There was no time for romance. And certainly no tolerance for the risky behaviors it encouraged among people. There was too much life-or-death work to be accomplished. Marriage was meant for baby-making and sound finances. 5 Romantic love, if permitted at all, was reserved for the heady realm of mistresses and fuckboys.
For most of human history, for the majority of humanity, their sustenance and survival hung by a tiny thread. People had shorter life expectancies than my mother’s cats. Everything you did had to be done for the simple sake of survival. ilies not because they liked each other, and especially not because they loved each other, but because their farms went together nicely, and the families could share some wheat or barley when the next flood or drought hit.
Marriages were a purely economic arrangement designed to promote the survival and prosperity of both extended families. So if Junior gets the tingles in his pants and wants to run away with the milkmaid across town, this wasn’t just an inconvenience-this was a legitimate threat to the community’s survival. And it was treated as such. In fact, this kind of behavior was so treacherous in young men that most ancient societies cut a lot of young boy’s balls off so they wouldn’t have to deal with their philandering. This had a side benefit of producing excellent-sounding boys’ choirs.
Or that love can sometimes be unpleasant or even painful, that it could potentially even be something we don’t want to feel at times
It wasn’t until the industrial age that things began to change. People began to take up work in city centers and factories. Their income, and thus their economic future, was no longer tied to the land and they were able to make money independent of their family. They didn’t have to rely on inheritances or family connections the way people did in the ancient world, and so the economic and political components of marriage ceased to make much sense.
But romantic love, and love in general, is far more complicated than we’ve been led to believe by Hollywood movies or jewelry store ads
Back in the olden days, marriage was seen as a duty, not something you did for personal fulfillment or emotional pleasure.
The new economic realities of the 19th century then cross-pollinated with the ideas that emerged from the Enlightenment about individual rights and the pursuit of happiness, and the result was a full-blown Age of Romanticism. Fuck the cattle, it was the 1800s and people’s feelings suddenly mattered. The new ideal was not only to marry for love but that that love was to live on in bliss for all of the eternity. Thus, it wasn’t until the relatively recent 150 years ago that the ever-popular “happily ever after” ideal was born. 6
Then the 20th century rolled around, and in between Hitler and a few genocides, Hollywood and ad agencies grabbed hold of https://lovingwomen.org/fi/kreikkalaiset-naiset/ the “happily ever after” fantasy and beat it to death over the next 100 years.
The point here is that romance and all of the weight we tend to put on it is a modern invention, and primarily promoted and marketed by a bunch of businessmen who realized it will get you to pay for movie tickets and/or a new piece of jewelry. ”
Romance is an easy sell. We all enjoy seeing the hero get the girl. We enjoy seeing the happy ending. We enjoy believing in “happily ever after.” It feels good. And so the commercial forces that arose in the 20th century took it and ran with it.
Nowhere do we hear that love can be unsexy drudgery. Or that love requires self-discipline and a certain amount of sustained effort over the course of years, decades, a lifetime.
