Hi Everybody,
I have a couple of spare minutes so I thought I'd finally get round to this. Because it's only a few spare minutes, I'll try keeping it brief, which I think will be beneficial for me as well as for the readers.
First of all, I don't think we disagree all that much. I got the impression that you considered relationships to depend on overt, literal agreement. Apparently I misinterpreted, sorry about that.
If anything, I tried, in my first response, to argue that love is something very personal, and that it is hard to make generalizable statements; at least to the detailed extent you were attempting. I will not give a definition of love or affection. There are quite general definitions of affections, which I will probably have adhered to. For love there is no generally accepted definition I think. I can give you my personal one, which will be enlightening in the face of this discussion; when I say love I mean a psychological phenomenon; a pleasant state of mind (call it a 'feeling') generated by and directed towards another individual. Besides this feeling, which can fluctuate in intensity over time, love is a willingness to invest in this person. This willingness to invest, to me, is not so much a really clear feeling in itself, an emotion; it's more like motivation, like a drive. That's my definition in a nutshell; of course it's still quite vague and you might have a completely different definition: fine. And if you want more clarity, you should wait for my book. If I a person does not give me intense happy thoughts or makes me want to share big important things with them, then I don't love them.
I agree that it must be possible to love many people at the same time. However, I think that in a lot of cases this would cause some practical problems which have little to do with my definition of love, but which are there none the less. An important one would be jealousy; I don't see myself as a very jealous person, nor do I think many of my dearest friends are typically jealous. However, there are situations where I AM jealous and so would other people. This is a very personal trait and is not under direct conscious control; even if I wanted, I can't shut either love or jealousy off like I can flick a switch. It is therefore unreasonable to assume that everyone is capable of having every kind of relationship simply by convincing them with rational arguments.
This does not mean that rational arguments have no influence in structuring a relationship; on the contrary I think. But saying, either, that love is or should be a purely rational construct, or that relationships should be constructed completely rationally, is a misconception I think. A persons personal disposition, their desires for specific kinds of affection, attention or mutual understanding, will be defining factors as well. The rational argument is the same for everyone, but the desires of the two lovers (whether these arise because of social construction or innate biological properties or a combination) is what makes two relationships differ.
That is why I can laugh in the face of anyone who denies that either monoamoury or polyamoury is impossible; it depends on you and your desired partner. Generally, I have a clear feeling that I do not have a very polyamourous disposition, even though I can see benefits to it or fantasize about it. I also do not think it would be impossible for me to thrive in polyamourous relationships. Still, at this moment I prefer a monoamourous relationship. For the sake of brevity, I will not go into details about this, but we can discuss it as lenght if you think it is interesting; I think it would be a bit besides the point I am trying to make right now.
To close the chapter on this one then:
>> I don’t see why you would laugh in the face of people who ‘stand by’ and deny, which is what you assume they do, what is there according to you.
If I meet people that say that it is impossible, for anyone, to have a happy and loving relationship with one person their entire life, I have a multitude of examples I can point out that prove otherwise. That's why I would laugh at someone making such a moronic claim. It is even worse than claiming that the earth is flat, because we cannot observe this to be otherwise without the use of technical instruments and mathematics.
Finally, you left a lot of things vague and many terms undefined in your original post; I found it a bit unfair to point the finger to me and demand I venture into semantics; a topic you seemed to be vigorously avoiding yourself. Also, a final excuse for the lack of structure in my original response, I wrote it in a short period of time while thinking on my feet. It was not my intention to respond to every single point you made either, but to respond with my personal view of the points that sparked my interest most.
As a concluding remark: There's no neuroscientific explanation for love, one reason for this is that it is an undefinable term. If you would use a broad definition to explain it neuroscientifically, you would quickly run into the Hard Problem. I do feel I should point out (once again) that you cannot use evolutionary theory to explain the substance of a psychological state; the feeling of love and our internal reasons for loving one or more people more than others probably have an evolutionary benefit, but evolution does neither hand down a blueprint for what a relationship should be (evolution has no purpose or goal in itself, in no way!), nor provides an explanation of why we experience love and relationships the way we do.
