Is love nature or culture?

This is a transcription from my personal notebook, thus it may not be completely clear or straight-forward to understand. I made some changes, but overall I didn't alter it much, to maintain the spontaneity which is so dear to me in these matters.
It might not seem complete, and it in fact isn't, but it is a subject on which I did not yet find a definite conclusion, I'm sharing it to have more objective ideas, I just hope you enjoy the input for some personal reflection.





Written on: Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

I never tried to write down one of my reflection about love. This one is from a historic point of view.
Let's start from the hypothesis that love is a human natural emotion. This is to justify what most think of it and what many claim to feel when they are “in love”. The hypothesis implies though that love must have always existed and that is an emotion we have from birth (or at least from an early age).
I will try not to talk about recent times, let's say, the last centuries, for especially since Romanticism, it is clear love's presence in man's history.
Instead, I will begin my inquiry from the very beginning, prehistory.

Obviously, we have no written data (such as journals) from those ages, but I think I can say with some certainty that mothers used to feel something similar to what they feel now, towards their kids. That is that feeling of protection and empathy which we call “mother's love”. But then what did they feel towards the fathers? Sure it could not be the same emotion, for even nowadays it is far from common that women might feel protectiveness towards men they “love”.
Nevertheless, they must have felt something not unlike affection, or at least dependency on some degree. This is nature's way to ensure that women will remain faithful after giving birth, so not to abandon the children.
We could name this kind of feelings “primeval love”. What about the fathers, though? Did they feel the same way?
Even back then, they didn't care that much about their offspring, thus fatherly love has always been somehow limited, where present at all.
Not being an expert, nor a historian, it's difficult for me to talk about their feelings towards women. Biologically/anatomically speaking, man is “built” to reproduce quickly, and with the highest chance of success possible, as, opposed to primates such as orangutans, we didn't have that kind of “alpha male” group where there can be more certainty about who's the father of the offspring.
I think that up until the end of nomadic life, the society was a polygamous one. Once settled, probably men picked up the “habit” of having only one wife with them.
If this is the case, certainly this kind of feeling cannot be called “love”, for it resembles more a sense of propriety or personal pride rather than affection.

I could end the discussion here, by simply saying that somewhere in between, when society evolved and became more complex, we felt the need to have some kind of strong feeling towards the opposite sex and we simply called it love. Although, this wouldn't be enough to explain some issues, like the completely irrational behavior humans keep while they are “in love”.

It could likely be that our sense of “love” is so deep-rooted in our culture and education, that it unconsciously affects our behavior and thoughts. However, to be certain of this, I'd need to dispose of a large sample of subjects, coming from many different cultures (some of which should never have come in contact with our Romantic definition of “love”) and see if they act in the same kind of way, or if it is actually a reaction to socio-cultural standards.

As a side note, I believe that whatever the real answer to my doubt might be, a suggestion to women in order to inspire a stronger kind of “love” in men might be the following. To find a compromise between feelings and rationality: to “descend” from the world of romance and meet us halfway, trying to inspire in us feelings we better understand, as respect and complicity.
We obviously should do the same the other way, trying to understand that it is not obvious what we think, and explaining our points of view to the woman we care about, so that she may see that, though different, ours can be called love all the same.