Abstract The distinction between romantic love and love has been sensed across cultures and historical periods but has rarely been structurally specified. This paper applies the Core/Modulation two-layer framework to provide the first structural account of this distinction. Romantic love and reproductive drive are re-described as outputs of the Modulation layer's species optimization program. Love is re-described as a function of Core processing: the maintenance of another's recomputable state. Existing literature on love—Fromm, C.S. Lewis—is re-read as intuitive description of this structural distinction. The paper further demonstrates that the conflation of "loving" and "protecting" is the structural origin of war, exclusion, and discrimination. No evaluative language is used. No hierarchy is proposed. This is a structural description.
Griselda Poe (Sun,) studied this question.