The way that society understands love has been marketed and sold to people in a package by American movies and Walt Disney; the modern understanding of love came into being during the 1920s.
Before this time, love was not seen as marriage’s main mechanism and outcome. According to the Psychologist and Author Esther Perel, love is not the purpose of marriage.
Love was traditionally found outside of the manage because men traditionally seek other forms of companionship.
Purpose of Love
To understand the purpose of love is to understand that love is a feeling; it is a beating of the heart filled with passion and desire, but now in the 21st century, marriage is not a contract or is perceived as a mechanism for raising children.
The Psychologist and Author Jordan Peterson put forward the argument that marriage is not a vehicle for romance but the most successful vehicle humans have in raising children.
So, with this outlook, where does it leave society, romance and desire? According to Esther Perel, the answer to this in here analogy is that great relationships require people to climb Mount Everest, and they can have the best relationships in the world.
However, those kinds of people are rare and unique.
Love Match & The Five Love Languages
To have a successful love match, both couples must go into a relationship with a true understanding of their goals and that romance is not just about sex, happiness and passion for the dull aspects of life like taking care of children going to, work, cooking meals and doing laundry.
Day-to-day normal activities tend to be incredibly dull affairs. Still, many arguments can be avoided by couples communicating through communication and meeting each other’s physical and emotional needs so that true love can be developed.
The couple’s therapist Gary Chipman wrote in his book the five Love languages: acts of service, gift-giving, physical touch, quality time, and words of affirmation.
What love languages tell society about love not being dead is that showing our partners our love and appreciation requires communication and openness between couples to understand each other’s emotional needs.
For example, imagine as a child your partner be they male, female or other, had a guardian or parent that made their beds every night but very rarely told them that they loved them.
This could very well mean that the partner in this analogy does not see being given gifts or taken care of as their primary love language due to their guardian or parent not telling them they loved as a child.
This could mean that the primary love language is touch and words of affirmation. When it comes to understanding touch and love, most men have the biological need to have sex and remove the sperm from the genitalia daily; in simple terms, men like to have sex.
However, this does not mean they get their love from the physical act because some men, after having relations with a woman, do not engage in physical cuddling because their primary love language is not physical touch.
Love languages can be a key to unlocking a couple’s love or can be a disaster should couples not be willing to meet their partners’ emotional and physical needs.
Relationships sometimes only last two years because, within those two years, couples are out of the honeymoon aspect of the relationship, according to Esther Perel, which means that after that time frame, couples will not have to learn how to be in love but staying in love.
The YouTube and ex-businesswoman Rebecca Barrett stated that in her relationship before getting married, she was in lust with her now husband but not love.
The key takeaway from this article is that love is not dead. But our culture does not understand love; on the individual level, couples are being sold relationships and romantic advice from Hollywood and cartoons, not reality.
Love is not dead; it is misunderstood and requires good communication because love and understanding are a two-way street.
Article link to The History on the Net article I have written
Linkedin link
My medium link
My blog link