In The Future of Love by Barbara Graham, she cites a variety of people and opinions as research about views on romantic love. These views fall into two general schools; those two schools are biological and environmental.

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Morton

Nancy Morton

English 161

Ms Theresa Kahl

October 11, 2012

                                   Is It Love or Biochemistry

In The Future of Love by Barbara Graham, she cites a variety of people and opinions as research about views on romantic love.  These views fall into two general schools; those two schools are biological and environmental.  She treats both of these schools of thought as valid and eventually seems to conclude that the way to overcome our cultures preoccupation with romantic love is awareness of that preoccupation.

She seems to be working from the presupposition that our culture is over saturated in romantic love.  This push towards romantic love influences us even from an early age, and she gives examples from her own childhood.  Graham’s article begins by giving a picture of her first “wedding.”  She and a friend are on a pier, Graham dressed from head to toe in white and the “groom” dressed in shorts.  Graham didn’t seem to notice the disgusted look on his face in the picture her mother took.  According to Graham, “We put our hopes on romantic love so early” (Graham), this can be seen in the example of her first wedding.  Graham goes on to say that we search for perfect love all too young, which could be a result of growing up with fairytales where everything ends perfectly or “happily ever after.”

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        One aspect she talks about is Joseph Campbell’s Myths To Live By, and explains how ancient India saw the relationship of marriage and passion.  Campbell concluded with there being five different levels of love.  The first level is the spiritual belief of a person and their relationship to their own god.  The following three levels are friendship, parent to child, and marriage.  The final form is passionate love, which Campbell describes as a seizure that only illicitly “breaking in upon the order of one’s dutiful life in virtue as a devastating storm” (Graham).

        Another important facet she talks about is ...

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