Romantic Love in America

In American Lovers, Victor de Munck draws on evolutionary, cognitive, and social theories to present a cultural model of romantic love. de Munck draws on interviews with gay, straight, and polyamorous individuals to provide insight into the core components and intricate variability of contemporary love.

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American Lovers: A Study of Romantic Love, Gender, and Sexuality introduces the reader to the love and sex lives of fifteen people: two are polyamorous, five are gay, and eight are straight. Coupled with rich interview material, this book provides a guided tour through the variable geography of love relationships as studied in the social sciences. Victor de Muck describes evolutionary, cognitive, social, prototypical, triadic, and neural and “style” theories of romantic love and sex, concluding with a generic American cultural model of romantic love that importantly delves into its relational properties as a dyad.