Talk:Romance

Wiki Education assignment: Humanities 2 HYBRID

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 27 January 2026 and 4 May 2026. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sheyla-Cervantes (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Sheyla-Cervantes (talk) 04:46, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Bullet points in lead

I reversed a recent change which removed the comprehensive definition at the beginning of the article, which gave MOS:PARA as its rationale. The bullet list at the beginning of this article is not the type of bullet list that guideline is meant to target, and in this case the bullets make the prose much more clear. Wikipedia has no firm rules. (It's one of the five pillars. WP:5; WP:IAR?.)

I have said this many times on talk pages (and it's stated in the article with citations) that it's difficult or impossible to clearly define what the words "romance", "romantic", and "romantic love" mean without explaining how there are several interrelated definitions which are in circulation.

Among one group of scholars, "romantic love" is considered a synonym with the mental state of being in love, but this is not a universal convention. (Also see Talk:Romantic_love_(mental_state).)

This is often given in reference to Helen Fisher's definition, which is defined as a motivation or brain system.

The attraction system is characterized by increased energy and focused attention on a preferred mating partner. In humans, the attraction system (standardly called romantic love, obsessive love, passionate love, being in love, infatuation, or limerence) is also characterized by feelings of exhilaration, “intrusive thinking” about the love object, and a craving for emotional union with this partner or potential partner. (Fisher, 2002)

Let me also list a few other kinds of definitions which are in circulation.

Romantic love is an unrealistic, irrational, and idealized type of love. Literary and social science scholars have primarily contrasted romantic love with rational, practical, and pragmatic love. Realistic and pragmatic attitudes are the opposite of romantic beliefs. Romantic lovers prefer to live in their idealized world of fantasies and aspirations. They tend to idealize their partner and their relationship. Their romantic imaginations embrace their minds. (Karandashev)

Romantic love is a passionate spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other's person. I do not describe a relationship as romantic love if the couple does not experience their attachment as passionate or intense, at least to some significant extent. (Branden & Branden, pp. 21-22)

romantic love: an intensity and idealization of a love relationship, in which the other is imbued with extraordinary virtue, beauty, etc., so that the relationship overrides all other considerations, including material ones. Conceptions of romantic love arose partly as a justification of extramarital sexual relations in contexts in which marital relationships were determined largely by economic considerations or by related expediencies. More generally, they are associated with the rise of more individualistic familial relationship, which, in Western Europe and elsewhere, replaced earlier patterns of values and relationships, such as arranged marriages. While rarely realized fully, the idea remains an element in the conceptions of companionate marriage, individualistic criteria in the choice of marriage and/or sexual partners, and the expectations attached to marriage in most modern societies, and can be a source of both heightened gratification and a sense of personal fulfilment or of disappointment and disruption in relationships. (Collins Dictionary, p. 525)

What's confusing is that these definitions refer to different things, but they are interrelated for historical reasons because the term has always had a fuzzy definition.

All of it has to be explained and delineated in this article as clearly as possible, because this is the main topic.

The alternative, if other editors really want to go with this very pedantic interpretation that a bulleted sentence should not be used here, is that I can rewrite the lead a different way so it does not use the bullets. This is preferable over just reverting to a much older version of the article with an inferior lead sentence. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 17:02, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

This is another definition that I think is interesting, because it's actually given by Robert Sternberg in reference to literature, even though it involves a kind of classification.

Romantic love. This kind of love derives from a combination of the intimacy and passion components of love. In essence, it is liking with an added element, namely, the arousal brought about by physical attraction and its concomitants. According to this view, then, romantic lovers are not only drawn physically to each other but are also bonded emotionally. This view of romantic love seems to be similar to that found in classic works of literature, such as Romeo and Juliet and Tristan and Isolde. This view of romantic love differs, however, from that of Hatfield and Walster (1981), who argue that romantic love does not differ from infatuation. (Sternberg)

Both versions of the lead in this article here were also written by me; the new version with the bulleted sentence was just written to be more clear. It does not explicitly define romantic love as referring to one specific concept, but rather lists several kinds of concepts which the term tends to encompass.

Trying to take all of these different kinds of definitions and condense them into one singular definition would require some WP:OR, and I was actually trying to avoid this as much as possible. It's not usually explicitly delineated, but the definitions tend to revolve around a number of different things: 1) a mental state, 2) a type of relationship, 3) a culture about this, and 4) fictional stories about this.

It's very difficult to write about this on Wikipedia sometimes (and I've actually complained to researchers in emails about this), but the way it's handled in the lead here with the bulleted sentence-as-list is as clear as I could possibly make it when I was working on this article before. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 17:27, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

Not to belabor the point, but these are a few other definitions I thought of, that I haven't posted on here before.

These all come from the same book (1980).

An initial working definition of romantic love might contain the following elements: A preoccupation with another person. A deeply felt desire to be with the loved one. A feeling of incompleteness without him or her. Thinking of the loved one often, whether together or apart. Separation frequently provokes feelings of genuine despair or else tantalizing anticipation of reuniting. Reunion is seen as bringing feelings of euphoric ecstasy or peace and fulfillment. (Pope, p. 4)

That's similar to Elaine Hatfield's definition of passionate love, and clearly talking about a mental state.

A precise and satisfactory definition of romantic love has eluded even those social scientists who have recently risen to the challenge of its scientific study. However, the phenomenon may be identified in one of its manifestations as an affectively charged subjective experience characterized by an intense longing for and preoccupation with another person. In the presence of this person the individual experiences powerful affect and physiological arousal; the individual aspires to be the exclusive recipient of the loved one's attention, interest, and approval, is painfully sensitive to indications of rejection, and is thus susceptible to feelings of jealousy when this aspiration goes unrealized. (Friedlander & Morrison, p. 27)

Again, talking about a mental state, but that chapter of the book is largely about crushes, infatuation or limerence based on fantasy (using "romantic love" to refer to this), not about relationships.

The basic phenomenology and "symptomatology" of romantic love has remained relatively constant since the beginnings of recorded history. Early descriptions of "love sickness," for example, that were presented by Sappho in the sixth century B.C. are remarkably similar to modern-day accounts.

[...]

Given [the] significant properties of the romantic bond, how might one define romantic love? Most attempts are based on the phenomenology of the experience, that is, how it feels to the person in love. From a scientific, evolutionary point of view, however, it may be advantageous to define romantic love without appealing to conscious experience or subjective reports of emotions. With this in mind, we define the dyadic social relationship of romantic love as a rapidly formed, temporally robust attachment between two genetically unrelated individuals. (Rizley, pp. 105-106)

There Rizley acknowledges that other authors (in the same book even) are talking about mental states, then simply disregards this because it doesn't fit what he wants to talk about, and gives a relationship type of definition instead.

The relationship type of definition seems to be fairly common, although the notion that romantic love involves a relationship has been called a misconception by Sandra Langeslag.

But then these people always write in a confusing way - Langeslag, for example, has claimed that she uses Fisher's model in her work , but then she actually uses "romantic love" in a different way from Fisher. Langeslag uses "romantic love" to mean any of lust/attraction/attachment , whereas Fisher uses "romantic love" only as a synonym for her attraction system concept (being in love).

In any case, this is why the lead is written the way it is, without explicitly offering a single definition of "romantic love". It just talks about the elements of typical definitions, and says defining the term is difficult (or even contradictory).

It could be written without bullets, but I think the bulleted sentence-as-list makes it much more clear. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 06:00, 21 August 2026 (UTC)