It’s amusing, and telling, that your post doesn’t even mention children, when they are obviously the ultimate reason for romantic feelings existing in the first place. Traditionally, the “value proposition” was primarily in the formation of a coherent family unit embedded in the larger clan/tribe, which allowed you to become a fully contributing, high status member of society. Of course, those structures mostly lie in ruins these days, the attendant “crisis of meaning” is vast and multifaceted, and people’s struggles with rebuilding the notion of relationships is only a part of it.
This post might (no promises) become the first in a sequence, and a likely theme of one post in that sequence is how this all used to work. Main claim: it is possible to get one’s needs for benefits-downstream-of-willingness-to-be-vulnerable met from non-romantic relationships instead, on some axes that is a much better strategy, and I think that’s how things mostly worked historically and still work in many places today. The prototypical picture here looks like both romantic partners having their separate tight-knit group of (probably same-sex) friends who they hang out with—he hangs with “the boys”, she hangs with “the girls”. And to some extent this is probably a necessity, because at the population level there’s a pretty severe mismatch between the kinds of benefits-downstream-of-willingness-to-be-vulnerable which men and women want vs can supply each other.
(To be clear, that does not mean I think everyone should pursue that strategy or even that it should necessarily be the default target, but I do think that it should at least be on one’s radar as a possibility.)
I am not sure if going back to ancient times is very meaningful though. A lot of things may have biological origins but humans have evolved for a good reason from them.
It’s amusing, and telling, that your post doesn’t even mention children, when they are obviously the ultimate reason for romantic feelings existing in the first place. Traditionally, the “value proposition” was primarily in the formation of a coherent family unit embedded in the larger clan/tribe, which allowed you to become a fully contributing, high status member of society. Of course, those structures mostly lie in ruins these days, the attendant “crisis of meaning” is vast and multifaceted, and people’s struggles with rebuilding the notion of relationships is only a part of it.
Indeed!
This post might (no promises) become the first in a sequence, and a likely theme of one post in that sequence is how this all used to work. Main claim: it is possible to get one’s needs for benefits-downstream-of-willingness-to-be-vulnerable met from non-romantic relationships instead, on some axes that is a much better strategy, and I think that’s how things mostly worked historically and still work in many places today. The prototypical picture here looks like both romantic partners having their separate tight-knit group of (probably same-sex) friends who they hang out with—he hangs with “the boys”, she hangs with “the girls”. And to some extent this is probably a necessity, because at the population level there’s a pretty severe mismatch between the kinds of benefits-downstream-of-willingness-to-be-vulnerable which men and women want vs can supply each other.
(To be clear, that does not mean I think everyone should pursue that strategy or even that it should necessarily be the default target, but I do think that it should at least be on one’s radar as a possibility.)
I am not sure if going back to ancient times is very meaningful though. A lot of things may have biological origins but humans have evolved for a good reason from them.