This Master's thesis focuses on the sociogenesis of romantic love and envisions it as an emotional and behavioural coda, which is bound to the emotional rules and normative ways of how to feel and how to form romantic relationships. It defines romantic love as a societal invention, which individuals learn through the various mechanisms of socialization, as opposed to perceiving love as an emotion. The main thesis of this dissertation is that individuals learn how to express emotions through various emotional rules and conventions, which are culturally and historically specific. Romantic relationships are, in this context, a societally expected behavioural coda, which emphasizes relational dyadics, communication and intimacy. This thesis is, at the same time, a criticism of certain popular sociological theories, which caution against the negative influence of modern society on romantic love and describe it as rationalized, contractual and intellectualized. The final part of the thesis provides an analysis of data acquired through semi-structured interviews, which (at least partially) points towards errors in the aforementioned sociological theories.
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