ABSTRACT
Historically, people have looked to philosophers, theologians, novelists, poets, biographers, composers, and other artists to gain a better understanding of their relationships. Treatises on various aspects of relationships date back thousands of years to Aristotle (Figure 3.1), who provided a lengthy analysis of friendship and romantic relationships in his Ethica Nichomachea. For example, he says that Aristotle. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315663074/87e4ff48-912d-4748-9f85-9c63c70cf091/content/fig3_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
in the friendship of lovers sometimes the lover complains that his excess of love is not met by love in return (though perhaps there is nothing lovable about him), while often the beloved complains that the lover who formerly promised everything now performs nothing. Such incidents happen when the lover loves the beloved for the sake of pleasure while the beloved loves the lover for the sake of utility, and they do not both possess the qualities expected of them. If these be the objects of the friendship it is dissolved when they do not get the things that formed the motives of their love. (quoted in Ross, 1915/1966, p. 1163)
