loved one in a positive light or bias ( Song et al., 2019 ).

Proximate Perspectives

When applied to romantic love, the first of Tinbergen’s (1963) four questions asks: “What are the mechanisms that cause romantic love?” This can be answered with reference to social mechanisms, psychological mate choice mechanisms, genetics, neurobiology, and endocrinology ( Zeifman, 2001 ; Bateson and Laland, 2013 ). Research into the social mechanisms and genetics of romantic love are in their infancy, but there is substantial theory on psychological mate choice mechanisms and ample research has been undertaken into the neural and endocrine activity associated with romantic love. Additional insights can be garnered from the neurobiology and endocrinology of psychopathology, cognitive biases, and animal models.

Social Mechanisms

Some precursors to romantic love (others discussed below) that act strongly as social mechanisms that cause romantic love are reciprocal liking, propinquity, social influence, and the filling of needs (e.g., Aron et al., 1989 ; Pines, 2001 ; Riela et al., 2010 ). Reciprocal liking (mutual attraction) is “being liked by the other, both in general, as well as when it is expressed through self-disclosure” ( Aron et al., 1989 , p. 245). It has been frequently identified as preceding romantic love among participants from the United States and is cross-culturally identified as the strongest preference in mates among both sexes ( Buss et al., 1990 ). “Whether expressed in a warm smile or a prolonged gaze, the message is unmistakable: ‘It’s safe to approach, I like you too. I’ll be nice. You’re not in danger of being rejected”’ ( Hazan and Diamond, 2000 , p. 197). Reciprocal liking may encourage the social approach and courtship activities characteristic and causative of romantic love.

Propinquity is “familiarity, in terms of having spent time together, living near the other, mere exposure to the other, thinking about the other, or anticipating interaction with the other” ( Aron et al., 1989 , p. 245). It has more recently been named “familiarity” (see Riela et al., 2010 ). The extended exposure of an individual to another helps to cause romantic love and specifically facilities the development of romantic love over extended periods of time. Propinquity, in our evolutionary history, served to ensure that “potential mates who are encountered daily at the river’s edge have an advantage over those residing on the other side” ( Hazan and Diamond, 2000 , p. 201). Given that the pool of potential mates in our evolutionary history would have been limited by the size of the groups in which we lived and the fact that most individuals of reproductive age would already have been involved in long-term mating relationships, propinquity is likely to have played a particularly important role in the generation of romantic love. Until recently (to a somewhat lesser extent, today), with the wide-scale take-up of online dating, propinquity played a role in the formation of many long-term pair-bonds, and presumably, romantic love, as is evidenced by a relatively high proportion of people having met their romantic partners in the places where exposure was facilitated, such as school, college, or work ( Rosenfeld et al., 2019 ). Changes in the importance of certain precursors in causing romantic love may be the result of a mismatch between the modern environment and our genotypes that evolved in a very different environment (discussed in detail below; see Li et al., 2018 ).

Social influences are “both general social norms and approval of others in the social network” ( Aron et al., 1989 , p. 245). This may cause people to fall in love with others who are of a similar attractiveness, cultural group, ethnic group, profession, economic class, or who are members of the same social group. Social influences may, directly, impact who we fall in love with by providing approval to a romantic union or, indirectly, by facilitating propinquity. The effect of social influences is demonstrated in the relatively large number of people who met their romantic partner through friends ( Rosenfeld et al., 2019 ). The filling of needs is “having the self’s needs met or meeting the needs of the other (e.g., he makes me happy, she buys me little presents that show she cares), and typically implies characteristics that are highly valued and beneficial in relationship maintenance (e.g., compassion, respect)” ( Riela et al., 2010 , pp. 474–475). The filling of needs may cause romantic love when social interaction facilitates a union where both partners complement each other.

Psychological Mate Choice Mechanisms

Mate choice, in the fields of evolutionary theory, can be defined as “the process that occurs whenever the effects of traits expressed in one sex lead to non-random allocation of reproductive investment with members of the opposite sex” ( Edward, 2015 , p. 301). It is essentially the process of intersexual selection proposed by Darwin (2013) more than 150 years ago ( Darwin, 1859 ) whereby someone has a preference for mating with a particular individual because of that individual’s characteristics. Mate choice, to that extent, involves the identification of a desirable conspecific ( Fisher et al., 2005 ) and sometimes, the focusing of mating energies on that individual. Mate preferences, sexual desire, and attraction all contribute to romantic love. The concepts of “extended phenotypes” and “overall attractiveness” help to explain how these features operate. Romantic love, as discussed below, serves a mate choice function ( Fisher et al., 2005 ) and these mechanisms and constructs contribute to when, and with whom, an individual falls in love.

A large body of research has developed around universal mate preferences (e.g., Buss and Barnes, 1986 ; Buss, 1989 ; Buss et al., 1990 ; Buss and Schmitt, 2019 ; Walter et al., 2020 ). Women, more than men, show a strong preference for resource potential, social status, a slightly older age, ambition and industriousness, dependability and stability, intelligence, compatibility, certain physical indicators, signs of good health, symmetry, masculinity, love, kindness, and commitment ( Buss, 1989 , 2016 ; Walter et al., 2020 ). Men, more than women, have preferences for youth, physical beauty, certain body shapes, chastity, and fidelity ( Buss, 1989 , 2016 ). Both sexes have particularly strong preferences for kindness and intelligence ( Buss et al., 1990 ). A male-taller-than-female norm exists in mate preferences and there is some evidence that women have a preference for taller-than-average height (e.g., Salska et al., 2008 ; Yancey and Emerson, 2014 ). Mutual attraction and reciprocated love are the most important characteristics that both women and men look for in a potential partner ( Buss et al., 1990 ).

Mate choice and attraction may be based on assessments of “extended phenotypes” ( Dawkins, 1982 ; Luoto, 2019a ), which include biotic and abiotic features of the environment that are influenced by an individual’s genes. For example, an extended phenotype would include an individual’s dwelling, car, pets, and social media presence. These can convey information relevant to fitness. Overall mate attractiveness, which is constituted by signs of health and fertility, neurophysiological efficiency, provisioning ability and resources, and capacity for cooperative relationships ( Miller and Todd, 1998 ) may be another heuristic through which attraction and mate choice operate.

Many mate preferences are relatively universal and therefore are likely to have at least some genetic basis (as suggested by, Sugiyama, 2015 ). While mate preferences are linked to actual mate selection ( Li et al., 2013 ; Li and Meltzer, 2015 ; Conroy-Beam and Buss, 2016 ; Buss and Schmitt, 2019 ), strong mate preferences do not always translate into real-world mate choice ( Todd et al., 2007 ; Stulp et al., 2013 ). This is in part because mate preferences function in a tradeoff manner whereby some preferences are given priority over others (see Li et al., 2002 ; Thomas et al., 2020 ). That is, mate choice is a multivariate process that includes the integration and tradeoff of several preferences ( Conroy-Beam et al., 2016 ). Mate preferences are important because they may serve as a means of screening potential mates, while sexual desire and attraction operationalize these preferences, and romantic love crystalizes them.

Sexual desire and attraction may be antecedents to falling in love and there is evidence that physiologically, sexual desire progresses into romantic love within shared neural structures ( Cacioppo et al., 2012a ). However, although both sexual desire and attraction operationalize mate choice, only attraction, and not sexual desire, may be necessary for romantic love to occur (see Leckman and Mayes, 1999 ; Diamond, 2004 ). Intense attraction is characterized by increased energy, focused attention, feelings of exhilaration, intrusive thinking, and a craving for emotional union ( Fisher, 1998 ) although it exists on a spectrum of intensity.

Changes in the expression of at least 61 genes are associated with falling in love in women ( Murray et al., 2019 ) suggesting that these genes may regulate features of romantic love. The DRD2 Taq I A polymorphism, which regulates Dopamine 2 receptor density ( Jonsson et al., 1999 ), is associated with eros ( Emanuele et al., 2007 ). Polymorphisms of genes that regulate vasopressin receptors (AVPR1a rs3), oxytocin receptors (OXTR rs53576), dopamine 4 receptors (DRD4-7R), and dopamine transmission (COMT rs4680) are associated with activity in the ventral tegmental area which, in turn, is associated with eros in newlyweds ( Acevedo et al., 2020 ).

Neurobiology

Neuroimaging studies (see Supplementary Table 2 ) implicate dozens of brain regions in romantic love. We focus, here, on only some of the most frequently replicated findings in an attempt to simplify a description of the neural activity associated with romantic love and explain its psychological characteristics. Romantic love, at least in people who are in a relationship with their loved one, appears to be associated with activity (activation or deactivation compared with a control condition) in four main overlapping systems: reward and motivation, emotions, sexual desire and arousal, and social cognition.

Reward and motivation structures associated with romantic love include those found in the mesolimbic pathway: the ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens, amygdala, and medial prefrontal cortex ( Xu et al., 2015 ). Activity in the mesolimbic pathway substantiates the claim that romantic love is a motivational state ( Fisher et al., 2005 ) and helps to explain why romantic love is characterized by psychological features such as longing for reciprocity, desire for complete union, service to the other, maintaining physical closeness, and physiological arousal ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ).

Emotional centers of the brain associated with romantic love include the amygdala, the anterior cingulate cortex ( Bartels and Zeki, 2000 ; Aron et al., 2005 ; Fisher et al., 2010 ; Younger et al., 2010 ; Zeki and Romaya, 2010 ; Stoessel et al., 2011 ; Acevedo et al., 2012 ; Scheele et al., 2013 ; Song et al., 2015 ), and the insula ( Bartels and Zeki, 2000 ; Aron et al., 2005 ; Ortigue et al., 2007 ; Fisher et al., 2010 ; Younger et al., 2010 ; Zeki and Romaya, 2010 ; Stoessel et al., 2011 ; Acevedo et al., 2012 ; Xu et al., 2012b ; Song et al., 2015 ). Activity in these structures helps to explain romantic love’s emotional features such as negative feelings when things go awry, longing for reciprocity, desire for complete union, and physiological arousal ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ).

The primary areas associated with both romantic love and sexual desire and arousal include the caudate, insula, putamen, and anterior cingulate cortex ( Diamond and Dickenson, 2012 ). The involvement of these regions helps to explain why people experiencing romantic love feel extremely sexually attracted to their loved one ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ). The neural similarities and overlapping psychological characteristics of romantic love and sexual desire are well documented (see Hatfield and Rapson, 2009 ; Cacioppo et al., 2012a ; Diamond and Dickenson, 2012 ).

Social cognition centers in the brain repeatedly associated with romantic love include the amygdala, the insula ( Adolphs, 2001 ), and the medial prefrontal cortex ( Van Overwalle, 2009 ). Social cognition plays a role in the social appraisals and cooperation characteristics of romantic love. Activity in these regions helps to explain psychological characteristics such as actions toward determining the other’s feelings, studying the other person, and service to the other ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ).

In addition to activity in these four systems, romantic love is associated with activity in higher-order cortical brain areas that are involved in attention, memory, mental associations, and self-representation ( Cacioppo et al., 2012b ). Mate choice (a function of romantic love detailed below) has been specifically associated with the mesolimbic pathway and hypothalamus ( Calabrò et al., 2019 ). The mesolimbic pathway, thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, septal region, prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, and insula have been specifically associated with human sexual behavior ( Calabrò et al., 2019 ), which has implications for the sex function of romantic love (detailed below).

Isolated studies have identified sex differences in the neurobiological activity associated with romantic love. One study ( Bartels and Zeki, 2004 ) found activity in the region ventral to the genu in only women experiencing romantic love. One preliminary study of romantic love (see Fisher et al., 2006 ) found that “[m]en tended to show more activity than women in a region of the right posterior dorsal insula that has been correlated with penile turgidity and male viewing of beautiful faces. Men also showed more activity in regions associated with the integration of visual stimuli. Women tended to show more activity than men in regions associated with attention, memory and emotion” (p. 2181).

Endocrinology

Romantic love is associated with changes in circulating sex hormones, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, cortisol, and nerve growth factor systems. Table 2 presents the endocrine factors which are found to be different, compared to controls, in people experiencing romantic love. More information about the controlled studies discussed in this subsection is presented in Supplementary Table 3 . Endocrine factors associated with romantic love have most of their psychological and other effects because of their role as a hormone (e.g., sex hormones, cortisol) or neurotransmitter (e.g., serotonin, dopamine), although many factors operate as both (see Calisi and Saldanha, 2015 ) or as neurohormones.

Significant results of controlled endocrine studies investigating romantic love.

Romantic love is associated with changes in the sex hormones testosterone, follicle-stimulating hormone, and luteinizing hormone ( Marazziti and Canale, 2004 ; Durdiakova et al., 2017 ; Sorokowski et al., 2019 ), although the findings have been inconsistent. Testosterone appears to be lower in men experiencing romantic love than controls ( Marazziti and Canale, 2004 ) and higher eros scores are associated with lower levels of testosterone in men ( Durdiakova et al., 2017 ). Lower levels of testosterone in fathers are associated with greater involvement in parenting (see Storey et al., 2020 , for review). The direction of testosterone change in women is unclear (see Marazziti and Canale, 2004 ; Sorokowski et al., 2019 ). Sex hormones are involved in the establishment and maintenance of sexual characteristics, sexual behavior, and reproductive function ( Mooradian et al., 1987 ; Chappel and Howles, 1991 ; Holloway and Wylie, 2015 ). Some sex hormones can influence behavior through their organizing effects resulting from prenatal and postnatal exposure. In the case of romantic love, however, the effects of sex hormones on the features of romantic love are the result of activating effects associated with behaviorally contemporaneous activity. It is possible that sex hormones influence individual differences in the presentation of romantic love through their organizing effect (see Motta-Mena and Puts, 2017 ; Luoto et al., 2019 ; Arnold, 2020 ; McCarthy, 2020 , for descriptions of organizing and activating effects of testosterone, estradiol, and progesterone). Changes in sex hormones could help to explain the increase in sexual desire and arousal associated with romantic love ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ; Hatfield and Rapson, 2009 ; Diamond and Dickenson, 2012 ).

Romantic love is associated with decreased serotonin transporter density ( Marazziti et al., 1999 ) and changes in plasma serotonin ( Langeslag et al., 2012 ), although inconsistencies have been found in the direction of change according to sex. In one study, men experiencing romantic love displayed lower serotonin levels than controls and women displayed higher serotonin levels than controls ( Langeslag et al., 2012 ). Decreased serotonin transporter density is indicative of elevated extracellular serotonin levels ( Mercado and Kilic, 2010 ; Jørgensen et al., 2014 ). However, decreased levels of serotonin are thought to play a role in depression, mania, and anxiety disorders ( Mohammad-Zadeh et al., 2008 ), including obsessive-compulsive disorder (for a discussion of the relationship between serotonin and OCD, see Baumgarten and Grozdanovic, 1998 ; Rantala et al., 2019 ). One study showed that a sample of mainly women (85% women) experiencing romantic love have similar levels of serotonin transporter density to a sample of both women and men (50% women) with obsessive-compulsive disorder ( Marazziti et al., 1999 ), which could account for the intrusive thinking or preoccupation with the loved one associated with romantic love ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ).

Lower dopamine transporter density and lower dopamine transporter maximal velocity in lymphocytes have been found in people experiencing romantic love ( Marazziti et al., 2017 ). This is indicative of increased dopamine levels ( Marazziti et al., 2017 ) and is consistent with neuroimaging studies (e.g., Takahashi et al., 2015 ; Acevedo et al., 2020 ) showing activation of dopamine-rich regions of the mesolimbic pathway. One study ( Dundon and Rellini, 2012 ) found no difference in dopamine levels in urine in women experiencing romantic love compared with a control group. Dopamine is involved in reward behavior, sleep, mood, attention, learning, pain processing, movement, emotion, and cognition ( Ayano, 2016 ). Up-regulation of the dopamine system could help to explain the motivational characteristics of romantic love such as longing for reciprocity, desire for complete union, service to the other, and maintaining physical closeness ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ).

There are no studies that have specifically investigated oxytocin levels in romantic love (at least none that measure romantic love with a validated scale). However, studies ( Schneiderman et al., 2012 , Schneiderman et al., 2014 ; Ulmer-Yaniv et al., 2016 ) have demonstrated that people in the early stages of their romantic relationship have higher levels of plasma oxytocin than controls (singles and new parents). We infer this to mean that reciprocated romantic love is associated with elevated oxytocin levels. Oxytocin plays a role in social affiliation ( IsHak et al., 2011 ) and pair-bonding ( Young et al., 2011 ; Acevedo et al., 2020 ). Oxytocin receptors are prevalent throughout the brain including in the mesolimbic pathway (e.g., Bartels and Zeki, 2000 ). Elevated oxytocin could account for many of the behavioral features of romantic love such as actions toward determining the other’s feelings, studying the other person, service to the other, and maintaining physical closeness ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ).

Romantic love has been associated with elevated cortisol levels ( Marazziti and Canale, 2004 ), although this has not been replicated ( Sorokowski et al., 2019 ), and one study measuring cortisol in saliva found the opposite ( Weisman et al., 2015 ). Different results could be attributed to different length of time in a relationship between the samples (see Garcia, 1997 ; de Boer et al., 2012 ). Cortisol plays a role in the human stress response by directing glucose and other resources to various areas of the body involved in responding to environmental stressors while simultaneously deactivating other processes (such as digestion and immune regulation, Mercado and Hibel, 2017 ). Elevated cortisol levels may play a role in pair-bond initiation ( Mercado and Hibel, 2017 ) and are indicative of a stressful environment.

Romantic love is associated with higher levels of nerve growth factor, and the intensity of romantic love correlates with levels of nerve growth factor ( Emanuele et al., 2006 ). Nerve growth factor is a neurotrophic implicated in psycho-neuroendocrine plasticity and neurogenesis ( Berry et al., 2012 ; Aloe et al., 2015 ; Shohayeb et al., 2018 ) and could contribute to some of the neural and endocrine changes associated with romantic love.

Insights From the Mechanisms of Psychopathology

Despite “madness” being mentioned in one review of the neurobiology of love ( Zeki, 2007 ) and psychopathology being discussed in studies investigating the endocrinology of romantic love (e.g., Marazziti et al., 1999 , 2017 ), the similarities between romantic love and psychopathology are under-investigated. An understanding of the mechanisms that regulate addiction, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders may help to shed light on the psychological characteristics and mechanisms underlying romantic love and identify areas for future research.

Conceptualizing romantic love as a “natural addiction” (e.g., Fisher et al., 2016 ) not only helps to explain romantic love’s psychological characteristics but provides insight into the mechanisms underlying it (e.g., Zou et al., 2016 ). For example, a neurocircuitry analysis of addiction, drawing on human and animal studies, reveals mechanisms of different “stages” of addiction that have implications for romantic love: binge/intoxication (encompassing drug reward and incentive salience), withdrawal/negative affect, and preoccupation/anticipation ( Koob and Volkow, 2016 ). Each of these stages is associated with particular neurobiological activity and each stage could be represented in romantic love. This may mean that the findings of studies investigating the neurobiology of romantic love (which rely primarily on studies where visual stimuli of a loved one are presented) equates to the binge/intoxication stage of addiction. Findings from studies investigating romantic rejection ( Fisher et al., 2010 ; Stoessel et al., 2011 ; Song et al., 2015 ) may equate to the withdrawal/negative affect stage of addiction. Findings from resting-state fMRI studies ( Song et al., 2015 ; Wang et al., 2020 ) may equate to the preoccupation/anticipation stage of addiction. The result is that current neuroimaging studies may paint a more detailed picture of the neurobiology of romantic love than might initially be assumed.

Mood is an emotional predictor of the short-term prospects of pleasure and pain ( Morris, 2003 ). The adaptive function of mood is, essentially, to integrate information about the environment and state of the individual to fine-tune decisions about behavioral effort ( Nettle and Bateson, 2012 ). Elevated mood can serve to promote goal-oriented behavior and depressed mood can serve to extinguish such behavior ( Wrosch and Miller, 2009 ; Bindl et al., 2012 ; Nesse, 2019 ). Anxious mood is a response to repeated threats ( Nettle and Bateson, 2012 ). Because romantic love can be a tumultuous time characterized by emotional highs, lows, fear, and trepidation, and can involve sustained and repetitive efforts to pursue and retain a mate, it follows that mood circuitry would be closely intertwined with romantic love. Additionally, because romantic love concerns itself with reproduction, which is the highest goal in the realm of evolutionary fitness, it makes sense that mood may impact upon the way romantic love manifests. Understanding the mechanisms that regulate mood can provide insights into psychological characteristics of romantic love and the mechanisms that regulate it. No studies have directly investigated the mechanisms that contribute to changes in mood in people experiencing romantic love. However, insights can be taken from research into the mechanisms of mood and anxiety disorders.

While addiction, hypomania, depression, and anxiety symptoms in people experiencing romantic love may be the normal manifestation of particular mechanisms, symptoms associated with psychopathology may be the manifestations of malfunctioning mechanisms as a result of evolutionary mismatch (see Durisko et al., 2016 ; Li et al., 2018 ). As a result, the mechanisms that cause romantic love and those that cause psychopathology may not be precise models with which to investigate the other. Nonetheless, the mechanisms that cause psychopathology may provide a useful framework with which to base future research into romantic love. Conversely, it may also be that our understanding of the mechanisms that cause romantic love could be a useful framework with which to further investigate psychopathology.

The drug reward and incentive salience features of the binge/intoxication stage of addiction involve changes in dopamine and opioid peptides in the basal ganglia (i.e., striatum, globus pallidus, subthalamic nucleus, and substantia nigra pars reticulata, Koob and Volkow, 2016 ). No research has investigated opioids in romantic love, despite them being involved in monogamy in primates (see French et al., 2018 ) and pair-bonding in rodents ( Loth and Donaldson, 2021 ). The negative emotional states and dysphoric and stress-like responses in the withdrawal/negative affect stage are caused by decreases in the function of dopamine in the mesolimbic pathway and recruitment of brain stress neurotransmitters (i.e., corticotropin-releasing factor, dynorphin), in the extended amygdala ( Koob and Volkow, 2016 ). No studies have investigated corticotropin-releasing factor in romantic love. The craving and deficits in executive function in the preoccupation/anticipation stage of addiction involve the dysregulation of projections from the prefrontal cortex and insula (e.g., glutamate), to the basal ganglia and extended amygdala ( Koob and Volkow, 2016 ). No studies have investigated glutamate in romantic love. There are at least 18 neurochemically defined mini circuits associated with addiction ( Koob and Volkow, 2016 ) that could be the target of research into romantic love. It is likely that romantic love has similar, although not identical, mechanisms to addiction (see Zou et al., 2016 ; Wang et al., 2020 ).

Mania/hypomania (bipolar disorder)

Similar to the brain regions implicated in romantic love, the ventral tegmental area has been associated with mania ( Abler et al., 2008 ), the ventral striatum has been associated with bipolar disorder ( Dutra et al., 2015 ), and the amygdala has been associated with the development of bipolar disorder ( Garrett and Chang, 2008 ). These findings should be interpreted with caution, however, as replicating neuroimaging findings in bipolar disorder has proven difficult (see Maletic and Raison, 2014 ). Research implicates two interrelated prefrontal–limbic networks in elevated mood, which overlap with activity found in romantic love: the automatic/internal emotional regulatory network which includes the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, nucleus accumbens, globus pallidus, and the thalamus, and the volitional/external regulatory network which includes the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, mid- and dorsal-cingulate cortex, ventromedial striatum, globus pallidus, and thalamus ( Maletic and Raison, 2014 ).

Norepinephrine (theorized to be involved in romantic love, e.g., Fisher, 1998 , 2000 ), serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine play a role in bipolar disorder ( Manji et al., 2003 ). One study ( Dundon and Rellini, 2012 ) found no difference in norepinephrine levels in urine in women experiencing romantic love compared with a control group. No studies have investigated acetylcholine in romantic love but romantic love is associated with serotonin ( Marazziti et al., 1999 ; Langeslag et al., 2012 ) and dopamine activity ( Marazziti et al., 2017 ). Similar to the endocrine factors implicated in romantic love ( Emanuele et al., 2006 ; Schneiderman et al., 2012 , 2014 ; Ulmer-Yaniv et al., 2016 ), bipolar patients in a period of mania have also demonstrated higher oxytocin ( Turan et al., 2013 ) and nerve growth factor ( Liu et al., 2014 ) levels and lower levels of serotonin ( Shiah and Yatham, 2000 ). Additionally, there is some evidence that women diagnosed with bipolar disorder present with higher levels of testosterone whereas men present with lower levels of testosterone compared with sex-matched controls ( Wooderson et al., 2015 ). Similar findings have been found in romantic love ( Marazziti and Canale, 2004 ). Dysfunction in the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, where cortisol plays a major role, has also been implicated in bipolar disorder ( Maletic and Raison, 2014 ). Cortisol probably plays a role in romantic love ( Marazziti and Canale, 2004 ; Weisman et al., 2015 ).

Neuroimaging studies have implicated changes in functional connectivity in the neural circuits involved in affect regulation in people experiencing depression ( Dean and Keshavan, 2017 ). Increased functional connectivity has been found in networks involving some of the same regions, such as the amygdala, the medial prefrontal cortex, and nucleus accumbens in both people experiencing romantic love and people who recently ended their relationship while in love ( Song et al., 2015 ).

There are a number of endocrine similarities between romantic love and depression. One major pathophysiological theory of depression is that it is caused by an alteration in levels of one or more monoamines, including serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine ( Dean and Keshavan, 2017 ). Altered dopamine transmission in depression may be characterized by a down-regulated dopamine system (see Belujon and Grace, 2017 ), which is inferred from numerous human and animal studies, including successful treatment in humans with a dopamine agonist. In romantic love, however, dopamine appears to be up-regulated, especially in areas of the mesolimbic pathway (e.g., Marazziti et al., 2017 ; Bartels and Zeki, 2000 ; Acevedo et al., 2020 ). This could account for some findings that romantic love is associated with a reduction in depression symptoms ( Bajoghli et al., 2013 , 2017 ). However, these need to be reconciled with contrasting findings that romantic love is associated with increased depression symptoms ( Bajoghli et al., 2014 ; Kuula et al., 2020 ) and evidence suggesting that a relationship breakup in people experiencing romantic love is associated with depression symptoms ( Stoessel et al., 2011 ; Price et al., 2016 ; Verhallen et al., 2019 ). The mechanisms that underlie depression might provide a framework for such efforts.

Dysregulation of the HPA axis and associated elevated levels of cortisol is theorized to be one contributor to depression ( Dean and Keshavan, 2017 ). Changes in oxytocin and vasopressin systems (theorized to be involved in romantic love, e.g., Fisher, 1998 , 2000 ; Carter, 2017 ; Walum and Young, 2018 ) are associated with depression (see Purba et al., 1996 ; Van Londen et al., 1998 ; Neumann and Landgraf, 2012 ; McQuaid et al., 2014 ). No studies have investigated vasopressin in people experiencing romantic love. There is also decreased neurogenesis and neuroplasticity in people experiencing depression ( Dean and Keshavan, 2017 ), the opposite of which can be inferred to occur in romantic love because of its substantial neurobiological activity and elevated nerve growth factor (see Berry et al., 2012 ; Aloe et al., 2015 ; Shohayeb et al., 2018 ).

The insular cortex, cingulate cortex, and amygdala are implicated in anxiety and anxiety disorders ( Martin et al., 2009 ). There is also evidence that cortisol, serotonin and norepinephrine are involved ( Martin et al., 2009 ). The substantial overlap between the mechanisms regulating romantic love and those causing anxiety and anxiety disorders provides an opportunity to investigate specific mechanistic effects on the psychological characteristics of romantic love. Assessing state anxiety and these mechanisms concurrently in people experiencing romantic love may be a fruitful area of research.

There is also a need to clarify the role of the serotonin system in romantic love. Similar serotonin transporter density in platelets in people experiencing romantic love and OCD suggests a similar serotonin-related mechanism in both ( Marazziti et al., 1999 ). However, lower serotonin transporter density in platelets is indicative of higher extracellular serotonin levels ( Mercado and Kilic, 2010 ; Jørgensen et al., 2014 ). This is despite lower levels of serotonin being theorized to contribute to anxiety ( Mohammad-Zadeh et al., 2008 ). One study found lower circulating serotonin levels in men experiencing romantic love than controls and higher levels of circulating levels of serotonin in women experiencing romantic love than controls ( Langeslag et al., 2012 ). Insights from the mechanisms regulating anxiety disorders may help to provide a framework with which to further investigate the role of the serotonin system in romantic love and reconcile these findings.

Insights From Cognitive Biases

Positive illusions are cognitive biases about a relationship and loved one that are thought to have positive relationship effects ( Song et al., 2019 ). The research into positive illusions does not use samples of people explicitly experiencing romantic love, and instead uses people in varied stages of a romantic relationship, including those in longer-term pair-bonds. One study ( Swami et al., 2009 ), however, did find a correlation between the “love-is-blind bias” (one type of positive illusion) and eros scores. We also know that cognitive biases resembling positive illusions do exist in romantic love. Both the Passionate Love Scale (e.g., “For me, ____ is the perfect romantic partner,” Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 , p. 391) and the eros subscale of the Love Attitudes Scale (e.g., “My lover fits my ideal standards of physical beauty/handsomeness,” Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986 , p. 395) include questions about a respondent’s loved one that resemble measures of positive illusions. Understanding the mechanism that regulates positive illusions will provide a model against which the mechanisms regulating the cognitive features of romantic love can be assessed.

A proposed mechanism of positive illusions includes the caudate nucleus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, ventral anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortical regions, and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex ( Song et al., 2019 ). These regions overlap with the brain regions associated with romantic love. This suggests that the cognitive biases associated with romantic love may be related to, but are distinct from, positive illusions. Targeted neuroimaging studies could ascertain any involvement of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex in romantic love. Such research could help to delineate a mechanism that specifically regulates one cognitive aspect of romantic love from those that regulate other psychological aspects of romantic love.

Insights From Mammalian Pair-Bonding Mechanisms

It is not possible to say with any certainty if other animals experience romantic love. Some certainly engage in pair-bonding and exhibit behaviors that are characteristic of romantic love such as obsessive following, affiliative gestures, and mate guarding (see Fisher et al., 2006 ). While some similarities between humans and other animals may be the result of parallel evolution, an understanding of the mechanisms involved in pair-bond formation in other animals can raise questions and guide research into romantic love in humans. Research into monogamous prairie voles, in particular, has identified neurobiological and endocrinological mechanisms that regulate pair-bonding processes. Drawing on this research, a hypothetical neural circuit model of pair-bond formation (pair-bonding) that includes the ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens, paraventricular nucleus, amygdala, hippocampus, anterior olfactory nucleus, and medial prefrontal cortex has been proposed ( Walum and Young, 2018 ). Research implicates oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, and, potentially, serotonin and cortisol in pair-bonding ( Walum and Young, 2018 ). Most of these neural regions and endocrine factors have been implicated in romantic love in humans. The implications of this research become apparent when the phylogeny of romantic love is presented.

When applied to romantic love, the second of Tinbergen’s (1963) four questions asks: “How does romantic love develop over the lifetime of an individual?” This can be answered with reference to the age of onset of romantic love, its presence throughout the lifespan, and its duration. Questions of ontogeny also encompass issues around the internal and external influences on romantic love ( Tinbergen, 1963 ; Zeifman, 2001 ). We have also chosen to include some consideration of culture in this section because it influences the causes of romantic love. We find that romantic love first develops in childhood, is experienced at all ages in both sexes, usually lasts months or years, but can exist for many years or decades. It is influenced by a range of internal and external factors and is similar across cultures. The modern environment may influence romantic love in ways not present in our evolutionary history.

Romantic Love Over the Lifetime

Romantic love occurs from childhood through adulthood. It first manifests before puberty ( Hatfield et al., 1988 ), with boys and girls as young as four reporting experiences that equate to romantic love. Adolescence is the time in which romantic love first manifests with all of its characteristic features ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ), including the onset of sexual desire and activity and, potentially, pair-bonding. Romantic love may be more common among adolescents than young adults. In one study ( Hill et al., 1997 ), American university psychology students reported a greater occurrence of mutual and unrequited love experiences when they were 16–20 years old compared to when they were 21–25 years old. However, romantic love exists at all ages of adulthood in both sexes ( Wang and Nguyen, 1995 ).

There are few studies of psychological sex differences in romantic love. Those that exist (e.g., Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ; Hendrick and Hendrick, 1995 ; Cannas Aghedu et al., 2018 ) compare the overall intensity of romantic love and find no difference or slightly more intense romantic love in women than men. To our knowledge, no research has specifically investigated sex differences in duration or form of romantic love although it has been shown that some precursors to romantic love may play a greater role in one sex than the other (see Pines, 2001 ; Sprecher et al., 1994 ; Riela et al., 2010 ). As highlighted above, there are small sex differences in the neurobiology of romantic love ( Bartels and Zeki, 2004 ; Fisher et al., 2006 ) and sex differences may exist in the activity of testosterone ( Marazziti and Canale, 2004 ) and serotonin ( Langeslag et al., 2012 ) in people experiencing romantic love, although findings have been inconsistent. These neurobiological and endocrinological differences may, presumably, have differential effects on the presentation of romantic love which have not yet been identified by research.

The psychological features of romantic love are said to normally last between 18 months to 3 years ( Tennov, 1979 ), although studies have found that serotonin transporter density, cortisol levels, testosterone levels, follicle-stimulating hormone levels, and nerve growth factor levels do not differ from controls 12–24 months after initial measurement ( Marazziti et al., 1999 ; Marazziti and Canale, 2004 ; Emanuele et al., 2006 ). Unrequited love has been shown to last an average duration of between 10 and 17 months, depending on the type of unrequited love ( Bringle et al., 2013 ). In that study, unrequited love for someone that an individual pursued lasted the shortest period of time (10.12 months) and romantic love for someone who an individual knows but has not revealed their love to lasted the longest (18.44 months) in a sample of high school and university students from the United States. This contrasts with reciprocated romantic love that lasted even longer (an average of 21.33 months).

The early stages of romantic love characterized by stress may be distinct from a later period characterized by feelings of safety and calm ( Garcia, 1997 ; de Boer et al., 2012 ). The first stage, which is characterized by approximately the first 6 months of a relationship, has been described as “being in love.” It is marked by all the characteristics of romantic love, including, especially, romantic passion and intimacy. The second phase, which has been said to last from approximately 6 months to 4 years, has been referred to as “passional love.” During this time passion is maintained but commitment and intimacy increase. Passional love gives way to companionate love, passion subsides, and commitment and intimacy reach their peaks. While a description of these phases is informative, it is important to recognize that only one study has investigated these phases and they used a sample of predominately university students ( Garcia, 1997 ). Mechanisms research has not adopted these stages and “early stage” romantic love does not specifically refer to the first 6 months of a romantic relationship.

Romantic love exists on a continuum of intensity but can be classified categorically ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ). The authors of the Passionate Love Scale ( Hatfield and Sprecher, 2011 ) have developed arbitrary cutoffs for differing intensities of romantic love. However the thresholds that define them are not theoretically or empirically derived and are yet to be widely accepted in the literature.

Romantic love can commence abruptly or build up slowly, although the phenomenon of “love at first sight” may actually be strong attraction rather than romantic love, per se ( Sternberg, 1986 ; Zsok et al., 2017 ). In one study of Chinese and American participants, 38% of participants fell in love fast and 35% fell in love slow, with the remaining unknown ( Riela et al., 2010 ). Another study, of Iranians, found that 70% of participants fell in love slowly or very slowly ( Riela et al., 2017 ). Romantic love can end abruptly but often wanes slowly.

Regardless of the normal duration of romantic love, there is a general inverse relationship between the length of time in a relationship and romantic love ( Hatfield et al., 2008 ; Acevedo and Aron, 2009 ). Romantic love normally gives way to failure of a relationship to form, a relationship breakup, or transition to companionate love. However, in some individuals, romantic love can last many years, or even, decades ( O’Leary et al., 2011 ; Acevedo et al., 2012 ; Sheets, 2013 ). In romantic relationships that last, romantic love serves to bond partners together by creating shared understandings, emotions, and habits ( Hatfield and Walster, 1985 ) characteristic of companionate love and long-term pair-bonds. The transition from romantic love to companionate love is gradual and both types of love share many characteristics. In circumstances where romantic love is maintained beyond the initial few years, obsessive thinking about a partner is no longer a feature (e.g., Acevedo and Aron, 2009 ; O’Leary et al., 2011 ).

Internal and External Influences

A number of internal and external influences affect when, with whom, and how we fall in love. The scenario of attachment, separation, and loss in young children ( Bowlby, 1969 , 1973 , 1980 ) is similar to a “desire for union” and may be the groundwork for romantic attachments in later life ( Hatfield et al., 1988 ). To this extent, romantic love, like newborn/infant attachment, is “prewired” into humans as part of their evolutionary heritage ( Hatfield et al., 1989 ). Researchers “focus their investigations on the effects of mother-infant bonding in order to explain variations in the form, duration, and/or frequency of adult passionate relationships” ( Fisher, 1998 , p. 31). For example, a person’s adult attachment style is determined in part by childhood relationships with parents ( Hazan and Shaver, 1987 ) and this may have implications for the experience of romantic love (e.g., Hendrick and Hendrick, 1989 ; Aron et al., 1998 ). Romantic love is positively associated with a secure attachment style and negatively associated with an avoidant attachment style.

Precursors to romantic love include reciprocal liking, appearance, personality, similarity, social influence, filling needs, arousal, readiness, specific cues, isolation, mysteriousness, and propinquity (see Aron et al., 1989 ; Sprecher et al., 1994 ; Riela et al., 2010 ; Riela et al., 2017 ; see also Hazan and Diamond, 2000 ; Fisher, 2011 ). Research also suggests that conscious variables (personality and appearance), situational variables (proximity and arousal), lover variables (lover finds us attractive, lover fills important needs, similarity, and lover is best friend), and unconscious variables (similarity to relationship with parents, similarity of lover to father, similarity of lover to mother, and love at first sight) contribute to with whom we fall in love ( Pines, 2005 ). The majority of precursors are an interplay between internal and external influences.

Some of the most important precursors to romantic love include personality, reciprocal liking, physical appearance, propinquity, specific cues, readiness, and similarity ( Aron et al., 1989 ; Sprecher et al., 1994 ; Riela et al., 2010 , 2017 ). Personality is the “attractiveness of the other’s personality (e.g., intelligent, humorous)” ( Riela et al., 2010 , p. 474). This represents an interplay between internal influences (the preferences of the individual or what they find attractive) and external influences (the personality characteristics of the potential loved one). Reciprocal liking has been defined above and is a mixture of internal and external influences. Physical appearance, too, is an interplay between what an individual finds attractive, either through genetic predisposition or learned experience, and the physical attributes of the potential loved one. Propinquity has been defined and discussed above and is a combination of internal and external influences. Similarity is “having things in common, including attitudes, experiences, interests, and personal factors such as appearance, personality, and family background ( Riela et al., 2010 , p. 474). This is contingent upon both the individual’s characteristics (internal influence) and the potential loved one’s characteristics (external influence).

There are, however, some precursors that are explicitly internal or external influences. Readiness is “being emotionally or physically prepared for seeking a romantic relationship, such as having just broken up with someone and seeking comfort in a new partner” ( Riela et al., 2010 , p. 475). This can be a largely internal influence that can cause romantic love. Specific cues are “particular characteristics of the other (e.g., smile, shape of the eyes), that are relevant to the perceiver in producing strong attractions. This is not the same as attractiveness in general but refers to highly idiosyncratic features of potential love objects that are specifically important to the individual” ( Riela et al., 2010 , p. 475). These are largely external influences that cause romantic love, although they do trigger a biological or psychological response which is internally determined.

Cross-Cultural Perspectives

There have been a number of books (e.g., Jankowiak, 1995 , 2008 ) and studies that shed light on the cross-cultural nature of romantic love. The sum of research indicates that romantic love is probably universal (although the research is yet to prove this unequivocally) with relatively few psychological differences found between cultures (although cultures respond to love in different ways). An ethnographic analysis of 166 cultures from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample ( Jankowiak and Fischer, 1992 ; Jankowiak and Paladino, 2008 ) found no evidence of romantic love in only 15 cultures, and this was largely due to lack of data. Validated measures of romantic love (i.e., Passionate Love Scale, Love Attitudes Scale, Triangular Love Scale) have been used in at least 50 countries ( Feybesse and Hatfield, 2019 ). The Triangular Theory of Love is robust cross-culturally ( Sorokowski et al., 2020 ). Cross-cultural accounts of the features and the intensity of romantic love are remarkably similar (see Feybesse and Hatfield, 2019 for a review of cross-cultural perspectives on romantic love). Multiple neuroimaging studies have ascertained that the same neural mechanisms associated with romantic love in American samples are associated with romantic love in Chinese samples ( Xu et al., 2011 , 2012b ).

Romantic love may be thought of more positively among Western countries than other countries and Westerners report falling in love more often (see Feybesse and Hatfield, 2019 ). Cultural differences have also been identified in the role of precursors in causing romantic love. A comparison between Japanese, Russian, and American populations found that culture played a role in the self-reported importance of personality, physical appearance, propinquity, similarity, readiness, isolation, mystery, and social standing ( Sprecher et al., 1994 ). Some differences have also been found between Chinese and Americans ( Riela et al., 2010 ) and between Iranians and Americans ( Riela et al., 2017 ) using similar and different methods. In some cultures, romantic love is suppressed and arranged marriages predominate (discussed below).

Evolutionary Mismatch

The evolutionary mismatch hypothesis argues that humans are now living in environments vastly different from those in which they evolved and, as a result, biological mechanisms may not interact with the environment in the manner that they originally evolved to Li et al. (2018) . Adaptations may malfunction. This has implications for the functioning of mechanisms and psychology. Evolutionary mismatch may influence the occurrence, duration, form, and experience of romantic love. As already suggested, evolutionary mismatch may influence the degree to which certain social mechanisms play a role in causing romantic love. This may have flow-on impacts on the frequency with which an individual falls in love or with whom they fall in love. The increased exposure to potential mates may also lead to greater instances of relationship dissolution and new instances of romantic love than would have been the case in our evolutionary history. Evolutionary mismatch may also influence the duration of romantic love. Under evolutionary conditions, romantic love would usually occur in the context of reproduction, pregnancy, and childbirth (see Goetz et al., 2019 ). This may mean that the duration of romantic love may have been shorter in females than is the case in modern developed societies because they are overcome by mother-infant bonding, possibly at the expense of romantic love.

The form and experience of romantic love may also be impacted by evolutionary mismatch. Technology means that lovers are able to maintain regular contact (e.g., by telephone) or be exposed to images of the loved one (e.g., by photographs) in the absence of physical contact. This consistent exposure may be associated with more frequent activation of neural structures associated with romantic love (i.e., reward and motivation structures) and change the intensity or subjective experience of romantic love compared to evolutionary ancestors who may have been completely separated for periods of time.

Ultimate Perspectives

When applied to romantic love, the third of Tinbergen’s (1963) four questions asks: “What are the fitness-relevant functions of romantic love?” Functional explanations address the fitness ramifications (survival and reproduction) of the behavior or trait of interest ( Tinbergen, 1963 ; Zeifman, 2001 ; Bateson and Laland, 2013 ). We are, thus, concerned with both the fitness-relevant benefits and costs of romantic love. We have outlined the benefits and costs of romantic love associated with five functions based on a small literature on the subject (i.e., Fletcher et al., 2015 ; Buss, 2019 ), reproduction-related literature, and our consideration of the subject. Some of the benefits we describe can be considered functions in their own right (e.g., Buss, 2019 ). Table 3 presents a summary of benefits and costs of romantic love according to five distinct yet interrelated functions: mate choice, courtship, sex, pair-bonding, and health. Our approach is to describe each function, present the benefits associated with each function, and present the costs associated with each function. Where relevant, we have included information about related concepts or theories. We contend that while there is a small amount of evidence for the health promoting benefits of romantic love, the evidence is insufficient to say with certainty that health promotion is a function of romantic love. We conclude this section by summarizing some potential selective pressures and describing romantic love as a complex suite of adaptations and by-products.

Reproduction- and survival-related benefits and costs associated with each function of romantic love.

Mate Choice

Romantic love serves a mate choice function ( Fisher et al., 2006 ). Both men and women engage in mate choice ( Stewart-Williams and Thomas, 2013 ). Assessing potential mates has important fitness consequences for individuals, as the benefits of finding a suitable mate are often higher than mating haphazardly or with a randomly selected mate ( Geary et al., 2004 ; Andersson and Simmons, 2006 ; Jones and Ratterman, 2009 ; Shizuka and Hudson, 2020 ). On the other hand, mate choice is a costly and error-prone activity and, thus, it may be adaptive to focus one’s attention on a particular mate that has been identified as a preferred partner ( Bowers et al., 2012 ). Romantic love serves this function.

Mate choice evolved in mammals to enable individuals to conserve their mating energy, choose between potential mates, and focus their attention on particular potential mating partners ( Fisher, 2000 ; Fisher et al., 2006 ). The focus of one’s attention on a single potential mate is not without costs (e.g., Klug, 2018 ; Bear and Rand, 2019 ). Imperfect mate choice (e.g., Johnstone and Earn, 1999 ) could result from imperfect information (e.g., Luttbeg, 2002 ) or acceptance or rejection errors. Imperfect information might include the concealment of information that has detrimental effects on fitness. Time to assess an individual is important in mate choice and imperfect mate choice could potentially be a greater problem in circumstances where romantic love is quick to arise. Mate choice, by definition, excludes other potential mates and romantic love, in fact, suppresses the search for other mates ( Fletcher et al., 2015 ). This cost can be exacerbated in certain environments such as those within which finding additional mates is relatively easy ( Kushnick, 2016 ). Romantic love can detract from other fitness-promoting goals such as career-advancing activities, physical health promoting activities, or forming and maintaining other social relationships.

Romantic love serves a courtship function ( Fisher et al., 2006 , 2016 ). Courtship involves a series of signals and behaviors that serve as a means of assessing potential partner quality and willingness to invest in a relationship ( Trivers, 1972 ; Wachtmeister and Enquist, 2000 ). One function of the attraction system is to pursue potential mates ( Fisher, 2000 ). People in love often engage in courtship of their loved one with the aim of persuading them that they are a good long-term mate.

The primary benefit of courtship in romantic love is that it can secure a mate that is prepared to commit to a relationship. To do this, both sexes can pursue potential mates, display commitment, and signal fidelity ( Buss, 2019 ). These acts are why love has been described as a commitment device ( Frank, 1988 ; Fletcher et al., 2015 ; Buss, 2019 ). Courtship allows individuals to learn about and assess the suitability of potential mates while displaying reproductively relevant resources ( Buss, 2019 ). Men emphasize characteristics such as resources, while women emphasize characteristics such as beauty, in an attempt to increase attractiveness ( Buss, 1988 ; Luoto, 2019a ). Men, at least historically, also provide signals of parental investment ( Buss, 2019 ). Literature on human courtship from an evolutionary perspective supports the notion of greater choosiness among females, predicted by parental investment theory ( Trivers, 1972 ), for short-term mating and less serious commitments. This effect, however, substantially diminishes for long-term mating endeavors and marriage commitment ( Kenrick et al., 1990 ). The literature also suggests that women are looking for specific cues, indicative of evolved preferences, during the courtship process ( Oesch and Miklousic, 2012 ).

There are costs associated with romantic love’s courtship function. These include the expenditure of a significant amount of time and resources and, if courtship efforts are not reciprocated, embarrassment ( Silver et al., 1987 ). Sometimes, individuals in love might engage in intrusive “obsessive pursuit” of someone who is not interested ( Spitzberg and Cupach, 2003 ). Courtship can be a particularly stressful time for an individual. There are also potential costs because individuals who are courting might find themselves in direct intrasexual competition with another individual who has an interest in their potential mate. Intrasexual competition can be costly because an individual must divert additional resources to this endeavor. An individual bears even greater costs if they lose this competition. Both sexes can be subject to costly signaling as part of courtship ( Griskevicius et al., 2007 ), although men are at risk of higher fitness costs associated with temporally extended courtships, despite this being interpreted as a sign of a good mate by women ( Seymour and Sozou, 2009 ).

Romantic love promotes sex and may increase the chances of pregnancy. Sex is an important part of romantic relationships and initiation into sex with a partner, and a greater frequency of sex, is associated with the earlier stages of a romantic relationship ( Call et al., 1995 ). Sex and pregnancy are not, however, features of romantic love in pre-pubescent children and pregnancy is not a feature of romantic love in post-menopausal women. The nature of reproduction is different in societies where contraception and family planning practices are widespread (see Goetz et al., 2019 , for review of evolutionary mismatch in human mating). In such circumstances, immediate pregnancy may not be a feature of romantic love, whereas sex often is. In such circumstances, romantic love may indirectly promote pregnancy by creating pair-bonds whose members later reproduce.

Romantic love provides sexual access ( Buss, 2019 ). Love is one of the most common reasons people give for having sex ( Ozer et al., 2003 ; Meston and Buss, 2007 ; Dawson et al., 2008 ; Meston and Buss, 2009 ). Given the relative willingness of men to engage in short-term mating compared to women, it follows that sex because of love plays a greater role in providing sexual access by women to men than the other way around ( Meston and Buss, 2007 ). Sex can facilitate a gain in reputation ( Meston and Buss, 2007 ) and both sexes increase their status by having children ( Buss et al., 2020 ). Sex is intrinsically pleasurable and reinforcing, and promotes bonding ( Meltzer et al., 2017 ). In times before the advent of contraception, repeated sex with a partner would usually result in pregnancy and childbirth ( Goetz et al., 2019 ; Kushnick, 2019 ). This is still the case in many parts of the world.

For example, there is evidence that features characteristic of romantic love may be associated with a greater number of children among the Hadza, a hunter gatherer tribe in northern Tanzania ( Sorokowski et al., 2017 ). Higher passion, which is definitive of romantic love (e.g., Sternberg, 1986 ), is associated with a greater number of children in women. The findings are important because the lifestyle of the Hadza more closely resembles the environment in which humans evolved than do industrialized or agrarian societies. As a result, inferences can be made about the adaptive function of passion in human evolutionary history. However, intimacy, another component of romantic love ( Sternberg, 1997 ), was found to be negatively correlated with number of children in women. Instead, commitment, a feature of companionate love, was associated with greater number of children in both women and men ( Sorokowski et al., 2017 ). Romantic love is normally relatively short-lived, and therefore the methods used in this study may not have been ideally suited to investigate the fitness consequences of romantic love. Nonetheless, this finding provides some support for the notion that romantic love promotes sexual access by women and facilitates reproduction.

One study ( Sorokowski et al., 2019 ) suggests that romantic love may increase the likelihood of a woman falling pregnant. Higher levels of the gonadotropins, follicle-stimulating hormone, and luteinizing hormone, and a non-significant but positive increase in estradiol to testosterone ratio in women experiencing romantic love could cause increased ovarian activity and increased estradiol synthesis, which might result in higher fecundity ( Sorokowski et al., 2019 ).

The costs associated with romantic love’s sex function are far greater for women than for men ( Trivers, 1972 ). Both sexes could be subject to unwanted pregnancy and associated parenting responsibilities (although this impacts women to a greater extent). There is also, however, a risk of damage to an individual’s reputation. Women are often subject to criticism from other women for engaging in sexual activity ( Koehn and Jonason, 2018 ), especially if a long-term relationship does not result. Men and women risk damage to their reputation for having sex with a low mate value partner, although men are generally treated far more favorably than women for engaging in sexual activity (see Zaikman and Marks, 2017 ). For women, a period of pregnancy followed by a lengthy period of lactation may ensue, and this is costly in terms of the ability to obtain sufficient resources and protecting oneself from harm. There is also the possibility that the relationship will dissolve following pregnancy and the woman may be left to raise a child without the father’s support ( Koehn and Jonason, 2018 ).

Pair-Bonding

Romantic love serves a pair-bonding function ( Fletcher et al., 2015 ). Pair bonding is both a process and a sate characterized by the formation of “enduring, selective attachments between sexual partners” ( Young et al., 2011 , p. 1). It differs from established pair-bonds and the neural characteristics of people experiencing romantic love differ somewhat from what is associated with longer-term pair-bonds (see Acevedo et al., 2012 , for distinction). Evolutionarily, when sex more often led to pregnancy, this pair-bonding would occur in the context of pregnancy and childbirth (although it is unclear if romantic love can exist at the same time as mother-infant bonding). This is still the case in many parts of the world. This is one possible reason for the duration of reciprocated romantic love to be between 18 months and 3 years ( Tennov, 1979 ) when not interrupted by childbirth. The intensity of specific neural activity in people experiencing romantic love is associated with relationship maintenance ( Xu et al., 2012a ).

Romantic love can establish long-term pair-bonds. In both sexes, romantic love promotes the provision of psychological and emotional resources ( Buss, 2019 ) as well as other types of caregiving ( Fletcher et al., 2015 ). It promotes relationship exclusivity through fidelity, jealousy, and mate-guarding ( Buss, 2019 ). Both sexes engage in additional mate retention tactics such as vigilance, mate concealment, monopolization of time, resource display, love and care, or sexual inducements ( Buss et al., 2008 ). Romantic love also promotes the sharing of other resources such as food or money. This benefit for women would have been, and often continues to be, greatest during times of lactation (see Marlowe, 2003 ; Quinlan, 2008 ). Both sexes can also benefit reputationally, as being in a relationship with a high mate value individual confers status, and individuals who are married or in a relationship are viewed more favorably than single people ( DePaulo and Morris, 2006 ). Men experiencing romantic love engage in actions that lead to successful reproductive outcomes ( Buss, 2019 ), such as protecting partners from physical harm. Men also engage in parenting ( Geary et al., 2004 ; Bribiescas et al., 2012 ), which could potentially result in increased offspring survival ( Fletcher et al., 2015 ).

When people are experiencing romantic love they are usually, but not always, interested in pursuing a “long-term mating strategy.” A long-term mating strategy is one that involves commitment, pair-bonding, and the parental investment (if children result) of both partners ( Buss, 2006 ). This contrasts with short-term mating strategies that do not often require public commitment, pair-bonding, and parental investment of the father ( Buss and Schmitt, 1993 ). Pair-bonding is characteristic of a long-term mating strategy.

The concept of romantic love serving as a commitment device is relevant to pair-bonding, as are the concepts of fitness interdependence ( Buss, 2019 ) and self-expansion. Fitness interdependence is the degree to which two people influence each other’s success in replicating their genes ( Aktipis et al., 2018 ). Romantic love binds two individuals together so that the potential reproductive success of one person is contingent upon the success of the other. The self-expansion model suggests that “people seek to expand their potential efficacy to increase their ability to accomplish goals” and that “one way people seek to expand the self is through close relationships, because in a close relationship the other’s resources, perspectives, and identities are experienced, to some extent, as one’s own” ( Aron and Tomlinson, 2019 , p. 2). Fitness interdependence and self-expansion can be increased in people experiencing romantic love.

There are substantial costs associated with pair-bonding ( Kushnick, 2016 ; Klug, 2018 ). Both sexes are potentially missing out on long-term mating opportunities with other suitable mates and are more restricted in terms of short-term mating opportunities ( Geary et al., 2004 ). There is a potential for damage to an individual’s reputation if they are in a relationship with a low mate value individual ( Buss, 2016 ). Both sexes share resources. Pair-bonding is associated with a reduction in the size of an individual’s support network ( Burton-Chellew and Dunbar, 2015 ). Jealousy can have negative effects upon a relationship ( Buss, 2000 , 2019 ; Hatfield et al., 2016 ) and there is a potential for emotional or physical harm arising from a relationship. People sometimes engage in homicide of their current or former partners in response to infidelity, or as a result of jealousy or a breakup ( Buss, 2000 , 2019 ; Shackelford et al., 2003 ). Some women engage in this behavior, but it is predominately a male behavior, when it occurs ( Buss, 2019 ). Stalking can occur following a breakup ( Spitzberg and Cupach, 2003 ; Buss, 2019 ) or, more generally, as a result of romantic love ( Marazziti et al., 2015 ). There is the potential for grief or depression symptoms following the breakup of a relationship ( Verhallen et al., 2019 ). Changing living arrangements, dividing up resources, and legal costs could all be necessary following the dissolution of a pair-bond ( Bear and Rand, 2019 ). Sex-specific costs include sexual obligations to a partner from women and parental investment by men ( Geary et al., 2004 ; Luoto, 2019a ).

While there is evidence that successful pair-bonding is associated with better health and survival ( Fletcher et al., 2015 ), there is little evidence showing that romantic love is associated with good health. Falling in love is associated with alteration in immune cell gene regulation in young women ( Murray et al., 2019 ). Specifically, falling in love is associated with genetic changes that could potentially result in an up-regulation of immune responses to viruses.

Experiencing romantic love for a recently gained partner is associated with the “active/elated” symptoms of hypomania ( Brand et al., 2007 , 2015 ). These symptoms are considered as favorable, “bright side” symptoms and contrast with unfavorable “dark side” symptoms such as disinhibition/stimulation-seeking and irritable/erratic dimensions ( Brand et al., 2015 ). Despite their association with hypomania, the favorable nature of these symptoms in romantic love may be a sign of good physical and mental health because higher hypomanic scores have been associated with higher “mental toughness,” increased physical activity, lower symptoms of depression, and lower sleep complaints ( Jahangard et al., 2017 ). Additionally, falling in love with a partner is sometimes associated with a reduction in depressive symptoms ( Bajoghli et al., 2013 , 2017 ). A reduction in the number of sexual partners could result in a decreased risk of sexually transmitted infections. There is evidence that romantic love might sometimes be associated with improved sleep quality ( Brand et al., 2007 ; Bajoghli et al., 2014 ).

There are some health-related costs associated with romantic love for both sexes. Despite a reduced risk of sexually transmitted infections being a benefit of romantic love, engaging in sexual activity at all may represent an increased risk of sexually transmitted infection, resulting in a cost to some ( Buss, 2016 ; Koehn and Jonason, 2018 ). Infertility from sexually transmitted infections is possible among women ( Koehn and Jonason, 2018 ). Disinhibited/stimulation-seeking and irritable/erratic, depressed, and anxious mood are sometimes features of romantic love ( Wang and Nguyen, 1995 ; Bajoghli et al., 2013 , 2014 , 2017 ; Brand et al., 2015 ; Kuula et al., 2020 ). In the face of repeated unrewarding efforts or adverse events in the courtship process, depressed or anxious mood could result ( Nettle and Bateson, 2012 ). Romantic rejection can result in a major depressive episode or even suicide (see Rantala et al., 2018 ). Despite evidence of improved sleep quality in people experiencing romantic love in some studies ( Brand et al., 2007 ; Bajoghli et al., 2014 ), one study ( Kuula et al., 2020 ) found poorer sleep quality, later sleep timing, and shorter sleep duration (one feature commonly found in studies relied upon to suggest a sleep quality benefit of romantic love) in adolescent girls experiencing romantic love. This suggests that altered sleep may in fact be a detrimental cost in some people experiencing romantic love. Women have the added risk of birth-related complications and death, which has been common in humans until recently in developed countries ( Goldenberg and McClure, 2011 ).

Selective Pressures

The literature contains three interesting theories of possible selective pressures for romantic love. They are framed in the context of promoting the evolution of pair-bonds, but as will be detailed below, the evolution of pair bonds and romantic love are likely to be inexorably linked. All three theories relate to the provision of resources by males to females. The first theory is that pair-bonds and romantic love may have emerged prior to 4 million years ago when bipedalism emerged and hominins moved into the woodlands and savannahs of our ancestral homelands (see Fisher et al., 2016 ). The need for mothers to carry infants in their arms may have driven them to select partners that were wired for pair-bonds which was associated with provisioning, defense, and other forms of support.

The second theory is that biparental care was a driving force in the emergence of long-term mating strategies ( Conroy-Beam et al., 2015 ). A game theoretical approach contends that females selecting males that were wired for pair-bonds directly increased the chances of offspring survival through the provisioning of tangible and intangible resources to the female and offspring. If biparental care was a driving force in the formation of pair-bonds in humans, it would be a uniquely human pressure, as biparental care has been generally identified as a consequence, rather than a cause, of pair-bonds in mammals ( Opie et al., 2013 ; Lukas and Clutton-Brock, 2013 ). This theory also has to contend with the fact that father presence is often not associated with better offspring survival in societies with little access to health care or contraception (see Fletcher et al., 2015 ).

The third theory is that a need for increased fecundity drove the selection of pair-bonds ( Conroy-Beam et al., 2015 ). Periods of malnutrition cause decreased fecundity. Once again, a game theoretical approach suggests that the selection of males that were wired for pair-bonds, which is associated with provisioning of females, increased the caloric intake of females over prolonged periods of time and, in turn, increased fecundity. This hypothesis is appealing because this selective pressure could have been present at any stage among the four hypotheses we propose for the emergence of pair-bonds in a section below.

Romantic Love Is a Complex Suite of Adaptations and By-Products

In evolutionary psychology, an adaptation is “…an inherited and reliably developing characteristic that came into existence as a feature of a species through natural selection because it helped to directly or indirectly facilitate reproduction during the period of its evolution” ( Buss et al., 1998 , p. 535; see also Williams, 2019 ). This approach is based, rightly, on the difficulty of testing hypotheses about the adaptive benefits of traits in ancestral environments. There is an equally valid approach, however, adopted by behavioral ecologists, that views current utility of adaptations as evidence that can be extrapolated to the past ( Fox and Westneat, 2010 ). One definition that has arisen from this approach is that “[a]n adaptation is a phenotypic variant that results in the highest fitness among a specified set of variants in a given environment” ( Reeve and Sherman, 1993 , p. 9).

Taken together, these two approaches to adaptation support the view that romantic love is a “complex suite of adaptations” ( Buss, 2019 , p. 42). The numerous mechanisms recruited in romantic love, the large number of psychological characteristics, and the multiple functions it serves suggest that romantic love may be an amalgamation of numerous adaptations that respond to a variety of adaptive challenges. However, while romantic love may comprise several inter-related adaptations, this does not preclude the possibility that some components are by-products. A by-product is a trait that evolved “not because it was selectively advantageous, but because it was inextricably linked…to another trait that was reproductively advantageous” ( Andrews et al., 2002 , p. 48).

Health-promoting benefits of romantic love, such as elevated mood, increased sleep quality, and up-regulated immune responses, for example, may be by-products of mood circuitry (see Nettle and Bateson, 2012 ; D’Acquisto, 2017 ; Jahangard et al., 2017 ) or other mechanisms, even though they offer some survival or reproductive advantage. Elevated mood, better sleep quality, and an associated up-regulated immune system probably evolved prior to the emergence of romantic love (see Flajnik and Kasahara, 2010 ; Loonen and Ivanova, 2015 ). As a result, it might be prudent to contend that romantic love is a complex suite of adaptations and by-products.

Further, while the evidence points to romantic love as a suite of adaptations and by-products, it is not adaptive in every context. Romantic love continues to have its reproduction-promoting functions in the modern world in some circumstances, either by immediately promoting reproduction, or indirectly promoting reproduction via the formation of romantic relationships, the members of which later reproduce. To that extent, romantic love is sometimes adaptive (see Laland and Brown, 2011 , for distinction between “adaptation” and “adaptive” and lists of benefits, above, for examples of how romantic love can be adaptive). There are circumstances when romantic love may be maladaptive, however, as is evidenced by the substantial fitness-relevant costs of romantic love detailed above. Cogent examples of this are when a loved one is already in a committed relationship or otherwise not interested, when an individual engages in obsessive pursuit that can have social or even legal ramifications, or when violence ensues.

When applied to romantic love, the fourth of Tinbergen’s (1963) four questions asks, “What is the evolutionary history of romantic love?” Phylogenetic explanations focus on the origin and maintenance of a trait in historical evolutionary terms ( Tinbergen, 1963 ; Bateson and Laland, 2013 ). They put a biological trait in a comparative perspective by focusing on the presence or absence of the trait in closely, and sometimes more distantly, related species. In this section, we describe the theory of independent emotion systems and articulate a theory of co-opting mother-infant bonding mechanisms. We examine the primitive structures related to romantic love that arose in our mammalian evolutionary past and were restructured in pair-bonded species. We also examine the particular history of pair-bonds, and thus romantic love, in hominin evolution, with a comparison to other species of primates, especially apes. Finally, we examine the effect of gene-cultural evolutionary issues with regard to romantic love.

Independent Emotion Systems

Fisher’s ( 1998 , 2000 , see also Fisher et al., 2002 ) evolutionary theory of independent emotions systems delineates sex drive (lust), attraction (romantic love), and attachment (pair-bonds). Sex drive is primarily associated with estrogens and androgens and serves to motivate individuals to engage in sexual activity, generally. Attraction is primarily associated with the catecholamines (i.e., dopamine and norepinephrine), phenylethylamine, and serotonin and serves to focus efforts on preferred mating partners. Attachment is primarily associated with oxytocin and vasopressin and serves to enable individuals to engage in positive social behaviors and connections of a sufficient length of time to satisfy species-specific parenting approaches ( Fisher, 1998 ). Sex drive relates most to the sex function of romantic love, attraction to the mate choice and courtship functions, and attachment to the pair-bonding function. Romantic love shares similarities with the ‘courtship attraction system’ found in many mammals ( Fisher et al., 2006 ).

Co-opting Mother Infant Bonding Mechanisms

While the theory of independent emotion systems ( Fisher, 1998 , 2000 ; Fisher et al., 2002 ) has been the predominate theoretical account of the evolution of romantic love for more 20 years, comparative studies, imaging studies, and assessments of psychological characteristics have raised the possibility of a complimentary evolutionary theory, that of co-opting mother-infant bonding mechanisms. Literature on romantic love, maternal love (of which mother-infant bonding is a part), mother–infant bonding, and pair-bonding ( Bartels and Zeki, 2004 ; Ortigue et al., 2010 ; Numan and Young, 2016 ; Walum and Young, 2018 ) suggests romantic love may have evolved by co-opting mother-infant bonding mechanisms. Co-option is an evolutionary process whereby a trait (e.g., mechanism, morphology, behavior) is repurposed – that is, it serves a different function to that which it originally served (see McLennan, 2008 ).

Animal research, focusing on mammals, and involving, monogamous prairie voles, finds substantial similarities between mother-infant bonding mechanisms and pair-bonding mechanisms ( Numan and Young, 2016 ). “[A]mygdala and nucleus accumbens–ventral pallidum (NA–VP) circuits are involved in both types of bond formation, and dopamine and oxytocin actions within NA appear to promote the synaptic plasticity that allows either infant or mating partner stimuli to persistently activate NA–VP attraction circuits, leading to an enduring social attraction and bonding” ( Numan and Young, 2016 , p. 98). Some of these circuits do not appear to be involved in human romantic love, but there are other similarities that support a theory of co-opting mother-infant bonding in humans.

Several brain regions implicated in romantic love overlap precisely with that involved in maternal love. This includes activity in numerous regions that are associated with a high density of oxytocin and vasopressin receptors ( Bartels and Zeki, 2000 , 2004 ) although it should be noted that in the study that asserts this, participants included mothers experiencing maternal love beyond the mother-infant bonding stage. A meta-analysis of love also found romantic and maternal love shared activity in dopamine-rich areas ( Ortigue et al., 2010 ). Almost nothing is known about the mechanisms regulating the infant side of mother-infant bonding. However, some inferences have been made from animal models which suggest that the mechanisms may be similar to those regulating the maternal side, but without involvement of the amygdala (see Sullivan et al., 2011 , for review).

There are substantial psychological similarities between romantic love and early parental love, of which mother–infant bonding is a part. Extreme similarities exist between romantic love and early parental love in the domains of altered mental state, longing for reciprocity, idealization of the other, and dichotomous resolution of the establishment of intimate mutually satisfying reciprocal patterns of interaction usually marked by a culturally defined ritual ( Leckman and Mayes, 1999 ). Similar trajectories of preoccupation in romantic love and parental love also exist. In romantic love, preoccupation increases through the courtship phase and peaks at the point of reciprocity where preoccupation begins to slowly diminish. In parental love, preoccupation increases throughout pregnancy and peaks at the point of birth where preoccupation begins to diminish.

Mammalian Antecedents

Romantic love in humans is caused by physiological mechanisms whose evolutionary roots were planted in our early mammalian ancestors. These evolutionary roots provided the raw materials that were fleshed out, in evolutionary time, to form the basis of a wide range of social behaviors in mammals, including those related to sex drive, mate choice, and attachment ( Fisher, 1998 , 2000 ; Fisher et al., 2002 ; Broad et al., 2006 ; Carter and Perkeybile, 2018 ; Curley and Keverne, 2005 ; Fisher et al., 2006 ; Fischer et al., 2019 ; Johnson and Young, 2015 ; Numan and Young, 2016 ; Porges, 1998 ). Romantic love may have evolved after the neural circuitry associated with mate choice became populated by oxytocin receptors which played a role in the evolution of enduring social attraction and pair-bond formation (see Numan and Young, 2016 ). “[P]air bonding is the evolutionary antecedent of romantic love and…the pair bond is an essential element of romantic love” ( Walum and Young, 2018 , p. 12).

Examining the similarities between the neurobiological and endocrinological mechanisms involved in mother-infant bonding and pair-bonding in mammals, it becomes apparent that the maternal functions of this suite of adaptations arose deep in the evolutionary history of mammals ( Numan and Young, 2016 ). Their derived, pair-bonding functions would have arisen later in a very small number of species (only 3–5% pair-bond). As such, the neural circuitry and other proximate mechanisms involved in mother-infant bonding in mammals “may have provided a primordial neural scaffold upon which other types of strong social bonds, such as pair bonds, have been built” ( Numan and Young, 2016 , p. 99). We are, thus, on reasonably solid ground to posit evolutionary trajectories of romantic love. Figure 1 presents information and hypotheses about the evolutionary history of romantic love. Evolutionary trajectories of romantic love start with the ancestral mammalian mother–infant bonding mechanisms and culminate in their co-option and modification for pair-bonding in several mammalian lineages ( Numan and Young, 2016 ). Human romantic love results from one of these trajectories. In another trajectory—the one that includes pair-bonding prairie voles ( Microtus ochrogaster )—we know quite a lot about the functioning of oxytocin, vasopressin, and dopamine in facilitating pair-bonding (e.g., Carter and Getz, 1993 ; Carter and Perkeybile, 2018 ; Walum and Young, 2018 ). Although these derived changes to the primitive mammalian machinery may not be the direct evolutionary antecedents of those at work in humans (they are, rather, the product of parallel evolution), they provide a window into how basic machinery can be modified to affect those ends. One substantive difference appears to be the relative importance of the hormonal drivers in the smaller species, and the dopamine-related ones in humans ( Broad et al., 2006 ; Fisher et al., 2016 ).

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Phylogenetic relationships among select mammal species that pair-bond.

Pair-Bonds in Primates

Humans are members of the primate superfamily Anthropoidea, amongst whom there is great diversity in social systems, and whose ancestral state likely included complex group-based social relationships ( Kay et al., 1997 ; Shultz and Dunbar, 2007 ). This would have included long-term association between unrelated males and females—which is a far cry from the solitary system that is modal and ancestral for mammals ( Lukas and Clutton-Brock, 2013 ; Opie et al., 2013 ). There are even some members of this lineage who have evolved pair-bonds, such as the marmosets and tamarins (Callitrichidae), and gibbons (Hylobatidae). The similarities between these species and humans in terms of the adaptive suite related to pair-bonds, like the similarities between humans and voles, are due to convergent/parallel evolution ( French et al., 2018 ).

Our closest living relatives are the common chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ) and bonobo ( Pan paniscus ) with whom we share a common ancestor just 5–8 million years ago. While bonobos are alluring due to their free-willed sexual nature, common chimpanzees provide a better glimpse into the behavior of our direct ancestors. Although the common chimpanzee mating system is defined as promiscuous, there are, in fact, three forms of common chimpanzee mating tactics ( Morin, 1993 ). The first two—possessive mating and consortships—involve some of the characteristics we associate with romantic love, such as a more-than-fleeting association and mate guarding, but they are much rarer than the third type, opportunistic mating. The comparison of chimpanzees and humans, thus, suggests that one possible hypothesis for the emergence of romantic love is that it originated in their common ancestor (H1 in Figure 1 ). Alternatively, it might be that the common ancestor had an adaptive repertoire that was primed for its emergence when the requisite socioecological context arose. In this way, the evolution of romantic love from chimp-like mating is similar to the evolution of human culture from chimp-like culture.

For some, the origin of romantic love was more likely to have fallen somewhere on our side of the human–chimpanzee split (e.g., Fisher et al., 2016 ). Even so, we are left with the difficulty of pinpointing exactly when it arose—attributable to there being only one extant hominin species from amongst the many that have existed ( Pigliucci and Kaplan, 2006 ) and the lack of direct fossil evidence for romantic love. If we accept the conventional view that romantic love evolved to facilitate pair-bonding, then we can search for clues about the evolution of the former by tracing the evolution of the latter ( Fletcher et al., 2015 ). A transition from ape-like to human-like sexual behavior in our lineage may have pre-dated the emergence of the genus Homo ( Lovejoy, 1981 )—and, thus, we have a second hypothesis (H2 in Figure 1 ). A comparison of sexual dimorphism in Australopithecus and early genus Homo , however, suggests a third hypothesis—that it arose after their emergence (H3 in Figure 1 ). Several lines of evidence suggest that the earliest members of our species, Homo sapiens , pair-bonded but were not necessarily monogamous. Based on an examination of the distribution of mating systems in modern, small-scale human societies and three correlates of primate mating systems ( Dixson, 2009 ), it is possible to conclude that pair-bonds are a “ubiquitous” feature of human mating that can manifest through polygyny or polyandry, but most commonly occur in the form of serial monogamy ( Schacht and Kramer, 2019 ). The final hypothesis, thus, is that romantic love is the unique domain of our species (H4 in Figure 1 ).

The transition to mostly monogamous and some polygynous groupings could have had a transitional phase where polygynous groupings were the norm ( Chapais, 2008 , 2013 ). Pair-bonds may have arisen from a complex interaction between the fitness benefits and costs of mating and parental care ( Quinlan, 2008 ). The transition from ape-like promiscuity to human pair-bonds may have been driven by the provision of females by low-ranking males ( Gavrilets, 2012 ). The direct benefits for females was the food provided, for the males, the mating opportunity. This may have led to selection for males that were less aggressive and more prosocial. The female mate-choice mechanism is a distinct possibility for explaining human self-domestication ( Gleeson and Kushnick, 2018 ).

Gene-Culture Coevolution

Romantic love is a universal or near-universal feature in human societies ( Jankowiak and Fischer, 1992 ; Gottschall and Nordlund, 2006 ; Jankowiak and Paladino, 2008 ; Fletcher et al., 2015 ; Buss, 2019 ; Sorokowski et al., 2020 ). A small number of genetic correlation studies show that there are a number of genes associated with romantic love ( Emanuele et al., 2007 ; Murray et al., 2019 ; Acevedo et al., 2020 ). Other insights into the genetic evolution of romantic love can be garnered from elsewhere, however. For example, life history theory provides insight into ethnic or geographical variation in romantic love and its role in providing sexual access by women.

Romantic love is among the most common reasons female adolescents give for having sex ( Ozer et al., 2003 ). A “slow” life history strategy is associated with eros more than other loving styles ( Marzec and Łukasik, 2017 ). Psychopathology associated with impulsivity is a feature of a “fast” life history strategy, as is promiscuous sexuality ( Del Giudice, 2016 ). Greater impulsivity is associated with a reduced likelihood of giving romantic love as a reason for having sex among adolescent females ( Dawson et al., 2008 ).

As a result, genetic determinants of life history strategies (e.g., Figueredo et al., 2004 ) may influence the occurrence of romantic love. National scores on the life history strategy genetic factor index correlate with adolescent fertility rates indicating that genetic predictors of a fast life history are associated with higher rates of adolescent pregnancy ( Luoto, 2019b ). This ethnic or geographical variation in the genetic determinants of life history strategies may also represent ethnic or geographic variation in the genetic determinants and reproductive relevance of romantic love.

In addition to this, cultural factors may have affected the role of romantic love in mating and marriage decisions—and this has implications for understanding the evolution of romantic love ( Fletcher et al., 2015 ). Arranged marriages are the norm in 80% of 200 forager societies from the Ethnographic Atlas ( Apostolou, 2007 ). Phylogenetic methods to reconstruct the ancestral marriage patterns of our species using the same data found that there were likely marriage transactions (brideprice or brideservice) but only a limited amount of polygyny ( Walker et al., 2011 ). While the ancestral state for arranged marriages was not definitive, arranged marriages were likely present around 50 thousand years ago, when our ancestors expanded their range beyond Africa. So, despite romantic love being viewed as an important component of marriage and mating, it may have played a role of decreasing importance in the recent evolutionary history of our species. Arranged marriages may have limited the role of female mate choice in intersexual selection ( Apostolou, 2007 ). Further, despite romantic love’s decreased role in courtship and marriage, it may have continued to serve a role in facilitating pair-bonding as romantic love can develop even in the arranged-marriage context. The role of romantic love in facilitating mate choice, courtship, and marriage may now be increasing with the decline and modification of arranged marriages in many parts of the world (e.g., Allendorf and Pandian, 2016 ). This may be the result of the increasing sexual equality of women (e.g., de Munck and Korotayev, 1999 ).

Romantic love is a complex and multifaceted aspect of human biology and psychology. Our approach in this review has been to highlight how Tinbergen’s (1963) “four questions” can help us to synthesize the important strands related to the mechanisms, development, fitness-relevant functions, and evolutionary history of this phenomenon. Here, we synthesize what this review has presented in each level of explanation and suggest what this indicates about other levels of explanation. We then highlight some gaps in our knowledge that could be filled with future research and present a new ethologically informed working definition of romantic love.

What Do Tinbergen’s Four Questions Tell Us?

One of the benefits of using Tinbergen’s four questions as a framework to describe a complex trait such as romantic love is its ability for one level of explanation to provide insights into the other level of explanation (see Tinbergen, 1963 ; Bateson and Laland, 2013 ; Zietsch et al., 2020 ). In particular, an understanding of the proximate causes of romantic love has provided insights into the functions and phylogeny of romantic love although an understanding of the ultimate level of explanation provides some insights into the mechanisms of romantic love.

Multiple mechanistic systems involved in romantic love suggests it may serve multiple functions and may be a suite of adaptations and by-products rather than a single adaptation. We found that romantic love is associated with activity in a number of neural systems: reward and motivation, emotions, sexual desire and arousal, and social cognition. It is also associated with activity in higher-order cortical brain areas that are involved in attention, memory, mental associations, and self-representation. We also found that romantic love is associated with a number of endocrine systems: sex hormones, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, cortisol, and nerve growth factor. This is consistent with our position that romantic love serves mate choice, courtship, sex, and pair-bonding functions. Reward and motivation system activity may be particularly involved in the mate choice function of romantic love. Cortisol may be particularly indicative of the courtship function of romantic love, which overlaps with pair-bonding. Neural areas associated with sexual desire and arousal and the activity of sex hormones may play a particular role in the sex function. Finally, reward and motivation regions of the brain (rich with oxytocin receptors) and activity of the oxytocin system may play a particular role in the pair-bonding function of romantic love. Our understanding of the biological mechanisms that cause romantic love supports our description of romantic love’s functions.

Mechanistic similarities between romantic love and mother-infant bonding suggest that romantic love may have evolved by co-opting mother-infant bonding mechanisms. This articulates one hypothesis about the evolutionary history of romantic love that complements the predominate theory of independent emotion systems ( Fisher, 1998 , 2000 ; Fisher et al., 2002 ). This is supported by the psychological similarities between romantic love and early parental love.

Evidence of substantial activity of oxytocin receptor rich brain regions and the oxytocin endocrine system in romantic love lends weight to the position that romantic love only evolved after the neural circuitry associated with mate choice, specifically, regions of the mesolimbic reward pathway and dopamine rich areas, became populated by oxytocin receptors specifically receptive to stimuli from mating partners. That played a role in the evolution of enduring social attraction and pair-bond formation ( Numan and Young, 2016 ). This supports our claim that romantic love probably evolved in conjunction with pair-bonds in humans. As a result, we are bolstered when we contend that romantic love emerged relatively recently in the history of humans.

The duration of romantic love also raises questions about the functions of romantic love. It has been said that the psychological features of romantic love can last from 18 months to 3 years in reciprocated romantic love. However, in our evolutionary history, romantic love would have usually occurred in the context of pregnancy and child birth. Mother-infant bonding becomes active around the time of childbirth. We are not aware of any research that has investigated whether romantic love can occur at the same time as mother-infant bonding or whether it must subside for mother-infant bonding to become active. Answering this question would elucidate if the functions of romantic love extinguish once reproduction has been successful. The existence of long-term romantic love also raises questions about the functions of romantic love. It has been posited that long-term romantic love is “part of a broad mammalian strategy for reproduction and long-term attachment” ( Acevedo et al., 2020 , p. 1). This may indicate that long-term romantic love serves similar functions to romantic love that lasts a shorter period of time.

Just as the multiple biological mechanisms involved in romantic love suggests a variety of functions, the functions of romantic love specified in our review suggests specific biological mechanisms are involved. As outlined above, specific functions may be associated with specific mechanisms and this should be an area of targeted research.

The possibility of romantic love evolving by co-opting mother-infant bonding mechanisms raises a number of possibilities in relation to the proximate causes of romantic love. It suggests that social activity associated with mother–infant bonding (e.g., filling of needs, specific cues) may be particularly important precursors to, or features of, romantic love. It suggests that many of the genes and polymorphisms involved in causing romantic love may have been present in mammals since the emergence of mother–infant bonding, making comparative animal research using mammals relevant. It also suggests that further research into shared neural activity between romantic love and mother–infant bonding is warranted.

We contend that romantic love probably emerged in conjunction with pair-bonds in humans or human ancestors. As such, further information about the similarities and differences between romantic love (pair-bonding) and companionate love (established pair-bonds) is needed. In particular, information about any role of the mesolimbic pathway (see Loth and Donaldson, 2021 ) or regions associated with sexual desire in companionate love would help to shed light on the evolutionary history of pair-bonding and pair-bonds. Specifically, this could shed light on if, as has been suggested (see Walum and Young, 2018 ), romantic love and pair-bonds are inextricably linked.

Areas of Future Research

One issue with research into the mechanisms of romantic love is that it has, with some exceptions (e.g., Fisher et al., 2010 ), utilized samples of people experiencing romantic love who are in a relationship with their loved one. Romantic love serves a mate choice and courtship function, and as a result, a large proportion of people experiencing romantic love are not in a relationship with their loved one (e.g., Bringle et al., 2013 ). A small number of studies have directly investigated unrequited love (e.g., Tennov, 1979 ; Baumeister et al., 1993 ; Hill et al., 1997 ; Aron et al., 1998 ; Bringle et al., 2013 ), but none of these investigated the mechanisms that cause romantic love. Studying such people might identify the specific contributions of particular mechanisms to particular functions. For example, the mechanisms associated with the pair-bonding function of romantic love may not be active in individuals who are engaging in courtship and the mechanisms involved in courtship may not be present in lovers who are already in a relationship with their loved one. Research would benefit from considering the mechanisms that underlie related psychopathologies and it would be useful to understand the relationship between mate preferences and romantic love.

Molecular genetics research, such as that undertaken by Acevedo et al. (2020) , could further identify contributions of genes in people experiencing romantic love. Resting state fMRI provide an opportunity to investigate networks characteristic of psychopathology related to romantic love. Research should investigate the automatic/internal emotional regulatory network and the volitional/external regulatory network associated with mania/hypomania in people experiencing romantic love. Further research is required into the endocrinology of romantic love. In particular, further research is needed into the role of opioids, corticotropin-releasing factor, glutamate, acetylcholine, and vasopressin in romantic love. Efforts should be made to combine psychological and mechanisms research. For example, differences in neural or endocrine activity may be present in people experiencing romantic love who display elevated symptoms of depression compared to those who display reduced symptoms. As a result, neuroimaging and endocrinological studies could categorize people experiencing romantic love according to their levels of depression or type of hypomanic symptoms.

Given the large number of fMRI studies, interpreting the neuroimaging literature can be overwhelming. It has been nearly 10 years since the last meta-analysis of fMRI studies including romantic love. It is time for another one that focuses solely on romantic love. There is also a pressing need to attempt to replicate and extend endocrine studies and to specifically investigate the oxytocin system in people experiencing romantic love using validated measures of romantic love. As with many areas of psychological research ( Henrich et al., 2010 ), and specifically in areas related to mating psychology ( Apicella et al., 2019 ; Scelza et al., 2020 ), there is a pressing need to ensure that samples used in research are not exclusively Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.

Limited ontogeny research has elucidated the mechanisms causing romantic love across the lifespan. The literature that has (e.g., Luoto, 2019a ), has focused on mate choice, rather than romantic love, per se . We know nothing about the neurobiology or endocrinology of romantic love in children or about the endocrinology of long-term romantic love. It would be useful to investigate how the functions of romantic love differ according to age of individuals or the duration of romantic love. Internal and external factors influence romantic love, although there has been surprisingly little research into this topic. It would be prudent to continue to develop a more detailed understanding of the factors that lead to romantic love (e.g., Riela et al., 2010 , 2017 ). It would be useful to better understand the relationship between attachment styles and romantic love. Research should investigate if romantic love can occur at the same time as mother-infant bonding, or if they are mutually exclusive states.

Research into the functions of romantic love is sparse. There is a need for clear, evidence-informed definitions and descriptions of each of the functions of romantic love. It is likely that different mechanisms moderate different functions, and research should attempt to determine the contribution of specific genetic, neural, and endocrine activity to each individual function (see Zietsch et al., 2020 ). The advent of contraception and the adoption of family planning strategies means romantic love now serves more of a sex function than a pregnancy function in some environments. This is particularly the case early in a relationship. Pregnancy may become a feature as a relationship progresses and the fitness consequences of romantic love need to be investigated. Romantic love’s role as a suite of adaptations and by-products should be investigated. There is theoretical support for the notion that romantic love serves a health-promoting function (e.g., Esch and Stefano, 2005 ); however, there is a limited number of studies demonstrating a health-promoting effect of romantic love.

The relative infancy of genetic research, the lack of a clear fossil record, and the small number of species with which comparative analysis can be undertaken, means novel and creative means of investigating the phylogeny of romantic love must be undertaken. There is a need to pin-point the phylogenetic emergence of romantic love and the factors that caused it. To do this, more research into the genetics of romantic love must be conducted, and this should consider the phylogeny of specific genes and polymorphisms (e.g., Acevedo et al., 2020 ; see also Walum and Young, 2018 ). Efforts to assess the contribution of sexual selection to the evolution of romantic love are warranted. Studies of newly discovered fossils can help to identify shifts in sexual dimorphism that are indicative of pair-bonds. Further observational and experimental research into romantic love in hunter-gatherer tribes could tell us more about how romantic love functioned in our evolutionary history. Comparative research still has much to contribute. Research should explore the possibility that initial changes to the ancestral mammalian physiology that led directly to human romantic love arose in response to selection on both mating and non-mating-related behavior, such as pro-sociality (e.g., Barron and Hare, 2020 ; Luoto, 2020 ) or unique aspects of our species’ parenting repertoire. It might be fruitful to further investigate the relationship between romantic love and life history theory (e.g., Olderbak and Figueredo, 2009 ; Marzec and Łukasik, 2017 ). Finally, efforts should be made to elaborate and test the theory that romantic love emerged by co-opting mother–infant bonding mechanisms.

A New Working Definition of Romantic Love

The introduction to this review provided four definitions or descriptions of romantic love. For decades, most definitions ( Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986 ; Sternberg, 1986 ; Hatfield and Rapson, 1993 ) of romantic love have informed research into the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral characteristics of romantic love. The past two decades, however, have seen an increasing focus on the biology of romantic love. Only recently has an evolution-informed definition been proposed ( Fletcher et al., 2015 ). That working definition, however, does not incorporate much of the research that provides insight into the proximate and ultimate causes of romantic love.

We believe that the analytical approach taken in this review has identified sufficient information to justify the development of a new ethologically informed working definition of romantic love. The purpose would be to create an inclusive definition that is useful for researchers in varied disciplines investigating romantic love’s psychological characteristics, genetics, neurobiology, endocrinology, development, fitness-relevant functions, and evolutionary history. It may also be of use to psychologists and psychiatrists attempting to understand the experience and etiology of romantic love in their practice. It should be sufficiently precise and descriptive to both guide and link research. We provide, here, a working definition of romantic love:

Romantic love is a motivational state typically associated with a desire for long-term mating with a particular individual. It occurs across the lifespan and is associated with distinctive cognitive, emotional, behavioral, social, genetic, neural, and endocrine activity in both sexes. Throughout much of the life course, it serves mate choice, courtship, sex, and pair-bonding functions. It is a suite of adaptations and by-products that arose sometime during the recent evolutionary history of humans.

We situate the study of romantic love within the context of existing human mating literature. Our definition recognizes that romantic love is experienced across the lifetime of an individual, that research has shed light on the social, psychological, genetic, neural, and endocrine characteristics associated with it, and that it occurs in both sexes. Our definition also recognizes that romantic love serves a variety of functions and that these functions may vary across the lifespan. It does not exclude long-term or unrequited romantic love from the definition. Health is not identified as a function of romantic love in our definition despite being considered in our review. If more evidence comes to light, this definition can be amended to incorporate health.

Our definition has similarities and differences with the definition proposed by Fletcher et al. (2015) . This is appropriate given both are informed by evolutionary approaches which differ somewhat. We do not specifically define romantic love as being a commitment device or reference passion, intimacy, and caregiving. In our review, we recognize that romantic love is a commitment device and serves to display commitment and signal fidelity as part of its courtship function. We believe that reference to romantic love’s behavioral activity and courtship and pair-bonding functions sufficiently encapsulate this concept. Sternberg’s (1997) definition of romantic love and Fletcher et al.’s (2015) definition include references to passion and intimacy. Caregiving (e.g., provision of psychological and emotional resources, sharing resources), while associated with pair-bonding, is not sufficiently definitive of romantic love using Tinbergen’s four questions as a framework to include in our definition.

We do not reference the universality of romantic love. While some experts assert its universality (e.g., Fletcher et al., 2015 ; Buss, 2019 ), we believe that the finding of Jankowiak and Fischer (1992) leaves enough uncertainty for it to be prudent to omit this aspect from our definition. Their research has found no evidence of romantic love in fifteen cultures (see Jankowiak and Paladino, 2008 , for update to the original investigation) although this is probably the result of lack of data rather than evidence to the contrary. Once this matter is settled, which could be achieved by further investigating those societies where no evidence of romantic love was found, the definition can be amended. Fletcher et al. (2015) state that romantic love is associated with pair-bonds. We do the same by stating that pair-bonding is one of the functions of romantic love.

We also do not make specific reference to romantic love suppressing the search for mates. We recognize this as a cost in our review, but do not believe that this is so definitive of romantic love to include in our definition. Rather, we believe that our reference to “behavioral” activity and the “mate choice” function of romantic love in our definition sufficiently accommodates this feature. Our definition provides more detail than that provided by Fletcher et al. (2015) by including elements derived from substantial research into the mechanisms, ontogeny, functions, and phylogeny of romantic love. Like the Fletcher et al. (2015) definition, our definition recognizes that romantic love has distinct psychological characteristics and that we know about some of the proximate mechanisms that regulate it. However, as explained above, we do not include reference to the health-promoting effects of romantic love.

As more information about romantic love is gathered, we anticipate the definition to develop. However, we believe that this definition is an improvement upon previous definitions and adequately captures what is currently known about romantic love’s proximate and ultimate causes. It would be useful for researchers investigating romantic love from myriad perspectives. This definition should be critiqued and improved, and we welcome any such efforts from researchers and theorists across the spectrum of academic disciplines.

Our review provides a comprehensive account of the phenomenon known as romantic love. It covers topics such as social precipitants, psychology, genetics, neurobiology, and endocrinology. It provides an account of romantic love across the lifetime of an individual and is the first to propose four discrete reproduction-related functions of romantic love supported in the literature: mate choice, courtship, sex, and pair-bonding. It provides a summary of the benefits and costs of romantic love, outlines possible selective pressures, and posits that it is a complex suite of adaptations and by-products. We propose four potential evolutionary histories of romantic love and introduce the theory of co-opting mother-infant bonding mechanisms. We have identified a number of specific and general areas for future research. Our review suggests a new, ethologically informed working definition of romantic love that synthesizes a broad range of research. The working definition we propose serves to define a complex trait in a way that can both guide and link research from a variety of fields.

Author Contributions

AB conceived the manuscript. AB and GK collaborated on the development of the analytical framework and writing of the manuscript. Both authors approved the final version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the reviewers for comments that helped to improve the manuscript.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.573123/full#supplementary-material

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International Handbook of Love pp 23–39 Cite as

The State of Ethnological Research on Love: A Critical Review

William Jankowiak 4 &
Alex J. Nelson 4
First Online: 05 May 2021

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Within anthropology and sociology three primary theoretical lenses have arisen for examining love in cultural and transcultural contexts: (1) The social-structural perspective that examines how features of a society’s organization and beliefs give rise to particular conceptions of love and how changes to social structures further transform expectations and experiences of love; (2) The bio-social theory of love which merges social structural perspectives on cross-cultural variation with evolutionary psychological and cognitive perspectives aimed at explaining why certain aspects of love are culturally universal; and (3) The critical perspective of love that highlights how cultural constructions of love and the social structures that formed them give rise to social inequalities. After synthesizing these three perspectives we examine how they have influenced the findings of the latest ethnographic and empirical studies of love and its cross-cultural variability and continuity. We thereby compare the fruits each theoretical perspective has born as tools to interrogate love as both a psychological essence and cultural experience.

Romantic love
Ethnography
Cross-cultural research
Social theory
Companionate marriage

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Jankowiak, W., Nelson, A.J. (2021). The State of Ethnological Research on Love: A Critical Review. In: Mayer, CH., Vanderheiden, E. (eds) International Handbook of Love. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45996-3_2

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New book explores true love stories through the ages

Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Historical ‘true’ love stories spanning more than 2,500 years, from Ancient Greece to Georgian England, are explored in a new book by an award-winning classicist.

Ancient Love Stories: The Most Remarkable Romances in History is the first to chronicle some of the greatest tales of true love, spanning kings and queens, emperors and slaves, and warriors and philosophers from around the world.

Written by Dr Emily Hauser , Senior Lecturer in Classics & Ancient History at the University, it includes portrayals of jealousy, loyalty and betrayal, as well as a diversity of relationships, both hetero and same-sex.

The book, which contains illustrations by Swedish artist Sander Berg, is published this week , and will have a public launch at Exeter Library on 3 October , where the author will reflect on some of the stories.

“When we think about love stories, we usually go straight to fiction – Romeo and Juliet , or Helen of Troy and Paris ,” says Dr Hauser, who is based in Exeter’s Department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology . “But the pages of history are crammed with stories about love that are, quite literally, true. “Many of them are among the greatest love stories ever told – from tales of fearless queens and besotted emperors to men who died fighting for the men they loved. These accounts of passion, jealousy, hope and longing show that perhaps little has changed over the last three thousand years – love, above all, has endured.”

Development of the book began in 2021 when Dr Hauser was approached by publisher Bonnier Books UK with the story proposal. An active researcher across a range of historical and contemporary fields concerning women writers and their representation, Dr Hauser took on the challenge and began to research classic love stories from history.

What she discovered was that many of the most famous examples had a tendency to privilege male, hetero perspectives, and featured protagonists in the upper echelons of society. Determined to make the book accessible to a young adult audience, Dr Hauser widened her focus, drawing in new and underexplored stories. And so, alongside the likes of Antony and Cleopatra, and how the Taj Mahal came into being, there is Ignatius Sancho – the first person of African descent to vote in a British general election – and the story of the Sacred Band of Thebes.

“I have conducted research into the antiquities for many years, but the story of the Sacred Band of Thebes genuinely surprised me,” Dr Hauser reveals. “They were a band of 300 warriors in the fourth century BCE formed of 150 pairs of male lovers. The theory was that if you were in love with someone, you would do anything for them. They became a legendary squad, undefeated for 40 years, until eventually they fell in battle to Alexander the Great.

“They were buried at the scene and remained undiscovered until the 19th century. And when the tomb was excavated, they found that not only were there hundreds of male skeletons, but some had even been buried holding hands. It’s an incredibly poignant monument, lovers holding hands even in death – and it shows how love really can reach out to us across the centuries.”

Ancient Love Stories is Dr Hauser’s second work of non-fiction alongside How Women Became Poets: A Gender History of Greek Literature , which was published in August with Princeton University Press. She is also the author of an acclaimed trilogy of novels retelling the stories of the women of Greek myth, For the Most Beautiful , For the Winner , and For the Immortal .

Dr Hauser read Classics at Cambridge, where she received a double first with distinction and won the Chancellor’s Medal for Classical Proficiency. She has a PhD in Classics from Yale and was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.

Joining Exeter in 2018, Dr Hauser teaches several Classics modules, including one on writing women in the ancient world. Through her writing career, she also has a strong focus on public engagement and in particular, inspiring younger people to experience the classics, and humanities in general.

“My hope it that this book contributes to getting young people interested in history,” Dr Hauser adds. “If even one young person picks this up and is inspired to learn more, then it’s done its job.”

The public launch of the book, featuring a talk by Dr Hauser, will take place at Exeter Library on Tuesday 3 October, at 7pm. More details are available on Eventbrite .

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It's Valentine's Day, and I can't help but reminisce about the first time I fell in love. It was in 1982, and I was 10 years old. She was sophisticated, full of surprises, and very popular. And she was no cheap date. So for a year I mowed lawns and sold lemonade until I had enough money to get her. Eventually I did, and I called her Abigail. Our romance lasted for years.

This was no girl. It was a home video-game console called the Atari 2600.

As researchers, we're often assessing consumers' affinity for brands. But what I've found in my 15 years on the job is that beloved brands — like my Atari 2600 — are the strongest ones of all. After all, love is why Apple, Harley Davidson, Starbucks and more enjoy such strong positions in the market place.

But what is brand love? And how can we create it for our own brands?

Brand Love Is Real

That helps explain why we attribute human characteristics to brands, as Tim Halloran points out in his book "Romancing the Brand." Researchers from Stanford University found that consumers assign the same personalities to brands as they do to people. And Susan Fournier, of the University of Florida , found that consumers develop the same relationships with brands as they do with people. What's more, "she concluded that the strongest brand-consumer relationships exhibited qualities comparable to those of happily married couples."

What's most fascinating is that when we fall in love with a brand, like I did with Abigail, we unlock millions of years of evolutionary behavior. Scientists theorize that just as we're programmed to fear spiders and sharks, we're also programmed to fall in love, pair up with a single partner — and protect each other to ensure mutual survival.Tapping this evolutionary impulse to love is key to building strong brands, too.

Consider the following four examples:

Brand Love is Instinctual

Love is a brand defense mechanism.

The biggest threat to a human relationship is more attractive alternatives — in other words, the "other woman" or "the other man" who has got something you don't. Research has shown that when you love someone, you ignore those alternatives. When you're in love with a brand, you often do the same thing — buy it without considering any other brands. Brand love is a defense mechanism, and that's why brand loyalty should be one of the key metrics of any brand tracker.

Love fosters brand compromise

When two people love each other they are more apt to compromise over a disagreement. This is a signal to the other partner that you're willing to sacrifice for his or her well being. That's how brands like Tylenol and Jack in the Box — both of whom accidentally killed customers with their products — made a comeback. Their devotees forgave them. When doing research for a distressed brand, consider its potential to make a comeback by assessing the amount of brand love its consumers have for it.

Love promotes brand planning

Scientists have observed that people in love are more likely to talk about the future than people not in love. That's because, evolutionarily, planning with a loved one is a signal that this person is worthy of our future. This applies to brands, too. For instance, people invest in the Apple suite of products in anticipation of buying future Apple devices that best fit their platform. In this way, it's important for the researcher to know that clients building towards a long-range future shouldn't move forward until their customers have fallen in love with them.

Love Programs You to Promote Brands

People in love are more likely to smile at each other, move towards each other, nod their heads. And when you see those signals, you know you're with an ally. The same is true for brands: when a Harley Davidson fan wears a tattoo, he's signaling to others that they belong together. A brand that has a following can build love by creating brand signals that embrace the customer.

Creating Brand Love

So how does a brand create a loving bond with its customers? Here are at least three ways:

Don't allow a competitor to swoop in and take your prospective customers. If they do, and they build a loving bond, you may never get a chance to convert them. Instead, identify untapped markets and grab them before anyone else — and foster the kind of bond that can't be broken.

Be a Listener

A good spouse is a good listener, and the same is true of brands. Those that check in with their customer keep up with needs, wants and desires. That's where market research comes. Brand tracking, attitude and usage studies, segmentations, and basic qualitative check-ins can make the difference between a brand that's liked and one that's beloved.

Create Unforgettable Moments

Just last month, independent agency MBLM released its 2017 Brand Intimacy Report, which ranks consumers' emotional connection to brands. Topping the list is Disney — a 93-year-old company. How does it do it after all these years? It does it by creating magical moments that last a lifetime. In other words, the experience is the product. That's what we look for when we do shop-a-long studies: opportunities for clients to turn transactions into unforgettable experiences.

In Conclusion

Science proves that loving a brand is as real as loving a person. Love is something we've evolved to do, and harnessing this instinct is key to building brands that last. Creating loving bonds is no mystery; we listed three ways here. It isn't easy. But then again, love never is.

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Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling

Paul J. Zak

Studying the neuroscience of compelling communication.

It is quiet and dark. The theater is hushed. James Bond skirts along the edge of a building as his enemy takes aim. Here in the audience, heart rates increase and palms sweat. I know this to be true because instead of enjoying the movie myself, I am measuring the brain activity of a dozen viewers. For me, excitement has a different source: I am watching an amazing neural ballet in which a story line changes the activity of people’s brains.

Paul J. Zak is the founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and a professor of economics, psychology, and management at Claremont Graduate University, and the CEO of Immersion Neuroscience. He is the author of Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies .

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Historical ties between Indonesia and Australia's top-end illuminated after photo discovery unravels a family mystery

A young man stands on a beach, watching the water.

Behind him is everything he's ever known – his country, his family, the rhythms of life on a small, isolated island.

Ahead? A hazy horizon, and a foreign boat crew about to sail beyond it.

As the tide begins to turn, he has a big decision to make.

Soon he is on the boat, wind whipping his curly dark hair, on a historic, international voyage that's being pieced together for the first time in more than 150 years.

This is a personal story of heartache, lost love, and splintered families.

But it is also sweeping in scale, illuminating a little-known era in the history of the Australian continent, when the first waves of international travel created a web of cross-cultural romance and relations.

"The man in the photos is Dirrikaya, and he was my great-grandfather," says Sylvia Tkac.

A woman holding up a black and white photo of Dirrikaya

"He went overseas and had a family we've never met — and he wasn't the only one.

"So it's like a love story — and it's wild."

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this article contains images of people who have died.

A photo mystery

The identification of Dirrikaya brings full circle a history mystery triggered by the discovery of a trove of black and white photos in a dusty Italian museum collection in 2011.

The images of First Nations men on a white background

The portraits were taken in the Indonesian port city of Makassar in the 1870s and show a group of Indigenous people from Australia — including a young child.

The photos raised many questions.

Who were the young men, how did they get to South-East Asia, and how many other First Nations people moved overseas prior to contact with British colonisers?

Ms Tkac was at her home at Groote Eylandt on Australia's remote north coast when she first saw the photos broadcast on ABC News in early 2023.

"My cousin Amos rang me and goes, 'Guess what, those photos on ABC are our great-grandfather Dirrikaya.'

"I was so shocked!" she exclaims.

"And he started telling me about how our ancestors had sailed away to Indonesia with the visiting fishermen."

Two women and a man sit around a table looking at photos

It is impossible to prove beyond doubt that the man in the photos is Dirrikaya.

But local families say the body markings, physical resemblance and oral history make for a compelling case.

Who was Dirrikaya?

According to family lore, Dirrikaya was a slender teenager when he made the fateful decision to sail overseas.

He was an Anindilyakwa man, who bore scars etched in flesh during coming-of-age ceremonies.

A man holding up a black and white image of Dirrikaya

"That scarification, only the men have that, not the women," explains great-grandson Amos Wurramarrba.

"He would have been a strong cultural man."

Dirrikaya's ancestors are believed to have lived on their island archipelago for thousands of years before the Makassans arrived.

Anindilyakwa country covers several islands on the eastern edge of Arnhem Land, a mere 600 kilometres from the Indonesian archipelago.

In the 1600s and 1700s, as the trading of spices and seafood escalated across the Asia-Pacific region, things began to change for tribes across the northern coast.

An Indigneous man spanning the wings of a bat with a woman and three children watching.

Waves of Asian fishing crews from Makassar — the Dutch-run port of the eastern Indonesian island of Sulawesi — began to arrive. Sailing south with the trade winds, they set up camps on local beaches for months to harvest sea cucumber on an industrial scale.

It appears they were cautiously welcomed by local Aboriginal tribes who recognised a mutually beneficial arrangement.

"We gave the Makassans permission to get pearls and trepang [sea cucumber] and in return, they traded cloth and rice and knives and hooks," Ms Tkac explains.

Over the decades the visits became more regular.

Indonesian words were incorporated into local dialects, and the arrival of the Makassan boats woven into ceremonial dance and rock art still scattered in caves and cliffs.

A map illustration showing sea routes from Indonesia to Australia

Romances formed between the visiting fishermen and local women, resulting in babies and complex, cross-cultural family trees.

And, at some point, Aboriginal people started moving overseas with the visiting fishermen.

Among them was Dirrikaya.

'He wanted adventure'

It's thought the men and women who boarded the boats did so voluntarily.

"Think about it – you're on this isolated island, and you're offered the chance to sail away – I think he wanted to go," Ms Tkac says.

"I think Dirrikaya wanted adventure."

Mr Wurramarrba agrees.

"It feels good to be here, in my great-grandfather's footprints," he says, gazing out across the wind-rippled bay from where Dirrikaya departed.

"I think he and the other men that left with him wanted excitement and they wanted to travel.

"But the problem was Dirrikaya didn't tell his family where he was going, so they thought he must have died and were wailing for him."

According to oral history, a total of four Anindilyakwa men set sail with the foreign crew.

Not long after, the boat docked in the bustling port city of Makassar.

Clues buried in historic documents

The view from the port of Makassar at sunset.

Little is known about Dirrikaya's years in Indonesia.

But there's growing evidence that a significant number of Aboriginal people were living there at the time.

In 1824 the Dutch governor-general wrote in his journal of seeing Aboriginal people from Australia walking the streets.

A black and white photo of three Indigenous mena nd a child leaning on a pole with a mosque in the background

"They are very black, tall in stature, with curly hair, long thin legs, and, in general, are quite well built."

But the black and white photos are the only visual evidence that has surfaced of their presence during this period.

The studio portraits were taken in Makassar in 1873 by Italian naturalist Odoardo Beccari.

At the time he was travelling through South-East Asia, documenting the mix of people and cultures he encountered.

The same year he took the photos, Mr Beccari wrote in his journal:

"To Makassar come some [boats] every year from northern Australia … and Indigenous Australians are not uncommon in Makassar where you see them moving about in the streets."

His photographs remained buried in the archives of the Pigorini Museum in Rome until 2011 , when they were unearthed by University of Western Australia Professor Jane Lydon.

They're an invaluable piece of historical evidence, according to Monash University Professor Lynette Russell.

She's heading an international research project called Global Encounters, which is investigating early contacts on the Australian continent .

"This is a story that most people have no idea about, but there is no doubt that Aboriginal people came to Makassar and stayed and had families," she says.

"Some voyaged back to Australia, but others did not.

Professor Lynette Russell is looking at images

"I suspect the scale of the movement is probably larger than what we first thought."

The scenario challenges Australia's national origin story of a continent of landlocked people living in isolation for tens of thousands of years.

Professor Russell — who has Wotjobaluk heritage herself — says the migration north shows more than a sense of adventure.

"I think the Aboriginal people who decided to join the Makassan fleets showed extraordinary agency and entrepreneurship," she reflects.

"There was obviously also a network of friendships and relationships that developed.

"I think it's extremely likely that there are descendants of Aboriginal people here in Makassar, and descendants of Makassan sailors in Australia."

Family connection lost

According to family history, Dirrikaya lived in Indonesia for several years and had a wife and children.

But the pull of home proved too strong.

"He decided he needed to come home to see his country again and his parents … so he sailed back to Australia," explains Ms Tkac.

A photograph of a young man leaning in bush on a beach

It was a tearful reunion. Dirrikaya was back from the dead, and telling strange stories about a land far, far away.

But one thing had changed.

"He had two gold teeth!" reveals Ms Tkac.

"They sparkled in the sun. The family couldn't believe it."

But for Dirrikaya, amid the elation, there was grief.

He had left his wife and children across the ocean.

"He was hoping they would come to see him on the Makassan boats," Ms Tkac explains.

"But he watched the horizon every year when they came, and his wife and children were never there ... he cried for them."

A few years later came a decision that shut down any chance of contact.

As British settlements expanded across northern Australia, resistance to foreign visitors grew, and Australian authorities shut down the Asian trepang trade in 1907 .

Three men and tow women walking on a beach

"It was very sad for our old people," says Mr Wurramarrba.

"They didn't understand what was going on, and why the Indonesians stopped coming."

"Lots of families were torn apart."

Dirrikaya went on to have a wife and children back at his home on Groote Eylandt, but he never forgot his family in Makassar.

The Wurramarrba family is now on a mission to try to locate Dirrikaya's descendants in Indonesia.

"They're our family," Ms Tkac reflects.

"Who are they, where are they — I want to meet them."

And they are not alone.

Across the ocean, another family searching

The historic port precinct of Makassar is as viscerally different from Groote Eylandt as can be imagined.

A mosque looms over the glistening water.

A fisherman in a sarong watches on, standing on a boat in the port of Makassar.

In the bustling backstreets of Losari Beach vendors crowd the pavement, hustling to sell smokes and sweet biscuits.

Here, the Aboriginal families from the vast southern land would have stepped off fishing boats and surveyed the scene.

Professor Russell is wandering the laneways tucked behind the waterfront.

"What an overwhelming experience it must have been for them," she marvels.

"To be in this new place, full of different languages and food and smells – I think it's a universal feeling, that desire for adventure and to be outside of your comfort zone."

There are accounts of Aboriginal men living in homes in the area as trusted employees of well-to-do fishing captains.

And buried in the busy streets is a family with their own extraordinary personal story to tell.

Portrait of Pak Kahar in a street in Makassar

Kaharuddin Lewa, who is known as Pak Kahar, and his family are also searching for long-lost relatives.

His great-grandfather was a Makassan fishing captain named Using Daeng Rangka, who had an Aboriginal wife and children during his decades sailing to Australia.

"He liked and respected the Aboriginal people," Pak Kahar explains.

"He wanted to help them, and share with them his Islamic religion."

An Indonesian family sitting together in a kitchen

The family knows that Captain Rangka, an experienced trepang fisherman of the era, had journeyed to Australia dozens of times between 1855 and 1907.

And there's evidence he partnered with a Yolngu woman in Arnhem Land and had several children.

Pak Kahar unfurls a carefully drawn genealogical map on the living room table, as his cigarette smoulders in a silver ashtray nearby.

"We think that they had four children in Australia – two boys and two girls ," he says.

But contact was lost in the early 1900s when the fishery wound up.

A man sitting on a table with two young boys

Now the family wants to find their relatives in Australia and meet them.

"I really want to meet them, to complete the family tree with my Aboriginal family," Pak Kahar says.

"I will welcome them with joy and happiness, and gather everyone together.

"I want to get to know them closely, so our family ties grow stronger through the generations."

Their situation is a mirror image of the Wurramarrba family in remote northern Australia.

Two families, with lineage cut off by ocean and history, anxious to reconnect with relatives before the knowledge of what occurred on those remote northern beaches is lost forever.

The physical links to the era are fragile and vanishing.

Every year, the graves of Makassan trepang ship captains weather and crumble, while one historic ship captain's house — rumoured to be made from Australian timber — was recently demolished.

A rare recording revealed

There are no written records of Dirrikaya's departure and eventual return — the story has been passed down four generations of the Wurramarrba family by word of mouth.

An illustration of Dirrikaya's family tree with Dirrikaya on top

But recently a rare audio recording from more than half a century ago was found.

It contains Dirrikaya's story as told by his eldest son Charlie Galiawa Wurramarrba .

Ms Tkac plays the tape for her 78-year-old mother Margaret, who is Charlie's daughter.

Unmute to watch the emotional moment when the Anindilyakwa matriarch hears her father's voice for the first time since he died in 1978.

Charlie's voice is melodic and calm; a fragile wire connecting two eras.

"Long ago my father told me his story," the old man tells the interviewer. "He went away when he was young, while he was single, before he grew up. "Wanabadi the Makassan took him, took him away, and he went to their country. "My father was away for four years."

The recording is significant as it helps verify the accuracy of the narrative handed down over several generations.

Search for traces of Dirrikaya

Mr Wurramarrba has taken the family to a remote beach on an unusual quest — they're trying to locate Dirrikaya's remains.

After returning from his overseas adventure, Dirrikaya married a local woman and had several children.

He died an old man and was laid to rest at a beach along the western edge of Groote Eylandt.

Crucially, the family believes the gold teeth he had implanted in Makassar were buried with him.

Could they be the final and only physical evidence of his trip?

"When he died, his remains would have been put up in a tree and dried out," Mr Wurramarrba explains.

"Then the bones were wrapped in paperbark and tucked away where they were safe."

But the exact site is hard to find. Over the decades the landscape has changed and memories have faded.

But as she walks along the beach, Dirrikaya's closest living relative — Margaret Wurramarrba – has a flashback.

The frail matriarch becomes animated as she describes a memory from adolescence.

"I was here at the beach collecting berries, and I suddenly saw the gold teeth!" she exclaims.

"They were in a bower-bird's nest. The bird had found the gold teeth.

"I told my father and he told me to return them to where my grandfather was buried, under a big tree."

It's a tantalising lead, but after several hours of surveying the coastline, the search is called off.

The sun is starting to set, and the location of Dirrikaya's gold teeth — for now — must remain a mystery.

The family is determined not to give up.

DNA testing remains a possibility to prove a connection to relatives in Makassar.

But first, the search would need to be narrowed to a family group or community linked to Dirrikaya in a city of more than 2 million people.

"Seeing Dirrikaya's face for the first time lit something up inside me," Ms Tkac reflects.

"I want to know more now. What happened to our family in Indonesia, and can I meet them?

"His story has been passed down, it is our family's story, and we need to do our bit to keep it alive."

Images and video by Paul Bell, Mitchell Woolnough and Erin Parke
Graphics by Shakira Wilson and Gabrielle Flood
Production by Fran Rimrod and Kit Mochan

Editorial note: Images of deceased people have been published with permission.

Watch more of The Lost Families in the latest episode of Compass on Sunday, March 31 at 6:30pm on ABC TV or stream any time on ABC iview.

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'Soulmate thinking' could be standing in the way of a lasting marriage, research shows - here are 5 things to remember for a happy relationship

If you want lasting love then it might be time to stop looking for your soulmate - research has found that the happiest couples are the ones that put the work in.

Marriages are hard work, especially when you're parents. They require communication, boundaries and organisation - and there's not always time for this in between the school runs, night feeds and all the other jobs that keep tiny humans alive. So, it's normal for you to feel disconnected from your partner after having a baby - and if you're wondering how to fix your marriage or how to spice up a relationship , then you're not alone.

But you'd be forgiven if you were expecting life to be all puppies and roses after getting married and having kids. After all, that's what the movies have taught us. In fact, A 2021 YouGov poll of nearly 15,000 adults found that 60 per cent of respondents believe in the idea of soulmates. But this 'soulmate thinking' can actually make it more difficult to form a loving and lasting marriage, new research has shown.

A study from the Wheatley Institute looked at 615 couples and found that couples who engage in proactive behaviours such as showing compassion to each other, spending meaningful time together, regularly engaging in acts of kindness, and participating in regular maintenance behaviours to improve their relationship were the most likely to flourish.

In fact, high-connection marriages have three times higher scores on proactive behaviours than low-connection couples, specifically in spending meaningful time together (71 per cent vs 19 per cent), doing acts of kindness for each other (72 per cent vs 18 per cent), and forgiving offences (70 per cent vs 21 per cent).

Meanwhile, spouses in high-connection marriages score twice as high as spouses in low-connection marriages on life satisfaction (63 per cent vs 27 per cent) and life meaning (60 per cent vs 30 per cent).

The data led the researchers to conclude that "Enduring connection in marriage results more from the intentional efforts of the spouses than it does from spontaneous love and emotional spark."

Jason Carroll , the Director of the Family Initiative at the Wheatley Institute and lead author of the report, said: "The problem with the soulmate model of marriage is that it provides a deeply flawed conception of how to achieve this aspiration. This is because soulmate beliefs tend to place relationship success outside of one’s agency or choices."

Meanwhile, Adam Galovan , a professor at the University of Alberta and a co-author of the report, said: "At their core, soulmate beliefs provide a backwards depiction of the proper sequence of healthy relationship development. Such beliefs suggest that someone exists as your One-and-Only before you have even met. However, the findings of our study illustrate that oneness in marriage is primarily made, not found."

In other words, rather than finding your soulmate, Galovan suggests finding someone that you like and get along with and seeing how the relationship develops rather than worrying about finding 'the One'. Then, once both partners have committed to the relationship, he says, "They should put effort into building a ‘soulmate’ relationship with the person they’ve committed to".

And if you're in need of pointers that will help you put aside 'soulmate thinking', the researchers have offered five solutions:

Avoiding a consumer approach to relationships: This refers to staying in a relationship that might not be right until you feel someone better has come along.
Fostering realistic expectations about relationships: Don't expect your partner to be the source of all your happiness and the solution to all your problems - shifting your mindset can lead to a happier relationship.
Developing a mature understanding of love: A healthy, secure, and stable relationship is one where both individuals have a deep, emotionally intimate connection - not one that depends solely on big romantic gestures.
Following healthy dating trajectories: A healthy relationship takes time and effort to grow - it doesn't move too fast but it also doesn't slow down and become stagnant.
Maintaining optimism while resolving break-up: 'Soulmate thinking' can make break-ups feel even harder, but it's important to remain positive.

In related news, if you're feeling like you've gone off sex or struggle to connect with your other half, find out how explaining the mental load to your partner can help. Elsewhere, here are five signs you're parenting your partner .

'Soulmate thinking' could be standing in the way of a lasting marriage, research shows - here are 5 things to remember for a happy relationship

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Tiny Love Stories: ‘My Family Owned Your House’

Modern Love in miniature, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words.

A banner of six black and blue illustrations. From left to right: a woman brushing her hair; two clouds standing next to each other; a man lying down with his head in a woman's lap; a man and woman standing away from each other, both looking at their phones; a man holding a large potted plant; two men looking sad at a bar.

‘Good Yezha’

Yezha, my dad’s old dog, was missing one leg and all her teeth. Weeks before my son and I visited them in Warsaw, she stopped eating. My dad never let my childhood dog in the house. Yet, for Yezha, he’d fry naleśniki crêpes in butter and feed her the cheese filling when it cooled. He’d buy cabbage rolls at the grocery store, and we’d cheer when bites of meat stuffing made it past her gums. “Good Yezha,” we’d coo. My dad, twice divorced, grew up poor under communism. Wasting food was unthinkable. But he’d do anything to keep her alive. — Milena Nigam

Passing the Mantle

It was an endearing detail when we bought our Los Angeles home: “Jack,” “Eva” and “1977” carved into the mantle above the fireplace. Years later, an email arrived: “My family owned your house. I had a few questions,” wrote Carl, who wanted to surprise his wife, Iris, with the mantle her grandfather carved. (Her grandparents, Jack and Eva, would host friends in the den, now our living room.) As a romance author, I was wooed by the grand gesture. We arranged an exchange. The mantle now hangs in their Florida home, ready for Iris and Carl to add their names. — Jennifer Chen

Disappearing Without Explanation

Did I want her, or did I want to be her? My evangelical upbringing demanded the latter. We met in college. She was brilliant, beautiful, a patient chemistry tutor and instant friend. When she graduated, I visited her at her new apartment. We shared a bed. She slept; I fidgeted as the truth sank into my bones. Terrified, I disappeared from her life without explanation. Years later, I apologized but withheld any reason. She forgave quickly, gently — knowingly? Now a proud queer woman, I wish I could tell her I’m grateful for the role she played in my self-discovery. — Abbey Driscoll

Diamonds in the Gravel

When she was 4, my daughter experienced the death of her grandfather, babysitter and dog. Life, she quickly learned, could be heartbreaking. Soon after, she began collecting rocks, hiding them in her shoes at daycare to show me later. She thought she’d found diamonds, but it was only gravel. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but I bought a bag of tumbled stones to plant around the yard. She found every tiger’s eye, green agate and red jasper. With each, she’d rush inside, sweaty-palmed, offering it to me. And I’d confirm, repeatedly, what she had discovered: Life is also beautiful. — Charlotte Pence

See more Tiny Love Stories at nytimes.com/modernlove . Submit yours at nytimes.com/tinylovestories .

Want more from Modern Love? Watch the TV series ; sign up for the newsletter ; or listen to the podcast on iTunes , Spotify or Google Play . We also have swag at the NYT Store and two books, “ Modern Love: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption ” and “ Tiny Love Stories: True Tales of Love in 100 Words or Less .”

Tales About Love to Nourish Your Soul

The Cost of the American Dream: A physical relationship is nearly impossible for a hard-working Bangladeshi taxi driver and his wife, who longed for each other.

Who Is Trusted to Have a Child?: A married gay man and emergency pediatrician wrestle with expectations of having a “traditional” family life .

A Fetish for a Second Skin: As a gay Korean American, he yearned for the privilege of being heterosexual or white. So he began wearing latex , a new skin.

The Slap That Changed Everything: She kept trying to laugh off and normalize sexual aggression by men. Eventually, it all caught up to her .

Seeking a Lover, Not a Nurse: Disability shouldn’t make someone undesirable or impractical as a romantic partner.

Two Kisses We Never Talked About: Sometimes you really have to show up for your ex. This was one of those times .

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The Science of Siblings

At the heart of this cozy coffee shop lies a big sister's love for her little brother.

Yuki Noguchi

Sibling Coffee Roasters owner Libby Powell poses with her brother, Benjamin Withem, outside her West Virginia coffee shop. In her hand is an early photo of the pair — one they are trying to re-create. Susana Raab/for NPR hide caption

The Science of Siblings is a new series exploring the ways our siblings can influence us, from our money and our mental health all the way down to our very molecules. We'll be sharing these stories over the next several weeks.

There's a coffee shop in the historic center of Charles Town, W.Va., where Libby Powell's family memorabilia hang from the exposed brick walls.

On one shelf, there's a photo of Libby posing with her towheaded baby brother. A jar of oatmeal-and-butterscotch cookies called Salty Siblings perches by the cash register. An elegant copper roaster parked in the shop's front bay window churns out the store's custom blends, including a popular one with Ethiopian beans named after that baby brother: The Benjamin.

Powell named this place Sibling Coffee Roasters — and it stands as a testament to one of her most cherished relationships.

Powell was already 14 and in high school when her brother, Benjamin Withem, was born 34 years ago. By that time she'd already thought a lot about the significance of having a sibling in her life. She knew, through intuition and experience, what the scientific research now shows: That this connection can deeply affect our mental and physical health over the course of our lives , for good or for ill.

Libby Powell was 14 years old and a high school student when her brother, Benjamin, was born. Susan Raab for NPR hide caption

"We have a human need to bond," she says. "Your friends are going to come and go. But when it's family, if your sibling is your friend, they're going to be there forever."

About 80% of children in the United States grow up with a sibling. It's a relationship that usually comes with shared experiences of family and childhood — and maybe also shared bedrooms and rivalries. Research about siblings' influence on our development and psychology is a relatively new field . But scientific studies show those relationships shape us in myriad ways, seen and unseen. And the impact of those relationships — good or bad — endures well beyond childhood, into middle age and beyond.

In adolescence, siblings are very influential when it comes to risk-taking behaviors that can include things like sex or substance abuse . Even in middle age, being on good terms with our siblings continues to strongly correlate with our mental and physical well-being, especially during life transitions like a divorce or caring for ailing parents. Late in life, siblings can help support one another to maintain their health and companionship, and recounting shared memories can be a powerful antidote to loneliness .

"Siblings matter. They matter above and beyond our parents. They matter above and beyond our peers," says Shawn Whiteman, who studies human development at Utah State University.

A sibling worth waiting for

On this bustling Saturday morning, Powell picks up a bag of The Benjamin off the shelves by the cash register and reads its label: "Sibling's brotherly love blend." It is mild, in keeping with her brother's personality, with a blueberry-like flavor. "I definitely wanted that to encompass what his taste for coffee is," she says.

Powell says she once experimented with a dark roast she called "The Sibling Rivalry," but it didn't fit any part of her ethos.

"I hated it," she says. "And I don't like to fight with my brother, so I decided — we're not going to carry a dark roast."

As a girl, Powell — a Baptist preacher's daughter — yearned to have a brother or sister, and her parents, Mike and Naysa Withem, tried to have more children.

Sibling Coffee Roasters features a variety of house-made baked goods including a "Salty Sibling" cookie. Susana Raab for NPR hide caption

When Libby Powell was about 2, they started taking in foster children. Those experiences were inevitably marked by disappointment, because for one reason or another they could not stay, says Naysa Withem.

The last foster child, an older boy named James, stayed for seven years, and Powell grew up thinking of him as her actual big brother, complete with all the skirmishes and antics that come with traditional siblings.

"I remember the arguments, and getting into trouble with him, and doing things with him that were sneaky," Powell says.

But when he was 16, her foster brother chose to leave the family, a decision that left a 10-year-old Powell devastated: "I was alone. It was like all eyes were back on me, and I didn't know what that felt like because I don't think I remember being an only child." His absence, and the sense of isolation, fed her desire for siblings.

Her parents, meanwhile, were trying to have another child. "I remember my mom had gotten pregnant and I was so excited," Powell recalls. "I remember that feeling and thinking, 'I'm gonna be a big sister.'"

It was not to be: Powell was with her mother when she miscarried. "That was traumatic," says Naysa Withem.

Powell and her mother, Naysa Withem, load a display case with baked goods. Pierre Kattar/NPR hide caption

So when Baby Benjamin arrived two years later, his sister was waiting with open arms.

"I just remember just thinking: 'This is the prettiest baby I've ever seen in my life,'" she says, her voice rising with emotion. Her brother shuffles from around the counter in the shop's back kitchen and pulls her in for a tight hug.

Awash with gratitude that he was born alive and healthy, Powell says she doted on her brother like a doll, lathering him with lotions and changing his diapers and clothes.

Around the time Benjamin Withem was potty trained, Powell headed to college. Even though the time they overlapped in the same house was limited, her brother says he had developed a close connection with her that endured: "It's nice to always be reminded that you have these shared experiences that are constantly pulling you back together."

Sibling Coffee Roasters is a family affair; brother Benjamin Withem will stop by to indulge in a cold brew and chat with mother Naysa Withem, father Michael Withem, and sister and owner Libby Powell. Here, they pose in front of a quilt Naysa made for the shop. Susana Raab for NPR hide caption

An evolving relationship

The study of sibling relationships and their influence on how we think or act hasn't been as studied as other family relationships — like those between mothers and children, for example. Researching siblings also isn't easy, because no two families are alike. Variations like gender, age gap, or the number of siblings can really matter, making comparisons between families difficult and conclusions harder to draw.

One classic example where that can get complicated is birth order — something popularly believed to have a great deal of influence on our personalities. While some earlier studies suggested it might have some impact, most research doesn't bear out the idea that birth order has any lasting significance on who we become, says Utah State's Whiteman.

Still, siblings are overall very influential because they're usually our first peers. We might idolize them or battle them, but either way, through them we learn how to relate to others.

"Peers, if you have too many conflicts with them, they are just not going to be your friend anymore, but siblings really can't get away from it," says Nicole Campione-Barr, a psychologist who researches family dynamics at the University of Missouri. "So it's really one of our only training grounds socially to understand how to handle conflict in effective ways."

Powell says hello to her brother, Benjamin Withem, at her coffee shop. Susana Raab for NPR hide caption

Powell says hello to her brother, Benjamin Withem, at her coffee shop.

Libby Powell, for example, recalls how her brother used her as a sounding board — especially in his teen years, and especially after he'd made a mistake.

"If he was going to be in trouble or if he made a bad decision, he came to me first — and he was feeling out what my reaction would be," she says.

"I think he was testing the waters," she says, before having to tell their parents.

Naysa Withem, who's been watching her two children reminisce as she cleans the shop's kitchen, chimes in with a correction: "He was hoping you would cushion that with mom and dad," she says with a laugh.

The dynamics between siblings often change in young adulthood, as they explore independent paths. That was true also for Ben Withem who, after college, took a cybersecurity job in the Middle East — a world away from his sister in Charles Town.

Have a story about your sibling? Share it with us!

"That was definitely the most distance we've experienced," he says. And being that far was "almost like hitting the reset button" on their relationship, he says.

Powell found that "reset" difficult and says she felt angry. "I felt those same feelings when James left — when my foster brother left," she explains. At the same time, her brother had recently married, which meant Powell had to adjust to make room for another important person in his life. "That was hard for me because I'm sharing my little brother, who I thought that I had a little control over."

Libby Powell says that she and her brother were always close and have hardly ever fought. Susana Raab for NPR hide caption

It was the only time they remember any tension existing between them. They had one fight, which culminated with Powell accepting her brother as an adult peer.

"He was taking a stand as an adult for the first time ... and I was put exactly where I needed to be put," Powell recalls, nodding approvingly toward her brother. Benjamin Withem, the more introverted sibling, agrees silently, deferring to her memory.

Through their adult lives, coffee played a big role in keeping them connected. Withem loved good coffee, and Powell says she relied on bad coffee for decades to get her through working overnight shifts as a nurse. He tried roasting beans in his popcorn popper; she eventually began following her younger brother's lead and upgraded to their current, kitchen-table-size industrial roaster.

Powell discovered she loved the taste of her own freshly roasted beans, as well as the coffee culture and social life that surrounded it.

Powell roasts her own coffee beans at her shop in West Virginia. Pierre Kattar/NPR hide caption

"I just found that coffee — the way that he would describe it — it wasn't just a drink, but it was a relationship," she says.

When she opened Sibling Coffee Roasters five years ago, Powell saw it as a kind of extension of that relationship, a chance to share the warmth and support she associates with siblinghood. She says the shop connects her to the community she's lived in her whole life, and it gives her an excuse to talk to people about their lives and their troubles.

"I always wanted to feel cared for, and I always have felt that way," she says, "and I know that there's just way too many people out there that don't."

Powell says the coffee shop is a kind of extension of her relationship with her brother, a chance to share the warmth and support she associates with siblinghood. Susana Raab for NPR hide caption

Powell says the coffee shop is a kind of extension of her relationship with her brother, a chance to share the warmth and support she associates with siblinghood.

Sibling Coffee Roasters also reflects the dream that Benjamin Withem will eventually open up another shop as they grow old together.

It's a sentiment he shares, he says. "I see the name she picked as the open invitation."

sibling relationships
Science of Siblings
family and relationships
coffee culture
healthy relationship
broken relationships

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Scientists find a few surprises in their study of love
The early phase of love is quite different" from later phases. During the first love-year, serotonin levels gradually return to normal, and the "stupid" and "obsessive" aspects of the condition moderate. That period is followed by increases in the hormone oxytocin, a neurotransmitter associated with a calmer, more mature form of love.
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It is a systematic and seminal analysis whose major ideas. have probably influenced contemporary work on love more than all subsequent philosophical work combined. However, four major intellectual developments of the 19th and 20th centuries provided key insights that helped shape the agenda for current research and theory of love.
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What is love? Stanford researchers and scholars examine matters of the heart. From the fields of science to sociology, politics and philosophy, here is what Stanford research says about love and ...
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Such a survey rapidly becomes prohibitively time-consuming, especially if we want to study atypical research samples (e.g., senior executives). Meredith Chivers: Sexuality research is still associated with discomfort and taboo for people outside the area. When preparing ethics and grant applications, we need to take extra care to present our ...
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According to a team of scientists led by Dr. Helen Fisher at Rutgers, romantic love can be broken down into three categories: lust, attraction, and attachment. Each category is characterized by its own set of hormones stemming from the brain (Table 1). Table 1: Love can be distilled into three categories: lust, attraction, and attachment.
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"Wired for Love" is the neurobiological story of how love rewires the brain. It's also a personal love story — one that took a sad turn when John died of cancer in March 2018.
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It feels instinctive but research reveals that many aspects of romantic love we take for granted are socially constructed. Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
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Drawing on extensive research and fascinating examples of real couples, Sternberg identifies 26 types of love story—including the fantasy story, the business story, the collector story, the horror story, and many others—each with its distinctive advantages and pitfalls, and many of which are clashingly incompatible.
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In general, averaged scores of 7 to 9 are high, Indicating a strong attraction to a story, and 1 to 3 are low, indicating little or no interest in the story. Moderate scores of 4 to 6 Indicate ...
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Despite the political barrier to love research in the U.S., other countries, particularly Canada, have taken a more enlightened view, as have at least two private foundations. ... TO LOVE, OR NOT TO LOVE. Love Stories of Later Life: A Narrative Approach to Understanding Romance (Amanda Smith Barusch. Oxford University Press, 2008.) This book is ...
Love as story, love as storytelling
Drawing on extensive research and fascinating examples of real couples, Sternberg identifies 26 types of love story—including the fantasy story, the business story, the collector story, the ...
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The first theme is Love stories exist within larger narrative contexts. This theme consists of how the couples' relationships are influenced by larger narrative contexts, such as religion and past relationships. Those larger narrative contexts influence how each couple co-constructs love together.
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In Falling in Love: Stories from Ming China 99, Patrick Hanan notes that, ... Further information on research design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.
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Why scholarly hearts are beating for Love Studies. Romantic love is an increasingly popular topic of study within the academy, exploring issues ranging from how technology is changing ...
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Abstract. This article advances the view that love is a story. The article discusses relationships as stories, what our stories are like, kinds of stories, where stories come from, how stories control the development of relationships, the difficulty of changing stories, the role of ideal stories, the cultural matrix of stories and relations to ...
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There have been a number of books (e.g., Jankowiak, 1995, 2008) and studies that shed light on the cross-cultural nature of romantic love. The sum of research indicates that romantic love is probably universal (although the research is yet to prove this unequivocally) with relatively few psychological differences found between cultures ...
Meaning-making Through Love Stories in Cultural Perspectives ...
In this book chapter, it is argued that love, as a socio-cultural construct, needs contextualisation to be understood in depth and to create meaning with regard to its definition and its emotional experience, as described by Beall and Sternberg ().Different forms of love, conceptions, experiences and expressions have been distinguished across cultures and contexts so far (Shumway, 2003).
Podcast: The Latest Research to Live Happily Ever After
But in our research we have identified the 26 most common love stories and we have grouped them in five different groups. So one group of love stories has a theme of working together or working on ...
The Psychology of Love: Theories and Facts
Research from 2016 points to neuropeptides and neurotransmitters as the source of love. Feelings of love help us form social bonds with others. Feelings of love help us form social bonds with others.
The State of Ethnological Research on Love: A Critical Review
Almost every culture has either oral or written stories of individuals falling in and out of love (Lee, 2007; Pan, 2016; Ryang, 2006; Singer, 2009).However, historians remind us that with the exception of seventeenth century England (Sarsby, 1983), romantic love only recently became a primary criterion for selecting a marriage partner in state societies (Baily, 1988; Coontz, 2005).
New book explores true love stories through the ages
Development of the book began in 2021 when Dr Hauser was approached by publisher Bonnier Books UK with the story proposal. An active researcher across a range of historical and contemporary fields concerning women writers and their representation, Dr Hauser took on the challenge and began to research classic love stories from history.
(PDF) Sternberg's Theory (Love as a Story) and ...
Abstract. Love is a common theme in psychology and literary works that can be examined and compared according to the principles of interdisciplinary research. Sternberg, in his theory of love ...
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Research has shown that when you love someone, you ignore those alternatives. When you're in love with a brand, you often do the same thing — buy it without considering any other brands. Brand love is a defense mechanism, and that's why brand loyalty should be one of the key metrics of any brand tracker. Love fosters brand compromise
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Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling. It is quiet and dark. The theater is hushed. James Bond skirts along the edge of a building as his enemy takes aim. Here in the audience, heart rates ...
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Libby Powell was 14 years old and a high school student when her brother, Benjamin, was born. "We have a human need to bond," she says. "Your friends are going to come and go. But when it's family ...
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The Great Gatsby Research Paper. 1384 Words6 Pages. It is often said that The Great Gatsby is a love story about Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan rekindling their past relationship and fighting the barriers of their socioeconomic statuses. However, by this line of thinking, The Great Gatsby would have ended with Gatsby and Daisy marrying in ...
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The Great Gatsby Research Paper. 652 Words3 Pages. The Great Tragic Love Story Love is a beautiful thing when left to flower, but when squashed, becomes stained with mud. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, Gatsby is fighting for the love of Daisy. Gatsby and Daisy are flower buds waiting to bloom.

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