The concept of romantic love was popularized in Western culture by the game of courtly love. Troubadours in the Middle Ages engaged in trysts – usually extramarital – with women as a game created for fun rather than for marriage. Since at the time marriage was a formal arrangement, courtly love was a way for people to express the love typically not found in their marriage. In the context of courtly love, “lovers” did not refer necessarily to those engaging in sex, but rather in the act of emotional loving. These lovers had short trysts in secret that escalated mentally but never physically. Rules of the game were even codified. For example, De amore or The Art of Courtly Love, as it is known in English, was written in the 12th century. It lists such rules as “Marriage is no real excuse for not loving”, “He who is not jealous cannot love”, “No one can be bound by a double love”, and “When made public love rarely endures.”

Some believe that romantic love evolved independently in multiple cultures. For example, in an article presented by Henry Gruenbaum, he argues “therapists mistakenly believe that romantic love is a phenomenon unique to Western cultures and first expressed by the troubadours of the Middle Ages.”

The more current and Western traditional terminology meaning “court as lover” or the general idea of “romantic love” is believed to have originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, primarily from that of the French culture. This idea is what has spurred the connection between the words “romantic” and “lover,” thus coining English phrases for romantic love such as “loving like the Romans do.” The precise origins of such a connection are unknown, however. Although the word “romance” or the equivalents thereof may not have the same connotation in other cultures, the general idea of “romantic love” appears to have crossed cultures and been accepted as a concept at one point in time or another.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_love

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