The following are a few scattered tweets made regarding a common misunderstanding of what romantic love is. – PW

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Amazing how researchers read history via a flawed reconstruction of romantic love – all because Jankowiak & Fischer claimed to find romantic love in 166 cultures; but their construct does NOT match the romantic love construct of Europe which involved a feudal vassal/Lord template.

Even the great @SteveStuWill falls for it. Have these guys never read pre-medieval European literature, or perhaps Chinese history? Jankowiak & Fischer’s romantic love minus the main feudal template (ie. man as vassal, woman as lord) means it isn’t romantic love whatsoever. The following is from the book Love and Women in Early Chinese Fiction By Daniel Hsieh · 2009:

Jankowiak & Fischer defined romantic love based on intimacy, passion, commitment, idealization, limerence, and so on. But no feudal metaphor = no romantic love. Academics relying on such misinformation overlook the novelty & implications of romantic love as does Stewart-Williams in his otherwise wonderful book on evolutionary psychology titled ‘The Ape Who Understood The Universe’, quote: