Love can never truly exist without societal influence and standards. Humans are inherently social creatures who require interaction to thrive. We rely on family, friends, peers, and communities for support, guidance, validation, belonging, and emotional fulfillment. Our lives are shaped by social expectations from birth until death; therefore, these expectations become internalized and shape our perceptions and actions regarding love and romantic relationships.
Parents raise children with specific cultural values, and partners learn about love and relationships from their families, media, education, religion, and society. Love is an abstract concept that encompasses multiple aspects, including romance, attraction, friendship, compassion, and commitment. It involves physical, psychological, and emotional components that vary based on individual beliefs, experiences, and culture. Thus, it cannot be fully autonomous but rather mediated through external factors such as language, gender roles, social norms, and sexuality. Love's definition varies across cultures, historical periods, religions, ethnicities, geographies, socioeconomic classes, age groups, and eras. Its manifestation depends on individual preferences, cultural mores, environmental contexts, and personal circumstances. It may include various behaviors and feelings, including infatuation, longing, desire, passion, jealousy, attachment, loyalty, dependency, compromise, sacrifice, trust, intimacy, devotion, forgiveness, empathy, compatibility, respect, trustworthiness, honesty, affection, admiration, and appreciation. Love can be self-directed or directed towards others, ranging from platonic to intimate. Its expression varies from public displays of affection, private acts of kindness, sharing interests, spending time together, engaging in activities, exchanging gifts, supporting each other, providing for one another, protecting each other, being honest and open, communicating effectively, resolving conflicts, growing together, and experiencing life journeys. Therefore, love requires external validation and acceptance to exist, making it inherently social.
Can love ever be fully autonomous, or is it always mediated by social expectation?
Love can never be entirely independent of cultural standards, expectations, and norms that are constantly changing over time and space because humans are social creatures who live in societies with specific values and belief systems about relationships, intimacy, and commitment. In other words, whether we want to accept it or not, our upbringing, the media we consume, our family and friends' experiences, and the society we live in impact how we understand and feel love and develop romantic relationships.