Romantic Love and Violence

Abstract

The experience of romantic love between two human individuals is claimed to be universal, crossing all demographics and cultures, and geographical and temporal spaces. Helen Fisher reports that findings from the research into experiences of romantic love indicate that there are negligible differences (in responses to the research questions) across all groups with no significant statistical variance across age, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation or gender (2004: 5). Buss also states that romantic love is a cross cultural universal, claiming that an anthropological study of 168 diverse cultures found its presence in 90 per cent of them (2006: 74). Fisher also states that the fundamentals of romantic love and how it is enacted and experienced have not, according to records, changed in 1000 years (2004: 12); it is perhaps then, a human staple, experienced by the majority at some point in their lives.