Is love a social construct? Or is it a biological response to something? Or is it a psychological weakness?

All of the above, yes.

also note that I mean specifically “romantic love”

I did not create it. Adam and Eve were the first beginners. We humans just followed suit.

No brain seizures here. It was love then and it still remains.

We did not have unmet needs.

What we did have was love at first sight, way back in the mid-60s.

Ain’t love grand?

Gender is a social construction based on biological factors but people treat it like a serious thing – same with love. Whether it’s a construct or not or a combination of all that you state, we seem to think we feel it.

Cold answer: I think it’s biological. It serves as motivation for parents to stay together (and therefore with their kids) which is an evolutionary benefit. Kids are more likely to survive when both parents are present caring for them, so the genes of men and women who stay together get successfully passed on more often. I guess.

@Mariah But why, then, how do you explain gay love? Because a homosexual couple cannot produce their own offspring i.e. cannot pass on copies of their own genetic material (adoption doesn’t count), why do they bond if they have no offspring/genetic material to protect…

It’s probably both 1 and 2. We’re social animals that develop cultural ways of dealing with our needs. Some element of love is probably inborn, then interpreted and/or built upon by culture.

@lopezpor1 A common argument against the idea that homosexuality might be genetic is why it wouldn’t have evolved away as it certainly doesn’t encourage reproduction. A theory that I quite like is that there isn’t, in fact, a gay gene, but there is an “I like men” gene (and also a female counterpart). Passed to a woman, the woman turns out straight, in a man he turns out homosexual. In this way, the straight sisters of gay men pass on the gene. It’s entirely possible that the biologic traits that create feelings of love would exist in people who have the “I like men” gene and it would simply manifest differently.

Again, a cold answer, and not one that we really have any proof of. I believe I have read though that it’s extremely common for gay men to have straight sisters, though, so that supports this theory.

I’ve often wondered if homosexuality is present in our species as one of the ways we keep populations steady. Some research I’ve seen showed that women who are pregnant with male sons and experience extreme stress during certain times of their pregnancy are more likely to give birth to males who turn out to be gay. As social animals, we have a certain range of people we’re hardwired to deal with, so having too many people would cause stress. Can’t say I’ve seen research about the number of homosexuals in a population being compared per population density, but I’d be interested. Then it would also fit into the fact that indigenous societies often venerate homosexuals (or at least treat them well), whereas cultures that have mores telling them to spread, reproduce, conquer, and dominate will typically disparage homosexuality.

That’s just my amateur opinion, as someone with education in anthropology. The fact that we seem to have developed various forms of birth control early on kind of throws a wrench in the theory, at least a bit.

Very interesting Dan. Can I ask, though, can natural selection favor the welfare of the species over the individual? I can’t make it make sense in my brain, but then, I’m not an expert.

That’s something we could probably discuss for a long time. I tend to say it can; if a group doesn’t succeed, or even has more famines than others (due to population pressures), that can greatly impede fertility. But for now that’s all I have time or mental energy for. :)

I barely understand lurve.

It’s not a social construct anyway, it’s one of the oldest feelings; to keep two compatible mates together to have more children and form a team to look after the young. Seriously, all these definitions are bad…love is the best thing life has to offer, if you don’t have it now, go look for it, but don’t just kick it to the ground in the meantime.

@Mariah I am butting in to the question you asked Dan.

Evolution works on the tribal level in many cases, not the individual. Most people in a tribe would share genes.

Color blindness, for example, is poor for an individual. They are more susceptible to eating the wrong plants, and therefore, that failure should have been bred out by evolution. When hunting, however, color blind individuals can determine movement more readily than those with full color discrimination, so in a group of twenty, it is wonderful if a small part of the population is color blind.

Romantic love is a social construct, especially in the sense that if you love someone, you show it to them in the following ways (for example, with flowers and poetry). There do seem to be various emotions with a biologic grounding, like infatuation, but as love changes over time, so do the emotions. Our constructs of romantic love aren’t very old (less than a thousand years). While that’s not to say that people before then didn’t not love each other, it was often understood much differently; sometimes that what we would call “romantic love” was regular, platonic love + sexytimes feelings (eros), sometimes that it was more something we experienced in the beginning of relationships and not so much down the line (infatuation)... The idea that love starts out as infatuation, then grows into a strong, permanent and monogamous bond of trust and partnership is a very, very new one; even 50 years ago it was very common to have mistresses and cheat on wives and that was just how it was because monogamy was about only having one spouse, not only sleeping with one person. Even newer is the idea that that one person should be your friend and partner in life, not just in household affairs, that your lives should revolve around each other.

It definitely is not instinctual; there is no “if you don’t know, then you aren’t in love”. This presumes all the same notions as to what love is, the same language with which to discuss the idea, and that the idea that if you love someone, you want to act in x way is encoded into our DNA, which is very clearly isn’t.

I was recently recommended a book on this very subject; A General Theory of Love. I’ve only gotten about a chapter in myself, but I think it’d be a good book if you’re interested. If you’re really interested, I have some other materials you might enjoy for a more historical view on love, romantic love, courtly love, and the sexytimes feelings.