“Love is a strong feeling of affection and sexual attraction for someone," says the Oxford Dictionary. Well, I am not satisfied with this attempt to define the indispensable subject of all kinds of art pieces, the reason for suicide or homicide, and a life goal for many. So what is love? Just to give you a trigger warning, this article will not be about a sappy college love story but instead be about a cold sociological analysis of love which will make you rethink if you full heartedly believe in it. Now let's get to it. I argue that love is a product of a superior mind that is created and constantly promoted to foster monogamy and by that maintain social order. It may seem too harsh at first but everything will make sense in a minute.

First of all, how does monogamy help to maintain social order? With monogamous relationships, it is much easier to identify the parents of children, and this identification creates family units. This concept of nucleus belonging differentiates you from other units, sets borders to your territory and leads to private property. Now, I don't want to defend capitalism, but I think everyone is familiar with the “tragedy of commons". When the population is large and resources are scarce, private property becomes a must to social order. With monogamous relationships, you take the responsibility of your own children and treat them as your own property. When people value things that are their own, they take good care of them and secure their future. We are living in an individualistic society so children are not seen as the continuity of the human race but one's own genes. In this modern era, sharing the responsibility of children by all members of the society is beyond my imagination, unfortunately.

Now, when does “love" get into the conversation? First of all, with all the options there are, why would you want to stick to just one person and give all your attention to that “one"? So there should be something to make monogamy seem attractive and that thing is, as you can guess, LOVE! Maybe we are forcing ourselves to be monogamous sometimes and using love as a defense mechanism, as in “I can't be with you because I'm in love with him". And it is not the question of “Can I love two people at the same time?" that is occupying our mind but the question of “Should I love two people at the same time?" We are thought to believe that being in a relationship with multiple people sexually or romantically is an immoral and perverse act because it doesn't serve the aims of modern society as I discussed earlier. Moreover, love is glorified and promoted as a magical emotion that bonds two people in order to make the institution of marriage, where you officialize this bonding in the eyes of the state, seem more attractive. By registering your relationship, you ease the job of the state which is to maintain order within the society.

Now I am going to give a rather extraordinary example that challenges all the norms of a modern society. In China, near the border of Tibet, there is a small ethnic group called the Mosuo. They are one of the few matriarchal societies in the world. In this society, the concept of marriage does not exist. The fathers of the children are not known because most of the relationships are polyamorous. Therefore, all the men in the society share the responsibility of taking care of these children. One time, a white man visits this society to document their lives. Then he can't help but ask them “What about love?" and gets the response “What about it?" These people are not familiar with the concept of love and they can't comprehend being in a monogamous relationship, they simply find it stupid. One of the women says “I am sometimes attracted to this man and sometimes to the other, why would I limit myself to one, when I can have it all." This society has managed to survive for hundreds of years with this lifestyle and both men and women are very content. Well, this kind of lifestyle would only work in a population as small as theirs. Mosuos are living as a tribe with a strong sense of community. That is why the shared responsibility of looking after children and elder people is not seen as a burden. This kind of lifestyle would be impossible in our modern individualistic society.(Coler, 2005)

The idea of love is so central to our lives that finding it becomes a life goal for most of us. We give meaning to our existence by this and when we can't find it, we go crazy, become depressed and think that something is wrong with us. Well, nothing is wrong with us. This whole sociological analysis/conspiracy theory aside, I am not saying that love doesn't exist at all. Maybe it does for some but certainly not for all of us. It is perfectly fine to choose to be only with one person or with multiple people or with no people at all. After all, how can a feeling so subjective be so universal? There is no way to set objective measures to love and saying that “you know when you know" is not valid at all so don't freak out if you haven't found your love yet. Maybe you will, maybe you won't and be perfectly happy with that.