Pip Rasmussen

And what was so interesting, Pip, was that she explained to me that romantic love, this blew my mind, even though I should have already known this, romantic love is actually a man-made construct.

Yeah, like it doesn't technically exist, right?

It doesn't exist.

It's something that we've culturally created.

Yeah.

And this is what she said.

Yeah.

And when that major shift happened and we kind of put romantic love as this, you know, pinnacle of all types of love, how did that shape the way that we now exist today in relationships?

Let's find out.

FYI, before we get into this ep, I do want to preface that we are going to be focusing and exploring romantic love historically through the lens of the Western world, right?

We will be talking about different cultures and the impact that they've had.

But yeah, just want to, you know, let you know that we will be looking at it through the lens in which you might have experienced growing up.

Yeah, can you?

I'm so excited.

It is.

yeah yeah giving like a bit of like romanticity to be honest yeah totally that's so fascinating well i think when we look because what we want to do now is look through just different ancient civilizations and culture right and find like this poem like moments where we have examples and evidence of this so-called romantic love that we think of today right so in ancient egypt

There was a lot of personal letters and poetry that we have today in like the Met and the London's British Museum that have poems and songs from everyday Egyptians showing tender emotional exchanges.

You know, whether that was between lovers, some married couples were often even shown holding hands or embracing in tomb art.

And there was a lot of stuff that kind of hinted at the value that was placed on emotional companionship.

An example of this is there's a poem that historians have kept and found.