Is romantic love shallow?

Torkolla · 2021-05-07T19:20:22+00:00

You are supposed to spend that time of one or two years when you are mad abut each other getting to know the one you are in love with and develop real, lasting love with them. That is what falling in love is for. In reverse, this is why you can also be in love with someone you feel contempt for, because love and being in love is not the same thing. Sometimes you fall in love with the wrong person.

Comfortable_Intern57 · 2021-05-07T20:01:26+00:00

Physical attraction is not the same as romantic love. You can be attracted to someone and never really love them. That can come later after really knowing someone. Physical attraction gets you into the door, but personality is key to opening that heart. I'm Demisexual so I usually don't find people attractive at all until I get to know them and like their Personality or there is an emotional attachment, but I still understand that these two things are different, love and physical attraction.

rainbowbarfff · 2021-05-07T21:20:36+00:00

Honestly, I have to wonder what deep, dark places of the internet and your mind you would have to explore in order to come to this conclusion, so I'm just going to remind you of the following things:

Disabled, obese, and people with chronic illnesses find and keep love. I guarantee there is an unattractive, obese, and disabled person with diabetes in this world with a dedicated and loving partner.
These observations are more indicative of your personal approach to love and relationships, not everyone else's. Whereas you are exclusively seeking the best status & genetics in a partner, some people seek partners based on other metrics, such as personality compatibility. You are reducing your view on the dating pool to that of young, cis, and heterosexual individuals seeking to date for the sake of establishing a family - not everyone who dates has these goals or fits into those categories.

My suggestion? Chill out. Stop viewing partnerships and love on such a technical basis because I can almost guarantee that you will end up being the type of guy that blows up on women who don't like him or decide to break up with him. This type of thinking exists exclusively to make you feel like you are not "status" or "attractive" enough whenever somebody decides that you aren't a good fit for them, and it WILL lead you into taking it a lot more personally than is appropriate.

You are navigating this blindly like some sort of bat, using these weird technical definers of compatibility as your form of echolocation because you're unable to see what's in front of you.

PlusFiveVorpalBunny · 2021-05-07T19:45:56+00:00

Oh biology plays a role, definitely. But the women I choose are more than just pretty. A good character is essential. An otherwise attractive woman with an ugly personality has no place in my life.

laundry_pirate · 2021-05-07T22:04:26+00:00

I mean the basis of any good relationship is a good friendship. So unless you consider friendship to be shallow then no

CaptinSuspenders · 2021-05-07T19:34:15+00:00

It's not shallow. Even within groups with the same "smv" you still select for compatibility. More introspective types will select for deep compatibility. Shallow people will have shallow love. Deep people will have deep love. This applies to any pairing, even between uggos.

Darknessdaddy69 · 2021-05-07T19:16:46+00:00

I think love is more of a choice, while its true that those good feelings last only about 1-2 years, people can make relationship last for decades. In my opinion biggest value in person is their personality.

xvszero · 2021-05-07T20:08:47+00:00

It can be, but then again, most romantic relationships don't work out longterm. Also, all kinds of people continually pick shitty partners over and over and over, so I'm not sure where this idea that everyone is always going for the best comes from.

People who actually know how to have good, longterm relationships that work tend to be less shallow.

zoemondo · 2021-05-07T23:10:51+00:00

I'm sure love is shallow among shallow people.

Not everyone is shallow, though.

raducu123 · 2021-05-08T07:22:16+00:00

Being in love is by no means shallow.
There are people who only spend a couple of months in a relationship to ride that new relationship energy wave, rinse and repeat.
Not even that is shallow if they are honest.
Expecting to find a LTR where that energy lasts forever, not doing any work, expecting to magically find someone where that lasts forever is shallow.

KirthWGersen · 2021-05-08T08:55:08+00:00

There is nothing shallow about physical and emotional attraction or romantic love, precisely because is the way nature has found to produce fitter offspring from generation to generation in our sexually-reproducing mammalian species.

For a most of human history, life was precarious, and a strong provider who was temporarily in love could make all the difference in the survival of infant and mother.

Language is relatively new in humans (60,000 years?) and has vastly increased our ability to survive as individuals and groups. So it should come as no surprise that artistic, linguistic and musical talent are sexually arousing. Intelligence is sexy for the same reason muscles are: survival.

On an individual level it may feel disappointing when people choose lovers they consider to be better than you. But surely expecting someone to love you for that special person you feel you are inside is the most superficial approach there is: it is expecting love in exchange for nothing. It is freeloading on another's time and energy. That is fine in a mother-child relationship, but not between mature adults.

Inareskai · 2021-05-07T21:46:39+00:00

I guess my main question is 'does it stop being romantic love?'

Like, is my relationship of almost 8 years no longer 'romantic' love? I feel like it very much still is romantic love, and it definitely doesn't feel shallow. If it were, no one's romantic relationships would last past the powerful infatuation stage.

So no, I don't think romantic love is fundamentally based on sexual selection/eugenics. I don't think it can really be based on eugenics in general, unless there is a conscious thought process regarding maximising gene selection for any future children. Which tends not to be the case - people who do not want to/cannot reproduce at all still fall romantically in love. As for sexual selection, it might be an aspect of the initial spark, but to claim that romantic love and sexual attraction are the same thing I think is a very big stretch and not one most people would agree with.

PlayfulLawyer · 2021-05-08T07:11:36+00:00

Looks help get you in the door, the rest of the stuff is extra

snoob2015 · 2021-05-07T18:05:26+00:00

Yes, it is shallow and unfair, but this is how we can get more beautiful people as a whole.

OutsideBandicoot3 · 2021-05-07T18:09:47+00:00

[permanently deleted]

2021-05-07T19:46:56+00:00

When I hear "the song of Beren and Luthien", I don't think so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11_aneHVaz8

PutsWomenOnPedestal · 2021-05-08T15:53:32+00:00

There is no such thing as romantic “love”. It is simply a fancy term for what sexual partners want from each other. We might as well coin a term called “transactional love” for what business partners want from each other.

Loudhale · 2021-05-11T07:28:22+00:00

Romantic love?

MilkchocolateHero · 2021-05-11T07:52:29+00:00

It's hard for me to figure out my opinion on this topic because of how abstract romantic love is. There are many factors to account for when measuring any abstract concept.

I personally don't believe the depth of romantic love is currently quantifiable by any scientific methodology. I could be wrong though. I think it would be hard to do as love itself can be such a nebulous and abstract concept.

For most people there does need to be physical attraction in the initial stages when forming a romantic or sexual relationship, but once a connection is made other traits can keep a couple together.

In my experience, I have met many elderly couples who have been married 60+ years who still have a strong romantic love for each other.

I didn't spend every waking minute with them, so it's entirely possible they aren't as "in love" as I perceived them to be. They are also from a different time period where it was generally frowned upon for couples to separate.

This has made me believe that the depth of romantic love is entirely dependent on the individuals experiencing it. Romantic love seems to only appear in the context of long term relationships.

IgnatCristian · 2023-04-27T19:43:51+00:00

To me, romantic love is shallow, I think people say it's worth far more than it is, although I say this from my point of view, since I am unable to properly understand it/feel it. I never understood the concept so well. Like what's love ? Is it a feeling, cause I sure as heck don't feel anything. Yeah, I might be happy to talk to a person whose personality I like and is a romantic interest to be sometimes, but that isn't a separate feeling, that's just a temporary happiness. And if you say that love is the one that triggers this happiness, I don't think that's the case. The way our brain works is much more complex than that.

Even talking to girls, yeah I may be interested in a family/I may even like her as a person, still I don't feel much except physical attraction and maybe some faint pleasure that doesn't last for long. I hear this word so much, so many people telling me how beautiful it is but it's just a hollow word for me. I can't really relate to it, I can't really imagine it. Ever since I was younger, to be able to understand and relate at least to some degree to other people made my own explanation for it. To me, romantic love is just getting used to the person you deem suitable to form a family with, it's like being a team that works together and that is there for each other. It's building respect, understanding and the capacity to navigate the trials of life together. It's like a fair exchange.

AgitatedBig2398 · 2026-05-01T14:12:59+00:00

Yes it's shallow

Title	Is romantic love shallow?
Author	OutsideBandicoot3
Upvotes	14
Comments	66
Date	May 7, 2021 6:03 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/ExRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/n74rkd/is_romantic_love_shallow/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/ExRedPill/is-romantic-love-shallow.755878 https://theredarchive.com/post/755878

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