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  • The strange thing about love is that even though we experienced it in a deeply personal

  • and apparently instinctive way, it has a history.

  • In other words people around the world haven't always fallen in love the way they do now.

  • The point of rehearsing a few of the telling moments in love's history is to remind ourselves

  • that there are different ways of arranging relationships, depending on what a given society happens to believe in.

  • Love is a cultural invention, and we are not at the end of its evolution.

  • We may in fact be still only at the early stages of the history of love;

  • we're still learning what we need and how we might get more successful at love

  • the Euphrates Mary's ship to the princess of the neighboring Kingdom of

  • young had far from being the outcome of love this marriage like that of many

  • between powerful people in the ancient world is purely transactional mari

  • occupies a critical position in the trade routes between Syria and

  • Mesopotamia and marrying ship to will allow them real in to expand his wealth

  • and power.

  • Henry Lin's attitude to marriage continues with his children. He marries

  • off eight of his daughters two rulers of neighboring cities forcing each of his

  • new son in laws to sign a document pledging themselves to him.

  • The people of mari are in effect saying that what gives a marriage meaning isn't

  • how much the couple happened to love one another but whether it's beneficial in

  • terms of trade connections and wore. This is so alien to us

  • it's worth reflecting on just how much we nowadays refuse to entertain at least

  • in public

  • any practical considerations when Mary feelings are meant to be our only load

  • starts and yet for thousands of years until only a minute ago on the

  • historical clock it was unambiguously meant to be only about land, power and

  • money.

  • The notion that you should love your spouse would have seemed plain laughable.

  • This may have created a collective trauma whistle and flight from bleh

  • france 11 47824 to tell the Prince of Bly

  • set sail for Tripoli in modern-day northern Lebanon.

  • He has off to see the Countess of Tripoli with whom he has fallen deeply

  • in love.

  • Rudel is one of the earliest known troubadours or skilled court poets who

  • rise to prominence in southern France in the 12th century and write poetry on one

  • subject exclusively love Rudel has written many poems in honor of the

  • countess and want to write some more in her presence but Rudy's idea of love is

  • very particular and at that time dramatically new. It's love that's

  • utterly divorce from practical considerations that doesn't involve

  • children, money, dynasties or even any kind of reciprocation. The troubadour

  • poets never tried to have sex with the objects of their love. Their focuses

  • exclusively on what we would call the infatuation or more colloquially the

  • crush side of love.

  • Rudel has fallen in love with the countess without ever having set eyes on

  • her.

  • Pining away for his lady from hundreds of miles away.

  • He composes and sets to music many songs expressing grief and joy.

  • Unfortunately, he falls ill on route to his lady and has to be stretched into

  • Tripoli whether counters hears about him and visit him in his chamber.

  • Rudel recovers momentarily before dying

  • Finally at peace very chase Lee in her arms

  • The troubadours took love very seriously only they didn't see it is linked to

  • marriage.

  • Romantic love is something you fell for someone you were never going to do

  • household chores with and that may be the secret of its intensity. This kind of

  • love was spared too much contact with daily life.

  • Rudel could imagine how lovely the Countess of Tripoli was without ever

  • having to dispute with her about the right place to hang a tapestry will get

  • frustrated if she didn't particularly want to do a special embarrassing thing

  • for him in bed that love could remain pristine. The troubadours show us a

  • historical moment when the idea of love was not tied to the notion of moving in

  • together or to the intertwining of two practical economic and social lives

  • using the same toilet Sharon utility bills and trying to go on camping

  • holidays with your partner's friends.

  • Versailles France fourteenth of september's 1745 at six o'clock in the

  • evening.

  • in a move engineered and planned for weeks general 28 price on a 23 year old

  • beauty from Paris bruised powdered and wearing a black off-the-shoulder dress

  • enter the cabin ethical say approaches can do with the fifteenth and curtsies

  • three times this simple gesture makes it official channel 28 is the King's mystic

  • lie or cheat mistress and from now on she will be known as madame de pompadour

  • and resided court with the King the king has by this point been married for 20

  • years but marriage doesn't mean fidelity you Mary for reasons of State and you

  • have mistresses on the side.

  • no one gets upset. That's just what happens with the 15th has several

  • mistresses including 14 year-old Mary Louise Oh Murphy who is painted in a

  • famous semi pornographic painting by force where she at Versailles in the

  • 18th century there was an acceptance of the imperfect fit between marriage and

  • love. It was understood that they would always be attention between the two.

  • Marriage was for children,

  • practicality and continuity. Love was for excitement, drama and sex.

  • One should never try to blend the two. Rather than be under hand or deceitful

  • like many people are today,

  • the King of France simply split love for marriage and without shame or guilt made

  • his romantic attachments and organized and public part of his life with his

  • wife.

  • gretna green Scotland first of January 1812 a couple has just got married in a

  • secret ceremony

  • John Lampton the first Earl of Durham who is portion has land and

  • responsibilities and Harriet the illegitimate daughter of the Earl of

  • john daly who has no money and little social status but is very pretty are now

  • man and wife

  • their families are furious and have tried desperately to stop the wedding

  • but the couple are modern which means that they believe that in marriage

  • love should come first and practical considerations second

  • they've gone to Gretna Green a village just inside Scotland to escape english

  • law and they are examples of a new philosophy of Romanticism which

  • privileges feeling over reason and impulse over tradition

  • romanticism transforms love the old system of marrying for political or

  • economic advantage

  • Stoli crumbles around the world the village of Gretna Green become

  • synonymous with illicit marriages and John and Harriet are among hundreds of

  • English couples in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to reload their

  • the public appetite for stories of romantic descent is such that the local

  • priest publishers some best-selling memoirs of his time they're full of

  • daring coach right across the border and the wrath of one consulted fathers who

  • reached the runaway children just too late

  • gretna green becomes an important place because there's a growing belief that

  • marriage should be the consequence of love and that if two people love each

  • other

  • that alone is what matters in come the standing of the wider family career and

  • how the parents and/or might get on seems irrelevant and more than that they

  • begin to be cast not as wise serious matters which really order to be taken

  • into account

  • but as things that could only seem relevant to County father's snobbish

  • arms and dried up conventional people with no care for the happiness of a

  • couple mostly when we want to do something we take advice if we can from

  • people who've done it before

  • gretna green stands for a remarkable shift in thinking around relationships

  • which is still powerful today the assumption that people who have already

  • had marriages are likely to be very poor advisors and guides to the young love is

  • understood to be an enthusiasm not as

  • kill

  • London England 18

  • teen readers of Jane Austen's latest novel are on the edge of their seats as

  • Fitzwilliam Darcy stumbles his way through a proposal to Elizabeth Bennet

  • his offer of marriage promises to fix all her problems

  • not only is he handsome but he's rich and Elizabeth family with for unmarried

  • daughters to support badly needs all the cash they can get

  • but Elizabeth says no Darcy for all his gifts is also arrogant and a snob pride

  • and prejudice may suggest women marry for money but Elizabeth actions reveal a

  • new and some first of belief rapidly gaining currency in English society that

  • they should love the man they betrothed themselves - it's an idea

  • Austin support strongly 11 years earlier she had herself rejected a proposal of

  • marriage claiming anything is to be preferred or injured rather than

  • marrying without affection in her greatest novel however things turn out

  • for the best

  • eventually after many twists and turns and despite her lack of standing and

  • money

  • Elizabeth and Darcy Mary what continues to strike readers today is that Jane

  • Austen is deeply concerned about romance and about money to marry only for money

  • is she argues a disaster but equally she holds that to marry only for love is a

  • terrible folly to in Austin's eyes a good marriage requires warmth and

  • tenderness of heart and strong practical worldly managerial competence and from

  • this austin draws the conclusion that few people are actually that well suited

  • for marriage

  • she's unsurprised that many marriages are a little hollow or a little grim

  • Austen's novels to pick numerous unsatisfactory relationships and only a

  • few very happy ones in the early years of the 19th century

  • Jane Austen is defining the wise ideal of modern love she sees marriage as a

  • hybrid enterprise in some respects it's like running a small business or

  • organizing a village fete

  • if you don't keep track of the practical details and don't have quite an

  • efficient turn for administration things are going to go badly wrong but at the

  • same time

  • marriage is a profoundly complex emotional encounter and to thrive in it

  • one needs emotional maturity

  • affection playfulness and warmth through her novels

  • Jane Austen is trying to present the reader with an education in a truly

  • classical way she believes we can do a few things well if we leave our

  • performance to nature luck and chance

  • happy relationship depends on the maturity of both parties in Pride and

  • Prejudice with Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy have to be improved

  • he has to lose his pride and she has to shed her prejudice

  • if they're to be capable of living well together love is something we need to

  • learn

  • London, printed fourth of november 1859. It's the day Charles Darwin publishes

  • the origin of species

  • There is a huge initial resistance but eventually much of the world is

  • convinced by his arguments.

  • Human beings are descended from the primates and that means that we've

  • inherited not just the skeletal structure but also a lot of their drives

  • and basic psychology.

  • Darwin's detractors are aghast at the implied humiliation.

  • But that's consolation and Darwin, too. Because he suggests that our inability

  • to live up to our ideals is not wholly our own fault.

  • We are anytime half apes. And for apes to aim for faithful life long passionate

  • egalitarians relationships is to attempt to pull off something hugely difficult,

  • starting from a very unpromising base.

  • No wonder we often fail without particularly intending to Darwin rushes

  • in a strategic and useful pessimism about relationships rather than being

  • for instance essentially monogamous

  • he implies that human beings might by nature at least be predisposed to as

  • many apes are polygamy opportunistic sex and the dumping of one made for another

  • on the basis of nothing more than their breathing potential signal by such

  • unedifying and unspiritual characteristics as how big their breasts are.

  • Aquatic park san francisco United States August, 1965. Jefferson Poland

  • wearing a flower behind his ear, strips off his swimming trunks and weights

  • naked into the sea.

  • Poland is one of the world's first hippies. He wears his hair long and

  • rejects the sophistication of modern life for a romantic notion of getting

  • back to a natural state of grace. Behind him and three other protesters braving

  • the icy cold ocean water is a cheering crowd of beatniks and anarchists who

  • hold up signs and charge the phrase sex is clean laura is obscene in front of a

  • hastily assembled group of reporters.

  • this event is one of many organized by groups advocating free love in the

  • nineteen sixties in America they argue that society's rules against nudity,

  • same-sex relationships and sex before marriage for all forms of sexual

  • repression soon monogamy itself is being questioned in an enlightened world they

  • argue sexually liberated men and women should just give up on marriage

  • along with it jealousy adultery and divorce. It's a beautiful deeply romantic

  • idea of what love could be and it eventually collapses into a disaster.

  • Belgium 2015. The country achieved a notorious distinction

  • it is the nation with the highest rate of divorce in the developed world and

  • astonishing 71 percent of couples will split up here.

  • A newspaper in the country asks why and the answer comes back clearly. "Initial

  • expectations were not met" Other countries are not far behind. In the UK,

  • the divorce rate is forty-two percent. In the US, fifty three percent. In Hungary,

  • sixty-seven percent and in Portugal, sixty-eight percent. Part of the reason

  • lies in the disappointment people feel with what had apparently been promised

  • to them by the freewheeling nineteen sixties, and before that, by 19th century

  • romanticism. the dream of love survives but it disappoints constantly at dinner

  • tables around the world.

  • Otherwise intelligent people complain that they simply can't understand

  • strange and tricky subject of love. The future hope for love lies in the notion

  • of sacrifice that is in accepting that we won't get everything we want from

  • love, relationships or marriage.

  • We're trying to do something highly ambitious in our modern ideals of

  • relationships unite sex, affection, the raising of a family, a career and

  • adequate material security.

  • We will by necessity fail to get all of these. The idea of sacrifice though helps

  • us if we consider getting half of what we really want and need might still be

  • quite a lot in comparison with what it would be like if we avoided

  • relationships all together.

  • Clearly, solitary life can work out really well for a few people but mostly

  • we hate living alone.

  • The question should not be so much whether relationships live up to our

  • ideal hopes of mutual happiness but whether they are better, if only a little,

  • than not having relationships at all.

  • The future of love needs us to get interested in ambivalence that is in the

  • capacity to keep on thinking that something is quite good

  • even while we're painfully conscious of its many and striking day-to-day

  • imperfections.

The strange thing about love is that even though we experienced it in a deeply personal

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