Text 14 romantic love

In the English-speaking culture marriage is supposed to be based on romantic love of the spouses. Though romance does not totally deny pragmatic considerations, like family background or earning potential of the male partner, the majority of Britons and Americans will look askance at those who marry for money or other pragmatic reasons.

Romantic love is a strong feeling of fondness between a man an a woman, based on sexual attraction. It involves both physical symptoms, such pounding heart, and psychological symptoms, such as obsessive focus on one person and disregard for any resulting social or economic risks. However, happily enough, romance defies a clinical definition. Love is irrational and overwhelming, it takes you by surprise and appears impossible to resist. It can be returned or one-sided, instant (at first sight) and short-lived or life-long. Anyway, it looks like fate.

It may be for this reason that Western society has historically emphasized romantic love far more than other cultures. Romantic love became a recognized passion in the Middle Ages, when in some cases insurmountable barriers of morality or convention separated the lovers. The effect of physical attraction and impossibility of intimacy resulted in an excessive regard of the beloved as extremely precious. Winning the love, or at least the attention, of the beloved, motivated great efforts of many kinds, such as poetry, song or feats of arms.

In more modern times romantic love has been portrayed and endorsed in art and entertainment in all its forms. Some of the greatest poetry (e.g. Shakespeare's sonnets), opera (e.g. La Boheme), and literature (e.g. Pride and Prejudice) have romantic love as the main theme. Similarly much of more popular culture from theatre to film to popular music has romantic love at its heart. In every day life romance is usually represented by boxes of chocolates, red roses, dinners by candle light, love letters, and walks by the light of the moon.

Apparently, this culture encourages us to look for romance – to find your other half, the ‘one and only’. If acquired love may be the basis for a lifelong union. More than that, it is often looked upon as the highest form of self-fulfillment.

Unfortunately, while for many romantic love is a dream and incentive to marriage, some claim that such love as is depicted in books and movies rarely, if ever, occurs. They point to the modern practice of dating, where often the goal is to have sexual intercourse as soon as possible instead of building a lasting relationship. Besides, the rigorous demands of careers in the modern world often rob people of the time to find such ideal companions.

At any rate, romantic love is a noble idea, and it can certainly provide a basis for a marriage whose success is expected to be guaranteed by the spouses’ enduring passion, and permit them to ‘live happily ever after.’ But since marriage can equally well be founded on much more practical considerations, there is a never-ending debate between those who believe in romantic marriage and those who don’t.

Romantics will often criticize pragmatic marriage, considering it oppressive, inhuman, sexist and, therefore, immoral. Defenders of pragmatic marriage disagree, often pointing to cultures where the success rate of pragmatic marriages is seen to be very high, and holding that nearly all couples learn with time to love each other very deeply. They also state that pragmatic marriage is traditional, that it upholds social morals, that it is good for the families involved, whereas romantic marriage is short-term, overly based on sexual desire, and immoral.

Their opponents insist that it is preferable to achieve an emotional bond before entering into a lifelong commitment. Besides, a loving and affectionate relationship helps to sustain the family “ever after as the wedding bells”.

Firstly, romantic love helps the young partners to loosen their bonds with their parents’ family, a step that is essential if a new nuclear family is to be created. Being totally absorbed in each other, the young couple will more easily transfer their loyalties from existing family and kin to their own family. Secondly, romantic love provides the couple with emotional support in the difficulties that they will inevitably face in establishing a new life of their own. Mutual love and care will enable them to confront problems cooperatively. Otherwise, life might not look like a bed of roses.

(compiled from http://en.wikipedia.org.)