Romantic Love: an Analysis of Andrew Sullivan's Article

Many people want to have a romantic love in their life; however, romance is such abstract feeling so that we do not know whether it exists or not. In many cases, we can find that romantic love do exist in varieties of movie, song, and even books. Therefore, some people do believe that romantic love exists, and they feel that romantic love does not seem to be abstract. For example, we can find in many movies that the main male character sees the main female character, and then all of a sudden, he realizes that she is the one he wants to be with for the rest of his life, and vice versa. We also can find the same scenes in numerous of songs and books. After all of these movies, songs, and books, we seem to be hypnotized; there is such thing as we called "romantic love." In the American Heritage Dictionary, romantic is defined "expressive of or conducive to love." However, what is love? According to the American Heritage Dictionary, love is defined as deep affection and warm feeling for another. Besides this one, love also have another definition such as, the emotion of sex and romance; strong sexual desire for another person. The ideal romantic love—expressive of deep affection and warm feeling for another—is what we've been taught the true meaning of romantic love is. But according to the American Heritage Dictionary, romantic love can also mean the expressive of strong sexual desire for another person. It comes down to one question—Does the ideal romantic love really exist or not. According to Andrew Sullivan in the Love Bloat: Why Obsess Over Romance?, there is not such thing called romantic love as we idealized, and his opinion about romantic love is right; there is not such thing called romantic love. In the Love Bloat: Why Obsess Over Romance?, Sullivan says that the concept of romantic love is crock by any serious person before the 19th century. And Sullivan applies Shakespeare's idea of love—it comes; it goes. If taken too seriously, it kills. Sullivan also gives some his idea of what relationships truly are, and which are useful economic bargains. Sullivan uses Rousseau as another support for his opinion about romantic love; Rousseau saw bourgeois love as a salve for the empty emotional center of restrained, law-bound societies. Rousseau wanted to substitute the passion of people for truth and honor and power with something just as absorbing but nowhere near as dangerous. Finally, Sullivan uses a quote from Noel Coward, "If love were all, I should be lonely," to end up his article.
. According to Sullivan, he writes, "For the other 99 percent of us, relationships are at best useful economic bargains and, if we're lucky, successful sexual transactions—better than the alternative, which has long been close to social death." The most of us may have the warm feeling for another person in beginning, but after a while, this warm feeling is faded. Therefore, it is important to know why we still maintain a relationship with another person after the wonderful feeling disappears. Sullivan says that relationships are at the best useful economic bargains. When we have a relationship with someone, we do have some economic bargains from the other person. For example, there is a person who can pay the diner bills, and also pay some of the things we buy. We can also have successful sexual transactions with our useful economic bargains if we are lucky. Sullivan also writes, "It [love] flatters our narcissism. It diverts us with phony adrenaline, teases us with jealousy, hooks us with sex. It is the means by which our genes persuade our bodies to reproduce." In his article, Sullivan tells us that Rousseau wants to substitute the passion of people for truth and honor and power with something just as absorbing but nowhere near as dangerous. Sullivan gives us the reason why we cannot use love to substitute for these feelings; love is dangerous, and sometimes it hurts people. He uses Shakespeare's quote to support his idea in the beginning of his article; "If taken too seriously, it [love] kills." The emotion of love does not really kill people but hurts people. We have these kinds of negative emotional feelings like, jealous from relationship or love that are hurting us. Therefore, love is not appeal what we have idealized and romantic. According to William Shakespeare in the Fair Is My Love, But Not So Fair as Fickle, he writes, "Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle; Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty;" Shakespeare says that love is brighter than glass, and softer than wax; he means that the way love appears seems to be great and wonderful, but it is just what love appears to be. Shakespeare also reveals that glass is brittle and wax is iron and rusty, so love is not appeal as wonderful as it looks, and he also says: "it comes; it goes. If taken too seriously, it kills." Love comes and goes, but it kills when it is taken too seriously. Love does not really murder people, but it is another way to say that love hurts people when people take it too seriously. Love gives people warm feelings, and some people are addicted to it. But love does hurt.