Short answers, pulled from the story.
The word romance derives from the Latin Romanus, meaning Rome or Roman. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Latin adverb Romanice came to mean "in the vernacular," identifying languages descended from Latin. In Old French this became romans or romanz, referring to both the language and works written in it; by the Middle Ages it narrowed to mean narrative verse about chivalry and love.
Arthur Lovejoy wrote that "the word 'romantic' has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing." He made this observation to highlight the contradictory and overlapping definitions the term had acquired across history and academic fields.
Limerence is a term coined by psychology professor Dorothy Tennov to describe an all-absorbing, infatuated love marked by idealization of the loved one, intrusive thoughts, and emotional volatility driven by uncertain reciprocation. A 2025 survey found that 64% of people reported having experienced it, and 32% found it so distressing that it was hard to enjoy life.
Romantic love only became a widespread basis for marriage at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, when men and women socialized more equally and dating replaced structured courtship practices. Before the 18th century, marriage served economic and political ends; the Catholic Church had declared passionate love outside procreation a mortal sin as early as the 6th century.
The 1992 study by William Jankowiak and Edward Fischer examined 166 cultures using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample and found passionate love documented in 88.5% of them. The authors argued that for the remaining 11.5%, the lack of evidence was likely due to ethnographic oversight rather than a genuine absence of the phenomenon.
The Romeo and Juliet effect, also called frustration attraction, refers to the observed tendency for adversity to heighten romantic passion. Researchers have found that obstacles such as parental interference, physical separation, rejection, and uncertain situations intensify romantic feelings rather than diminishing them. Helen Fisher linked this to dopamine neurons firing in anticipation of an expected reward that is delayed.