THREE OTHER FORMS OF LOVE
OFTEN CONFUSED WITH ROMANTIC LOVE

1. SEXUAL ATTRACTION

    Human sexuality has been active for about 100,000 years,
ever since the human race began to speak.
Before that, presumably, our ancestors' sexual experiences
were more akin to the sexuality of animals.

    We respond to other persons sexually
when they trigger our imprinted sex-scripts.
These sex-scripts are stories, scenarios, & fantasies
that were imprinted into our minds at an early age.
We did not choose the nature of our sexual responses.
And that is why sex sometimes
seems to surprise us or even overwhelm us.
Depending on the exact nature of our sexual imprinting,
we respond to certain bodily types
—or perhaps we respond to certain parts of a body.
We can discover our sexual imprinting by watching what 'turns us on'.

2. MATE-SELECTION & MARRIAGE

    People have been selecting each other as mates
since before the beginning of recorded history.
Thus some form of marriage has been around for several thousand years.

    If we have been looking for a man or woman with whom to spend our lives,
we have imagined an ideal Mr. Right or Ms. Right.
If someone corresponds with this internal Dream Lover,
we might easily 'fall in love' with him or her.
And we might be sexually attracted to him or her.
But the marriage decision itself is more rational and organized
than either romantic love or sexual response.
We can easily 'fall in love' and 'get turned on'
by men or women whom we would never consider marrying.
Looking for a life-partner involves compatibilities
of personalities and purposes, which do not always correspond
with our romantic and sexual responses.
Marriage is a more practical affair.
We need to know whether the potential spouse
has any bad habits that would make it difficult to live with him or her.

    If we have decided that we are going to spend
most of our adult lives married to one man or one woman,
we have built up some clear ideas
about what kind of man or woman that should be.
We see such men or women married to others.
And we hope that we will be able to find such a person for ourselves.

    The desire to get married is relatively easy to explain.
It is the result of explicit instruction and example:
We learn how people ought to behave when they grow up:
We are supposed to find a good person to marry.
Marriage is a social phenomenon we can all understand.
But marriage itself sometimes gets confused with
sexual responses and/or 'falling in love'.

    In the minds of many of us, the ideal mate would be someone
who 'turns us on' sexually, who would be a good parent,
and about whom we could feel romantic.
How often do all of these features arrive in the same person?
The rational person may select for a spouse the one he or she can live with,
even if their sex-life and their romantic feelings
are not as intense as with other people, some of whom,
of course, would not make good spouses.

3. FAMILIARITY

    Familiarity has been a part of human experience
from the beginning of our race some 7 million years ago,
when we branched off from the other large apes.
Familiarity is a feeling we share with all animals that live in groups.

    If we have lived with someone in the same household for a few years,
feelings develop that arise only from that specific relationship.
These are similar to the feelings that develop in loving families.
When the siblings get along well, they like to be together.
They do things together because they enjoy being in one another's company.
Married or living-together couples develop familiarity with each other.
And if their regular interactions make them both happy,
they will want to continue to be together.

    Good marriages and good long-lasting relationships
can have a sense of a loving togetherness
not based on the fantasy of romantic love,
not based on the imprinted sex-scripts they had before they met,
not based on their pre-existing ideas of who would be a good spouse.
Being comfortable together is based in reality.
From their past experience of being with each other,
the partners know they like each other.
The fantasy of romance might be gone.
The triggering of their sex-scripts might have been replaced
by a special kind of sexuality that they could not have predicted
before it actually happened between them.
And whatever prior expectations they had for a marriage partner
has been replaced by real information about this particular person.

    One important part of familiarity is raising children together.
Two people who have shared the trials and rewards of parenthood
might develop deep connections with each other
that will never be repeated in any other relationship of their lives.

AND NOW FOR ROMANCE

    Romantic love is the most recent addition
to these other feelings with which it is often confused.
Romantic fantasies were invented about 800 years ago in Medieval Europe.
Since then these delusions have spread over the whole world.
Almost everywhere, people 'fall in love'.
And they regard it as a natural response,
perhaps in part because they confuse it with
(1) sex, (2) mate-selection, and (3) familiarity.
The Romantic Love Test is intended to highlight our romantic feelings,
as defined in the 26 section-headings within the test.

AUTHOR

    James Park is an existential philosopher and author of
New Ways of Loving: How Authenticity Transforms Relationships,
the first chapter of which is called
"Romantic Love is a Hoax! Emotional Programming to 'Fall in Love' ".

    The essay above has also become a chapter in a new book:
Heartbreak Prevention: Loving Beyond Romance, Sex, & Marriage.
If you have appreciated this critique of one dimension love,
you might also enjoy the deconstruction of other illusions.

    If you would like to have your own printed copy of the whole test,
send $1 for each copy, plus $2 for postage and handling to:

Existential Books
Lofts on Arts Avenue #218
1829 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404-2185