Romance and devotion.

In a word: No.

One should never chose someone romantically with the idea that they will care for you throughout your single life time and take care of you in sickness, because they will ultimately fail when you die. Also, unless it is reciprocal you are doing a terrible disservice to whoever you are with, so what happens if they die first? Have they also failed you, since they are no longer around to care for you?

Romance does not require devotion. Love requires devotion, because romance can fade or be temporarily expunged by a bad disagreement, and it is in those moments, when the romance is missing, that irreparable damage can be done to a relationship. Devotion is the light that gets you through the dark patches of a relationship.

Reply to TiredThinker
I believe you're right, that is one of the selling points, the mutually agreed script to take care of each other, more than of other people in the tribe. The other is procreation. The third is sex.

Plus, combining forces, in this case between spouses, you get a multiplicative effect of efforts, not just an additive one. Much like how and why people live in societies.

Reply to Book273 I like how you made the distinction between romance and love. It defines why some of my relationships didn't work out since I believed it to be the latter.

Reply to OneTwoMany Good spotting. The English language has a large amount of words to describe "love" with one word, with differences in the meaning that may range from just a nuance to a more robust one.

Let me try to illustrate this from the basic form to the most revered form:

F, fornicate, sex (have sex), escapade, affair, romance, infatuation, relationship, love.

This is probably not a full list. And after infatuation there is a different branch: stalking, which is the unwanted form of devotion.

I made the mistake that @Book237 did not: I took the OP's word "Romance" as "love", mainly because he did indicate that he figured a mutual support in other areas in life from sex and tet-de-tet is also involved.

I stand corrected.

Whatever I wrote in my previous two posts was meant to cover love, not romance.

Reply to Book273

I realize that one will outlive the other, but what is romance in a life without limits? When we ourselves are the cosmic forces we once compared ourselves to in the heat of passion?

Reply to TiredThinker You are conflating romance, love, and marriage. The first two may lead to the third, but not necessarily. It is in the marriage ceremony that we agree to love and care for each other in sickness and in health, for better and for worse. And, worth mentioning, "marriage" isn't merely a ceremony. It's a contractual arrangement sponsored by the state for the purpose o encouraging stable families. Once married, you are supposed to make a good faith effort to care for each other. Of course, lots of people do no such thing, which is one of the reasons a lot of marriages fail. Another reason a lot of marriages fail is that a lot of people believe their own bullshit about romance and love.

Don't take this the wrong way: I'm totally in favor of romance, love, and marriage (if a couple wants it) but things work out for the best when people understand what it is that they are feeling and know how deep their feelings are (or are not). As the joke goes, you could wade through many people's feelings and not get your feet wet.

Reply to TiredThinkerNeither true that it does, nor true that it doesn't. Now, I say this because, out there somewhere, among the 7 billion humans that walk the earth, there'll be someone, man, woman, perhaps a child, even an AI for all we know, who'll say exactly what I said, word for word, and it'll make complete sense to him/her/it. The question is, does it make sense to you? For the record, nec caput nec pedes as far as I'm concerned.