ABSTRACT
"Sexuality", "romance", "love": words that should be easy for the psychoanalyst, for they refer to direct, reportable experiences with visible behavorial consequences. Words that draw on common knowledge requiring at the start neither the microscope of analytic treatment, nor the dark glass of metapsychology. "Love" is a word like "happiness", "joy", "beauty", "art", "goodness", "sincerity", "kindness", or "wisdom"; it can stand for so many different experiences, have such different dynamic structures, be used for such different purposes. "Romance" and "love" are subjects that, properly, analysts have pretty much avoided until recently. Romance is merging, temporary. Love is merging, more extensive. Romance has no connotation of constancy nor of commitment, insight, and patience. The chapter focuses on romance, love, erotic excitement, and the common knowledge of the erotic incompatibility between men and women and the incompatibility, in males more than females, between erotic excitement and love.
