Abstract Kruglanski’s “significance quest” model of romantic love purports to be functionalist. But it only explains one positive emotion (falling in love) as a way to feel another positive emotion (feeling significant), without explaining why the second should be considered more fundamental or important than the first. Evolutionarily, the model does not make sense, and even descriptively, it seems incoherent.
Brendan Paul Zietsch (Thu,) studied this question.