It depends how you define ‘romantic’. I have a lot of trouble with the concept of monogamy, too, so if you’re asking if I pair-bond, no. I do have deeply meaningful personal relationships that involve most of the same kinds of caring-about, though. On the other hand, I don’t see a strong disconnect between that kind of relationship and a friendship—the difference in degree of closeness definitely changes how things work, but it’s a continuum, not different categories, and people do wind up in spots on that continuum that don’t map easily to ‘friends’ or ‘romantic partners’. (I do have names for different parts of that continuum, to make it easier to discuss the resulting issues, but they don’t seem to work the same as most peoples’ categories.)
From your response, I’d have to guess that, no, you don’t “fall in love” either. My personal experience is that there’s a sharp, obvious difference in the emotions involved in romantic relationships and in friendships, although the girls I’ve had crushes on have never felt similarly about me.
Yep, limerence is foreign to me, though not as incomprehensible as some emotions.
The wikipeida entry on love styles may be useful. I’m very familiar with storge, and familiar with agape. Ludus and pragma make sense as mental states (pragma more so than ludus), but it’s unclear to me why they’re considered types of love. I can recognize mania, but doubt that there’s any situation in which I’d experience it, so I consider it foreign. Eros is simply incomprehensible—I don’t even recognize when others are experiencing it.
That said, it seems completely accurate to me to describe myself as being in love with the people I’m closest with—the strength and closeness and emotional attachment of those relationships seems to be at least comparable with relationships established through more traditional patterns, once the traditional-pattern relationships are out of the initial infatuation stage.
In a genetic study of 350 lovers, the Eros style was found to be present more often in those bearing the TaqI A1 allele of the DRD2 3′ UTR sequence and the overlapping ANKK1 exon 8. This allele has been proposed to influence a wide range of behaviors, favoring obesity and alcoholism but opposing neuroticism-anxiety and juvenile delinquency.[3] This genetic variation has been hypothesized to cause a reduced amount of pleasure to be obtained from a given action, causing people to indulge more frequently.[4]
It depends how you define ‘romantic’. I have a lot of trouble with the concept of monogamy, too, so if you’re asking if I pair-bond, no. I do have deeply meaningful personal relationships that involve most of the same kinds of caring-about, though. On the other hand, I don’t see a strong disconnect between that kind of relationship and a friendship—the difference in degree of closeness definitely changes how things work, but it’s a continuum, not different categories, and people do wind up in spots on that continuum that don’t map easily to ‘friends’ or ‘romantic partners’. (I do have names for different parts of that continuum, to make it easier to discuss the resulting issues, but they don’t seem to work the same as most peoples’ categories.)
Well, I was mostly referring to this feeling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence
From your response, I’d have to guess that, no, you don’t “fall in love” either. My personal experience is that there’s a sharp, obvious difference in the emotions involved in romantic relationships and in friendships, although the girls I’ve had crushes on have never felt similarly about me.
Yep, limerence is foreign to me, though not as incomprehensible as some emotions.
The wikipeida entry on love styles may be useful. I’m very familiar with storge, and familiar with agape. Ludus and pragma make sense as mental states (pragma more so than ludus), but it’s unclear to me why they’re considered types of love. I can recognize mania, but doubt that there’s any situation in which I’d experience it, so I consider it foreign. Eros is simply incomprehensible—I don’t even recognize when others are experiencing it.
That said, it seems completely accurate to me to describe myself as being in love with the people I’m closest with—the strength and closeness and emotional attachment of those relationships seems to be at least comparable with relationships established through more traditional patterns, once the traditional-pattern relationships are out of the initial infatuation stage.
Thanks for the link. This part was fascinating: