ABSTRACT
One of the dangers of being a theorist is to become the prisoner of one's own theory, construing every phenomenon as a reflection of one's unique and at least to one selfcompelling understanding. Collins is not so nave as to suggest that all sexual interaction produces love. He excludes commercial sex, for example, paying a prostitute for the pleasure. But sexual intercourse leads to love in the "ideal" case. But for him, the differentia specifica between the solidarity outcome that is love and the one that is not is in the amount of 'mutual focus and shared emotion'. In status-power theory, sex is a product of love and not the other way round as Collins has it. Although the status-power theory of love sees love as leading to sex, to give Collins his due sexual interaction is favorably disposed to releasing another emotion, namely liking.
