That is if you accept my definition of romantic love being care + sexual attraction and/or relationship. — schopenhauer1

I wouldn't accept it. Asexuals can have romantic love.

I'm interested in the notion of romantic love specifically, but maybe there's some deeper connection there. — The Great Whatever

My point is that romantic love is played out differently and involves different behaviours, particularly involving sex, but the psychology attachment that accompanies romantic relationships is derivative of the more primitive and primary mother-child attachment. Love as a romantic feeling piggy-backs on the already developed mother-child attachment. Evolutionarily, we don't need love in order to have sex, but we need mothers to protect and care for children, and children not to stray from mothers for the species to survive. If evolution started to favour romantic love for species survival, it could be a mutation of the mother-child attachment rather than an independently developed faculty and maybe even sexually selected by the female.

But see, this just shows you the very theoretical nature of evolutionary psychology. — schopenhauer1

Some would call it pseudo-science, and as such, I must admit that the evolutionary development of romantic love and the mother-child attachment may be completely independent of each other.

I wouldn't accept it. Asexuals can have romantic love. — Michael

Notice it is a definition of romantic love as opposed to other kinds of love. You can care about someone deeply in a Platonic love, but that wouldn't be romantic. You can maybe argue that the rare case of seeing the "beauty" of someone as Socrates explained in the Symposium, but that also brings with it a whole metaphysical package that goes along with it such as the existence of Forms. I can expand the definition of beauty as well, though that is rarer. I would also argue that might be a more Platonic love that is afforded to non-asexuals as well. It depends how you want to slice the definition. Certainly, it is a rarer form that may or may not be categorized differently depending if you want to include beauty in the definition of romantic love.

Notice it is a definition of romantic love as opposed to other kinds of love. You can care about someone deeply in a Platonic love, but that wouldn't be romantic. — schopenhauer1

Yes, and you can have romantic love without sex and sexual attraction. The aforementioned relationship between asexuals is a case in point.

I don't see how Platonic love is romantic love then. This actually seems to be a defining point in Platonic love- that it isn't romantic. However, if you are quoting the part about Socrates' idea of beauty, I guess you can define it to include beauty as well. However, this then comes down the definition of romance or the term romantic. I am willing to agree that it can be a strong emotional attachment, but then I would follow up with a question of how that would be different than a form of Platonic love.

Women are 'mixed maters.' One class of men fathers the children, and another class raises them (the ones that love the women). — The Great Whatever

According to the wonderful Wiki:

Misattributed paternity is the situation when a child’s putative father is not the child's biological father. Overall, the incidence of misattributed paternity ranges from about 1% to 2%, though it may be considerably higher in certain populations. Genetic testing for purposes other than establishing paternity has the potential to unintentionally yield information regarding a child’s paternity. This generally occurs in two different scenarios: the first occurs in searches for a suitable bone marrow or organ donor where the patient’s family members are tested; the second is in the course of a genetic-risk assessment for reproductive purposes.

TGW, way to go, never let the truth ruin a good story!

Here's the link, in case you want to inform yourself further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misattributed_paternity

I'm not saying that Platonic love is romantic love. I'm saying that romantic love need not involve sex or sexual attraction. Platonic love is a type of non-sexual love, but not the only one. There's also familial love and the love of God (and, as I've said, asexual romantic love). The difference between Platonic love and non-sexual romantic love is the degree of emotional intimacy, where non-sexual romantic love will often involve the same sort of monogamous commitment as "typical" sexual romantic love, and sometimes lead to cohabitation and marriage, whereas Platonic love usually won't.

I didn't think it was controversial that men are less attached to their children than women, on whatever metric you care to use. Or am I wrong about that? — The Great Whatever

You are wrong about that (and some other points) because you are generalizing far too broadly. Some men clearly do not like, do not care about, and do not want to be around to nurture, support or defend their children. What percentage? Some. I don't know how many. It would not take a an incredibly difficult research project to find out.

Are all women attached to their children equally, and more than any man could be? No. Some women would rather not raise the children they have. Some men make better mothers than some women. Some children are unlucky enough to have parents who are both either hostile or indifferent to their children's needs.

Some men are clearly attached to, love, adore, and want to be around their children a lot. What percentage? Some. I don't know how many. It would not take an incredibly difficult research project to find out.

I predict that our researchers would find that the statistically averaged man and woman have slightly different levels of attachment to each other and to their children, but that individually their attachment levels would fall within a range adjacent to the central tendency. You would't find many men and women who were several standard deviations away from the average. (This is true for all sorts of things.)

Do men and women actually love each other for the person their partner is? Yes, most heterosexuals love their partners a good share of the time as authentic persons. No person loves their partner unequivocally and unconditionally 100% of the time. For one thing, that kind of love takes time to develop -- it doesn't show up on the honeymoon or maybe even by the 10th wedding anniversary. For a second, people are just too irritating at times. It's surprising that more married people are not killed by their partners. If married couples stay together for a long time (like 25 years) they have a good chance of arriving at love that is at least closer to unequivocal and unconditional.

Over-generalizing about gay men is as prone to bad results as overgeneralizing about straight men. Most gay men fall into the area close to the average and either side of it. How many partners do gay men have? Some have 2,000 in a life time but most don't (happily or not). One variable is how quickly they settled down. I find it very difficult to imagine either what it is like to find a man and stick with him for 50 years without having sex with anybody else, or why one would want to do that. It's surprising that more gay men are not killed by their partners. If I had it to do over again, I would still play the field for a decade or so first. But, none the less, some gay men have met each other at work, church, the bar, the furniture department, or wherever and stayed together thereafter. (Mercifully, that is not the norm -- yet, anyway.)

Numerous studies have found that gay men's emotional and intellectual capacities for love and caring, achievement, insight, mental health, and all that are quite solid. They can behave in ways that many heterosexuals find appallingly libertine, and still be healthy people. Are gay men all that different from straight men? Why don't straight men have tons of sex before (or after, even) they marry? Well, some do -- but for the most part, straight women don't let them get away with that approach. Gay men don't have straight females around to put a break on free range sex. Straight men do.

I've never been convinced that there is any such thing as "platonic love". I think it is a euphemism for a relationship that has not gotten, and won't get, to first base. I don't think there is any such thing as romantic love which doesn't have a sexual component -- whether sexual attraction or desire is expressed or not. I also don't think there is such a thing as "asexual" anything in human relationships. Sex is, per Sigmund Freud's account and many others' testimony, ubiquitous in human affairs. It isn't that we have to fuck everybody and everything we see, it's just that a sort of very basic sex drive (the id) powers our personalities. It's the most basic emotional force we have --the basic desire to exist and have pleasures.

Asexuals would disagree. Sexual attraction might be typical but it isn't ubiquitous.

You get different numbers. It's like rape, hard to get the right stats on because no one reports or talks about it. You should be careful of Wikipedia just in general, too, by the way.

(Also, note that the mixed mating strategy involves not just misattributed paternity, but cases of known cuckolding as well as non-cuckolding where the offspring is not the husband's, such as men marrying single mothers).

But the question then is, do asexual people participate in romantic relationships in the way that sexual people do? The politically correct answer is yes, obviously, because the prevailing doctrine is that all these things -- love, sex, gender, and so on, are just freely interchangeable ideal categories, and you can mix and match any category with them without affecting any of the others. But that's dishonest; we all know they're related in interesting ways.

Socrates felt Divinly inspired:

"Every one sees that love is a desire, and we know also that non-lovers desire the beautiful and good. Now in what way is the lover to be distinguished from the non-lover? Let us note that in every one of us there are two guiding and ruling principles which lead us whither they will; one is the natural desire of pleasure, the other is an acquired opinion which aspires after the best; and these two are sometimes in harmony and then again at war, and sometimes the one, sometimes the other conquers. When opinion by the help of reason leads us to the best, the conquering principle is called temperance; but when desire, which is devoid of reason, rules in us and drags us to pleasure, that power of misrule is called excess. Now excess has many names, and many members, and many forms, and any of these forms when very marked gives a name, neither honourable nor creditable, to the bearer of the name. The desire of eating, for example, which gets the better of the higher reason and the other desires, is called gluttony, and he who is possessed by it is called a glutton-I the tyrannical desire of drink, which inclines the possessor of the desire to drink, has a name which is only too obvious, and there can be as little doubt by what name any other appetite of the same family would be called;-it will be the name of that which happens to be eluminant. And now I think that you will perceive the drift of my discourse; but as every spoken word is in a manner plainer than the unspoken, I had better say further that the irrational desire which overcomes the tendency of opinion towards right, and is led away to the enjoyment of beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the desires which are her own kindred-that supreme desire, I say, which by leading conquers and by the force of passion is reinforced, from this very force, receiving a name, is called love." Phaedrus

Love, according to Plato here, is a force and I agree with that. For Plato that force is the result of the conflict between reason and desire. Love has its roots in our primal species desire, to reproduce. That primal desire is played out in society's concept of the correct forms of physical engagement.

I think love can be a form of narcissism where the lover loves the beloved because they see in the beloved them self. The desire for the beloved here is the imaginary love of ones's self, in spite of differences. The lover's desire is for the beloved to reciprocate, to desire the lover. The lover's impossible desire is to be whole, this is the excess that love adds to a relationship, which is beyond the basic force of sex, and it is rarely obtainable.

The only difference between an asexual romantic relationship and a sexual romantic relationship is that a sexual romantic relationship will involve sex. But the non-sexual aspects of the relationship would be the same.

Right, that's a recapitulation of the standard view I just outlined. It might be true, it might not be. It seems to me that sex has an influence that changes other things, but I wouldn't know what exactly that is.

The lover's impossible desire is to be whole, this is the excess that love adds to a relationship, which is beyond the basic force of sex, and it is rarely obtainable. — Cavacava

As I said to TGW before: The illusion that everyone seems to tell themselves is that the pain in pursuing romantic love is worth the rewards, but for many reasons you bring up, the system is set up to almost always not be the case. It is a major part of suffering in the human experience.

As Schopenhauer said:

Why all this crowding, blustering, anguish, and want? Why should such a trifle play so important a part and create disturbance and confusion in the well-regulated life of mankind?” But to the earnest investigator the spirit of truth gradually unfolds the answer: it is not a trifle one is dealing with; the importance of love is absolutely in keeping with the seriousness and zeal with which it is prosecuted. The ultimate aim of all love-affairs, whether they be of a tragic or comic nature, is really more important than all other aims in human life, and therefore is perfectly deserving of that profound seriousness with which it is pursued.

As a matter of fact, love determines nothing less than the establishment of the next generation. The existence and nature of the dramatis personae who come on to the scene when we have made our exit have been determined by some frivolous love-affair. As the being, the existentia of these future people is conditioned by our instinct of sex in general, so is the nature, the essentia, of these same people conditioned by the selection that the individual makes for his satisfaction, that is to say, by love, and is thereby in every respect irrevocably established. This is the key of the problem. In applying it, we shall understand it more fully if we analyse the various degrees of love, from the most fleeting sensation to the most ardent passion; we shall then see that the difference arises from the degree of individualisation of the choice. All the love-affairs of the present generation taken altogether are accordingly the meditatio compositionis generationis futurae, e qua iterum pendent innumerae generationes of mankind. Love is of such high import, because it has nothing to do with the weal or woe of the present individual, as every other matter has; it has to secure the existence and special nature of the human race in future times; hence the will of the individual appears in a higher aspect as the will of the species; and this it is that gives a pathetic and sublime import to love-affairs, and makes their raptures and troubles transcendent, emotions which poets for centuries have not tired of depicting in a variety of ways. There is no subject that can rouse the same interest as love, since it concerns both the weal and woe of the species, and is related to every other which only concerns the welfare of the individual as body to surface. — Schopenhauer

The stats may not be perfect, but they are all we have to go on. I have found Wiki is not much good for philosophy but for science, statistics and so on it seems OK, so generalizing about the virtues of Wiki would not seem to be much good either. If you have different or better stats then by all means bring them forth.

In most cases that I know of personally where the children belong to a mother who has separated from their father and 're-partnered', the father still has en emotional interest in his children, in being seen by them as their father, and continues to fulfill his share of financial responsibility for their upbringing. The kinds of cases you are trying to portray as general seem to be, in fact, the rare exceptions not the rule.

From a social point of view, heterosexual relationships are constructed such that from a woman's point of view, a man is fungible and reducible to what he provides for her; but the man, in order to keep the relationship going, because the women provides nothing materially for him, has to be given a spiritual significance to make her attractive. So the women cannot be fungible, but must be intrinsically valuable while the man is disposable. Hence the man aspires to the woman, not vice-versa, and love originates in men towards women, not vice-versa. — The Great Whatever

As much as I think you display elements of pathology sometimes, I think you have stumbled on something true and greatly important. So for that, my congratulations. Indeed, love is more often than not a tool of control over men that women wield. In modern society, because man has been deprived of all weapons that he has by nature, it is not uncommon to see even fine specimen of men become the slaves of women. Notice that a man can be the most handsome, the strongest physically, the most charismatic, but if he refuses to be enslaved, if he refuses to let down his dignity - women will give him a very hard time. Long ago, men like Julius Caesar and Napoleon had a very easy time with women, because they were enabled to use the means that Nature has provided them in their conquests. But in modern society - they would be loners.

What prevents men from doing this today, and what caused this breakdown that you talk about?

A poem about love by William Blake

Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.

So sung a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle’s feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.

Homework assignment for tomorrow: compare and contrast the Clod and the Pebble.

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more ...

What is love? — The Great Whatever

I agree with you wholly about "

Love is a heterosexual social mechanism primarily designed for lower status men to aim at women. — The Great Whatever

.

After all, heterosexual love is, by definition, an inequality. A man x who loves a woman y necessarily holds y in higher esteem than himself - something to be attained, protected and hopefully mated with.

You got zombied. The Great Whatever got banned a couple of years ago.

You got zombied. The Great Whatever got banned a couple of years ago. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Thanks. S/he makes sense though.

Men aspire to women; women deign to be with men. — The Great Whatever

This is the case only in societies infected with the romantic-love disease and with too much easy money floating around. Elsewhere, these things are always arranged, and very much so as a business transaction.

You want a wife? Then pay the marriage gift. You want a one-night stand? Then pay the rental fee and for the room. If you want something, you will simply have to pay for it. How hard can that be?

(Of course, I do not recommend to marry or even co-habitate with anyone in a divorce-rape jurisdiction. I live in SE Asia.)

Furthermore, I would never see or ever talk with a woman who does not want to be with me, because I only ever see the ones who do. Hence, I do not give a flying fart about what arbitrary women may think about me. Since they are not candidates who were pushed through a particular arrangement procedure, they are totally irrelevant. If I need a woman for any such purpose, I just ask a local friend to do the legwork. Over here, they love doing that anyway. He may even bring his favourite niece! It is simply a question of "getting HR to thoroughly filter candidates" first.

I do not date and I do not participate sexually in societies where people date. What kind of situation are you constructing if you start out by putting her on a pedestal? These guys actively transform themselves into a bunch of losers.

Seriously, if you are good at business negotiations, and you can pay the reasonable price, then why wouldn't you get exactly what you want? You don't need to be a "higher-status" man for that, and frankly, it is not even particularly costly. Like with any business transaction, all you need to do, is to shut off and shut down all avenues for bullshitting, upfront. Prevent the system from allowing that, and you should be fine!

I am only reporting how these gender roles and love in fact work regardless of any opinion of them.[/quote

You showed nothing that proved this to be fact. This is solely just your opinion on how YOU see men, even if you adopted the idea.

But I have a question... Do you not believe that there’s such thing as high and low status women or does that just go for men? — The Great Whatever