Romantic Love and the Search for Happiness

Today’s second “On The Square” essay for Valentine’s Day is Michael Novak’s ” The Myth of Romantic Love ,” wherein he explores romantic love, and its relation to caritas and agape:

As a result of this invention, we Westerners have come to think that the central fire of human happiness is romantic love, love forever and ever (love “happily ever after”). Imagination ends with the romantic couple walking hand in hand across the fields toward the sunlight. Many people spend their entire lives looking for such love, wanting to feel such love, wondering, when they are first attracted to another, if that’s what they’re now feeling. Above all, most people love being in love , love the feeling of loving, love even the mad passion of being in love.