The Invention of Romance

According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, “romance” tends to involve something in the way of the following: (1) a medieval tale based on legend, chivalric love and adventure; (2) a prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote in time and place and usually heroic, adventurous or mysterious; (3) a love story; (4) something that lacks basis in fact. The last one seems to say it all, doesn’t it? Where there is romance, there is likely to be some kind of kooky story that lacks basis in fact. When we experience romantic feelings, we suddenly turn into some “imaginary character involved in events remote in time and place.” We tend to lose track of our “real” lives for a while, that is. Sooner or later, however, reality reels us back in and we flop up on shore kicking and screaming. Turns out there was a hook inside the candy heart after all.

THE INVENTION OF ROMANCE

When we look at history, it seems that romance hasn’t always been around – not in its current form, at least. Many scholars assert that, until medieval times, people got married for strategic purposes of politics and finance. As the poet, Mary Leapor, wrote, “In spite of all romantic poets sing,/This gold, my dearest, is an [sic] useful thing.” Sex would happen, inside – and often outside – the relationship because, well, as says evolutionary psychology, sex needed to happen. Gooey feelings of romantic love, being not all that practically “useful,” simply weren’t part of the deal. Around the 11th century, however, a new idea – new to the West, at least – of “pure desire” began to show up.

Alan Watts discusses this phenomenon of pure desire at some length in Nature, Man and Woman. A curious practice was spreading among the 11th-century Christians, Watts tells us, which involved the forming of odd relationships between virgin Christian girls and devout Christian men. Such relationships went so far as to allow caressing and sleeping with one another, but strictly disallowed orgasm for both parties. Why? The idea was to “store up” enough sexual energy so that a highly passionate relationship could be sustained. The virgin woman became a model of the divine. In his devoted worshipping of her, an act meant to ultimately redirect his passion toward the divine, the Christian man never allowed his desire to be satisfied or dissipated in sexual climax.

A little later, Watts says, the same idea showed up in the form of “courtly love.” Here, young knights involved themselves with wives of feudal princes in a practice known as donnoi. Like the Christians, the practitioners of donnoi tried to create an atmosphere of “pure,” or romantic, desire. Sexual energy was translated into gentlemanly and chivalrous behaviors – not to mention ambiguous, naked caressing. To actually satisfy the sexual desire directly would dirty the romance, diminish the passionate feelings of courtly love. Watts quotes a troubadour poet of the period: “He knows nothing of donnoi who wants fully to possess his lady.” Or, as the song-writer, Dorothy Fields wrote as recently as 1936, “A fine romance with no kisses./A fine romance, my friend, this is.” And so we see the continuing Western notion of romantic love being invented, or at least refined into a science, by the Christians and the knights-errant.

Here’s how men think. Sex, work – and those are reversible, depending on age – sex, work, food, sports and lastly, begrudgingly, relationships. And here’s how women think. Relationships, relationships, relationships, relationships, work, sex, shopping, weight, food. (p. 257)