The origins of romantic love
In 1774, the German writer Goethe published The Sorrow of Young Werther where the young man develops an unhealthy obsession with a Charlotte whom he can not have.
She is sacred to me. All desire falls silent in her presence. I never know what is happening to me when I am with her; it’s as if my nerves are turning my soul inside out.—She has a melody that she plays on the clavier with the power of an angel, so simply and so spiritedly! It is her favorite song, and as soon as she strikes the first note it stills all my pain, confusion, and fancies. Not a word about the old magic power of music is improbable to me. How the simple song seizes me! And how she knows when to play it, often at a time when I would like to put a bullet through my head! It disperses the darkness and confusion of my soul, and I breathe more freely again. 1Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, trans. Burton Pike (New York: Random House, 2004), 43.
Charlotte already belongs to someone else. The love triangle means that his love is doomed and there would be no solution after falling into depression except for suicide. The novel was a sensation and there were reports that it encouraged other “hopeless romantics” to take their own lives. Authorities banned it in Italy and Denmark. That novel was not the first or indeed the last in the genre of romantic novels.
It is impossible to track the first work of this kind though we know it developed in Europe in the Middle Ages. Some scholars have singled out the Romance of Tristan and Isolde (or Iseult) as one of the oldest in this genre. Despite being a medieval story, it has familiar themes. Tristan is travelling with the princess Isolde along with others, during which he takes by mistake a magical potion (note how their fate is sealed) that commits him to Isolde. They now belong to each other forever. But he could never have her hence death, only death, could terminate his suffering. And upon seeing the dead Tristan, she dies too. Today we can’t escape romantic love in literature, music or movies.
How does the romantic myth go?
The Romantic myth has invaded our daily language with clichés that we are all heard before and it goes like this:
a. We do not choose who we fall in love with.
b. And we always FALL in love.
c. Why we’re helpless? Because love is blind and it’s all written in the stars.
d. When does it happen? It happens at first sight.
e. We can not choose! Everyone has a “soulmate.”
f. How does it end? If you’re fortunate, you’ll be blessed with a “happily ever after” life.
g. If you are not fortunate, and living under the spell of love, depression and ultimately death might be the only solution.
h. What happens to love after marriage, or perhaps death? Nothing, love is forever!
What was there before romantic love?
For centuries, marriage was an economic arrangement that might have been decades in the works. Sometimes it was even decided as early as the time birth. Marriage would take into consideration the family’s inheritance, the wealth of the other family, the land on which they live, social class, the opinions of members of the extended family and probably also the local priest and other factors that could affect the entire community. The right marriage would mean the difference between the suffering or the prosperity of the families involved. What young men and women actually desired was irrelevant. It was a duty to be taken seriously for the sake of the community’s survival.
It all changed with the rise of industrialization, the great shift of people from agrarian communities to the city, the break-up of large extended families and the removal of the attachment people had to “the land.” Young people working in factories and shops, who in a different era could never meet, were now able to develop emotional attachments without the intrusion of older people. That’s where the ideal of romantic love took root. As education became the norm into the twentieth-century, there were even more opportunities for the younger generations to meet and mingle in schools and universities. Technology like cars and phones presented the new generations more freedom to pursue romance. The Internet would take that to unprecedented levels with dating websites and social media connections.
Nothing in the past reinforced the myth of romance like the capitalism of the twentieth century. Commercial forces united to hammer the idea in the brains of the young through advertising in every medium with one purpose: sell, sell, sell. Chocolate, cards, jewelry, cosmetics, vacations, movies, novels, etc. A date was added on the calendar to capitalize on the public obsession: Saint Valentine’s Day.
That’s how since the 1800s romance took over culture. Thousands of stage plays, operas, novels, songs, poems and films replayed that same theme of love. Sometimes even reusing the original plot that linked love to death as with Tristan and Isolde. We could find many examples of the same plot; from Romeo and Juliet of the 16th century to nineties films like Titanic and Ghost.
What started as a European invention became widely adopted around the world. In fact, it has became one of the most influential Western ideas ever created and the cornerstone for a modern marriage. A modern marital relationship had to be preceded by a romantic one. A married couple needed to have trekked a path of sentimentality and idealism. What originated as chivalric romances with knights in shining armor centuries earlier became the foundation for starting a family.
The problems with giving in to the romantic myth
1. Romantic love is popularized in culture as something “we fall in,” and over which we have no power. What could be explained as an physical attraction is given a metaphysical (“a fate written in the stars”) explanation. If the relationship goes awry, the explanation is often that we are to blame for we have misread the stars and we have to move on to find the true soulmate. Ironically our culture that had shed almost all beliefs rooted in magic and alchemy has hung onto the fascination with romance and some other archiac traditions like horoscopes.
2. When we give in to the delusion that “falling in love” is not a choice, then we face the fact that we are matched with those are might not be the best matches. As we find in movies, sometimes “life matches us” with even people we dislike or despise. The love-obsessed could so far down the path of delusion that they would accept someone who mistreats them or disrespect them. They would tolerate abuse or unhealthy lifestyle of drug addiction or crime. Sometimes conflicting life goals or ambitions are enough for a couple to realize that they can not carry on. Eventually many couples walk away from such dysfunctional relationship and realize that they were too blinded to notice their mismatch.
4. We often forget that just like we fall in love, we always fall out of it. It’s usually temporary and bound to end. Even if it leads to a relationship, the fire will eventually peter out. We realize late that the honeymoon never lasts forever, the “happy ever after” ending is only in princess stories and fairy tales.
3. Romantic love as we know it is perceived as a challenge that requires resolution. Often it resolves in the proverbial happy ending with the couple settling together but other times that is unattainable and suffering surrounds the lovers. If the popular tales are to go by, then death is the only way to preserve that “divine” bond forever and to end their misery. Some lovers do resort to suicide, or even worse murder of their beloved to bring the romantic situation to an ending that fits the popular narrative. The bizarre connection between romantic love and death has been studied by a few, one of them is Denis De Rougemont. He wrote:
Happy love has no history. Romance only comes into existence where love is fatal, frowned upon and doomed by life itself. What stirs lyrical poets to their finest flights is neither the delight of the senses nor the fruitful contentment of the settled couple; not the satisfaction of love, but its passion. And passion means suffering. 2Denis De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939), 15.
4. The entire romantic myth requires that we believe that life’s ultimate meaning is dependent on someone else, i.e. that lover, that soulmate who holds the key to our happiness.
These ideas that intertwine with fate and heaven, suffering and salvation within a mythological system called romantic love might remind you of a religion or a cult. No wonder some writers like Robert A. Johnson considered romance as a modern replacement for religion in his book We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love:
In our culture [romantic love] has supplanted religion as the arena in which men and women seek meaning, transcendence, wholeness and ecstasy. 3Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1985), 9.
5. Unnecessary pressure is exerted on young people who are taught by pop culture that their lives are not complete unless they experience romance. Millions waste their lives and their money trying to recreate the passion they see in movies while pursuing it in real life. An entire slew of businesses has appeared to take advantage of that desire for a perfect union, for a fairy tale ending.
6. Walking together into the sunset, hand in hand is the ending we expect in the romantic narrative. It is so delusional that it hides from us the fact that a long-term relationship can be unsexy or perhaps even boring. Lovers are never told that relationships to endure self-discipline and compromise will be necessary. Washing the dishes, changing diapers and taking out the trash is never shown as part of the daily lives of lovers in Hollywood movies for they inhabit a sentimental world that has no time for the mundane. Sometimes the lovers are so deluded that it actually presents a danger to their mental and physical health.
7. Being a common delusion, romance sometimes evolves into a masochistic dependence for many impressionable young people, almost an addiction to that pleasurable suffering. Who amongst us did not wish at some point in their younger years to experience romantic love? But the pursuit is less about finding someone than living a particular condition. In De Rougemont’s book, he explained explained that what they love is love and being in love. Elsewhere he described it as follows:
What they need is not one another’s presence, but one another’s absence. 4Denis De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939), 42.
That is the only way to keep their love burning. The ideal ending for a love story is not a normal life of a couple aging together, but death. That is the way to preserve the flame of love for eternity, far away from contamination by ordinary life.
Having a healthy and meaningful relationship requires that we pass beyond the passion of the moment and understand that the romance eventually fades away.
Romantic love, at its core, is a revolutionary idea. For centuries, arranged marriages that used to be based on family obligations were now in the hands of the individual. When it came out of the medieval era and on its path towards our modern times, it passed by the Enlightenment which reinforced it. Yes, romance might have metaphysical properties that harkens back to astrology and alchemy but it also emphasizes that we are free entities with desires that should be respected. The enlightenment era with its rise of humans rights and individualism reinforced the idea and gave it further fuel to spread around Europe.
Endnotes
