@Kub933 was writing about romantic love being a construct, a fantasy.
I agree.
It’s because we can’t get what we really desire (the most attractive partner), that we must construct this bridge to fill in the gaps.
Nurture is something else.
As the majority is “average looking” this construct is absolutely everywhere.
Desire doesn’t care about which body it is installed in. It is programmed to want it all, regardless of the bodies ability to attract it.
Brutal. 
are you saying it’s a fantasy to all except the exceptionally few who are attractive enough to nab their ideal (in the context of the “because we can’t get the most attractive partner we must construct this bridge to fill in the gaps” comment)? what aspects of romantic love are you labeling as fantasy?
(also hey hello! i’m new here 
)
Hi @scout
An aspect of it is, though according to the Actual Freedom Trust, love is primarily there to bridge the seperation felt by feeling beings.
Which may be a different flavour of the spectrum, the whole spectrum including all kinds of love feelings towards different people. Parents, children, siblings, friends… and of course ice-cream.
I am commenting on the fact that the full experience of sexual desire and the bliss if far different to the experience of typical romantic love for me.
The love I feel is more of the imagination that this person is a great deal, when desire is saying, “eh”.
So we can contruct a whole fantasy about this person somehow being more than they are.
It’s the difference between “Love at first sight” which is 90% what visual appeal a person has, and “Building a relationship”, where one seeks to date, and “get to know” and spend time together. That “love” is being constructed. A lot of it is already constructed for us by society.
Men ask and display confidence, give gifts and display provider signals, women dress up and act feminine, displaying fertility symbols (makeup etc). Then each convince themselves that they are “falling in love” via becoming increasingly deliberately blind to each other’s faults.
It’s like a template with emotional check points.
Whilst straight up desire has a single instant checkpoint.
Yes, I can’t rule out that. How would I know?
I see the lop-sided version far more, where one is infactuated then expects the other to “build up love” via the romantic construct.
So two people can end up saying “I love you” but they aren’t talking about the same thing at all.
Romantic love is vastly more fragile than infactuated love. It needs constant maintenance least the whole edifice comes crashing down.
The whole Authority & Love drama is part of the romantic love construct.
There is no authority or “built up” love in infactuated desire; it bypasses all the rules.
ok this makes sense. i think i was confused because society rarely disentangles raw desire from this slow emotional signaling construct; both are discussed as “romantic love”, both are seen as foundations of relationships, and both can occur concurrently in a relationship. but often times it is one or the other
perhaps in the beginning, although i think the emotional construction of romance tends to be necessary in longer-lasting relationships, as that powerful infatuation does fade eventually
what you wrote struck a chord with me as i’m navigating this in a relationship right now. a couple years ago i ended one of those infatuated/attraction relationships because it was lacking connection and emotional depth, and my partner was not interested in deeper intimacy. despite their clear distance and lots of glaring misalignments, i was pretty obsessed with them for a while
now i am in a relationship with that depth of intimacy, going through all the steps you described as the foundations of romance; my partner is demonstrating themselves to be dependable, available, thoughtful. and i enjoy them and our ease of communication immensely. but i notice how i crave that infatuated spark, which i am not experiencing, and even though i love my partner, i still long for it
i can see the spark functioned in an addictive way - bred anxiety and pain and insecurity, made me want to do anything to make them stay because they were like a drug to me. and it blinded me to the reality of our differences, because it felt so good. i don’t know if i actually want that again. but i feel the urgent pull of it, and i am afraid that perhaps the intimacy i am building with this person now is something of a sham, because were i to feel the infatuation again, i may very well run off and chase it
i talked about non-monogamy with my partner and they seem open to some version of it eventually. which is a little bit “keeping my options open” to feel that druggy infatuation again - and my partner expresses deep love for me and commitment to me, so this seems like a half-hearted engagement in our dynamic on my part, an emotional betrayal. i feel torn between urges and emotions and i don’t really like feeling beholden to either
and thank you! great to be here dumping my greatest insecurities already lol
found actualism through another spiritual forum that i’m part of
Hardly dumping! Really interesting to read.
That’s point of sharing each other’s experiences and thoughts on these rarely examined topics.
I am probably off the mark in what I am saying, as far as actualism goes. I do however like the seperating of these feelings into what is a powerful instinctual passion level inherited in one’s DNA, and what is handed to us as a construct. Cheers @Kub933
It’s a good point that the “spark” can fade, it’s no guarantee of success.
I’ve experienced the one sided infactuated combined with romantic love (with me being the infactuated) and it took a long time to die down after it was over. A very powerful combination.
I felt good seeing what I saw, even though I imagine that it’s not all correct. They can mix somehow. And each person will experience these differently. I have a woman friend who gets infactuated with short, bald men. She is my height 5’11"(180cm) and quite masculine.
Well there’s always porn 
The thing I’m seeing with addictions is it’s simply and literally down to nothing but my choice. Do I go the addiction route or a different way? There’s literally nothing else to it. Any emotional struggle or conflict about it is essentially a sham, me trying to convince myself it’s not my choice and making it into a bigger thing than it is.
It’s just a matter of … do you want it (the object of addiction)? If the answer is yes then you will pursue it. If the answer is no you won’t. And you can figure out what the answer is based on what you find yourself doing .
Also it’s not a one-time choice. You choose it each time. And nothing says you can’t change that choice.
Haha,
Yes.
The swirling confusion of desire can be quickly sorted out, then, nothing. No drama left.
Welcome to the forum @scout 
If you put love under a microscope you can begin to see that this whole construct we call love consists of things such as :
What you might see is that there is some slight variation around the edges in how love plays itself out but at core it plays out the same way across all people within a culture, it is a universal experience.
Now the question is, what makes love so predictable? Why are couples who are ‘in love’ acting somewhat the same, why is it that it is never original, authentic, unique?
The more this is looked into the more it becomes clear that all couples are to an extent ‘acting out’ of the same script (of what love is believed to be in the particular culture they find themselves in). I.e what they learned love to be and what they are now blindly repeating, of course love has a very powerful affective backing so it is not merely an act. It is a very deeply entrenched way of relating, one that does not work however.
The other thing which relates to the points above is you might find that all those stories about yourself and your parter that you hold are not a clear appraisal of the facts of the situation but rather they have an affective tinge to them, they are coloured and as such distorted by love and the feelings it involves.
Hence why it is possible to love someone and see them as a god one day and say after learning that they cheated see them as the most despicable creature on earth, yet the same person has been there all along.
Wow, I was being far more simplistic than that @Kub933 , but then again my relationships have been very 2 Dimensional.
Here is the script, go do it.
Pretty messed up though.
When the script is in place, there isn’t even the imitation of intimacy. Just automatons acting out a role, scared of their own shadows.
Oh shoot and I forgot to mention the most prominent aspect of that ‘script’, also perhaps most damaging one!
You might find that being in love at core requires and reinforces the belief in the gender identities and the roles that they must fulfil, this reinforces the already existing power structure within a society, typically with the man holding somewhat of a position of authority and the woman being the gate keeper of Love. This structure leads to conflict and away from intimacy.
Yes and even more so messed up when one sees that the roles are mutually reinforcing.
I coined a saying years ago
"A man wants to turn a woman into his mother, but stay in control
A woman wants to turn a man into her father, but stay in control "
A man needs that love, a woman needs that authority.