Category Archives: What is it?

scholarly ground explanations for the concepts related to love

How You Feel You Are Loved

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How do you feel you are loved? Do you?

Professor Mengya Xia and her colleagues from the University of Alabama recently conducted an interesting exploratory study on the core elements of love across family, romantic, and friend relationships. This research revealed how people know they are loved.

Their studies have shown the benefits of love across diverse populations. Love and being loved are both valuable feelings. Love is a complex concept with various types and constructs that research studies in various interpersonal relationships.

What Studies Explored?

In this study, researchers used a grounded theory analysis of 468 individuals. They revealed that love is an interpersonal process involving positive responsiveness and authentic connection. All participants in the study shared three core elements across family, romantic, and friendship relationships. This integrated theoretical conceptualization of love as a shared feeling and asset offers insights for love conceptualization, assessment, study design, intervention, and therapy.

This study explores love literature by identifying central features and examining core elements in various relationship types using qualitative, data-driven approaches.

  • What are the core elements of love, as perceived by lay people?
  • Are the core elements of love shared across family, romantic, and friend relationships?
  • Whether the weights of each element are the same or different across three relationships?

This study analyzed open-ended responses on love in family, romantic, and friend relationships, revealing three core elements: positive responsiveness, authentic connection, and stability. This theory contributes to understanding love as a feeling and asset in interpersonal processes. The theory informs strengths-based research, and sets the foundation for developing an assessment tool. The varying frequencies of love elements across relationships suggest that love in different relationships may have different distributions of the same components.

Grounded Theory on Core Elements of Love

The study reveals that love is an accumulative interpersonal process. In such love relationships, people consistently perceive positive responsiveness from others. They experience authentic connection with them, resulting in a positive sense of oneness. This grounded theory aligns with Reis and Shaver’s interpersonal process model of intimacy, which emphasizes mutual validation and understanding. The core elements of love include positive responsiveness, authentic connection, and a sense of stability. Positive responsiveness describes positive ways of responding to others’ needs, while authentic connection describes the process of forming a pleasurable, desired, and heart-to-heart connection. Mutual affinity emphasizes the enjoyable and mutually desired experience of togetherness, while being in tune with one another focuses on approaching and merging with someone to form a heart-to-heart connection.

A sense of stability describes the feeling that the interaction between two parties is durable, stable, and reliable, as echoed in attachment theory, unconditional love, and the commitment component. The study highlights the importance of considering the temporal history of interpersonal relationships and the need to incorporate the timing and dynamic components of love into the study design.

Comparison of Love Across Family, Romantic, and Friendship Relationships

The study reveals that love is a general feeling experienced in various interpersonal contexts, with core elements of feeling loved being more similar across interpersonal contexts than distinct between relationship types. The specific actions that elicit the feeling of love may vary depending on the type of relationship, but the message they convey is generalizable across relationship contexts. The frequency of each element across relationship types corresponds to how people typically conceptualize love in the respective relationship. In family and romantic relationships, “positive responsiveness” is most frequently mentioned, while “demonstrating affection” is more often mentioned in romantic relationships. In friend relationships, “authentic connection” and “a sense of stability” are most often mentioned, with spiritual union being the key to love in friend relationships.

The higher weight of “a sense of stability” in friend relationships is consistent with companionate love and friendship literature, where trust is viewed as an important component. While many categories weigh differently across three relationships, some similarities provide insights into the key aspects of love as a feeling shared across relationships. Support, mutual affinity, and being in tune with one another are at the core of several conceptualizations of love, emphasizing the importance of providing support, having quality time together, and truly understanding someone’s feeling of love. Additionally, “enhancing sense of worth” was mentioned by 23–30% of individuals in different relationships and did not differ significantly by relationship type.

Reference

Xia, M., Chen, Y., & Dunne, S. (2023). What makes people feel loved? An exploratory study on core elements of love across family, romantic, and friend relationships. Family Process, 00, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12873

How People Experience the Meaning of Gratitude

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Reciprocal giving and receiving have the adaptive function of creating interpersonal obligations and maintaining personal bonding between people. In another place, I talked more about what gratitude is and why it is important in our lives. However, the meaning of gratitude can be different for different people. For example,

“Beneath the warm feelings of gratitude resides an imperative force, a force that compels us to return the benefit we have received”

(Komter, 2004, p. 195).

What Is the Meaning of Gratitude?

Gratitude is a personal experience that people live by in their daily social lives. It plays a functional role within the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. The concept of gratitude is quite broad and includes cognitive, affective, expressive, and behavioral processes.

What People Experience When They Experience Gratitude

Patty Hlava and John Elfers, the researchers from Sofia University in Palo Alto, California, USA, conducted a qualitative study of how people experience gratitude.

The authors interviewed 51 participants, ranging in age from 18 to 80 years, who likely engaged in a full range of embodied experiences of gratitude. The sample was ethnically diverse, with a first language other than English. Among participants, the majority were Caucasians, with less representation of Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Hispanic, African American, and other groups.

Researchers asked participants to recall a specific experience of gratitude. They asked to focus on their physiological and somatic experiences during these feelings. Researcher asked:

  • “In what way does the feeling of gratitude show up in your body?
  • Where specifically do you experience the sensations?”
(Hlava & Elfers, 2014, p. 438).

Researchers asked people to think about their lived experience of gratitude, developmental history, personality orientation, and how they thought gratitude affected their relationships.

The study revealed patterns of emotions that include somatic experiences and cognitive appraisals. Among those are the feelings of love, joy, awakening, awe, release, and being blessed.

What People Experience When They Experience Gratitude

Researchers revealed in their study several specific features of the somatic experience of gratitude. These include:

  • Sensations in the Heart and Chest/Warmth
  • Release
  • Awakening
  • Comfort, Security, Acceptance
  • Blessed
  • Joy
  • Love
  • Witnessed
  • Presence
  • Thankful

“Friends with Benefits”: Single Men and Women in Relationships

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Throughout the last couple of centuries, traditional ideals of romantic love have suggested people find their soul mate, marry the loved one, have children, and live happily ever after. The cultural beliefs in love marriages have long shaped people’s dreams of a happy married life and kids.

However, many modern single men and women can also experience joy and be apparently happy in their lives. It turns out that for many, being single doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Marriage may appear to be desirable, but it is not always a necessary condition of well-being and happiness. 

Kim Mills, in her recent interview with Geoff MacDonald, a professor at the University of Toronto in Canada, asked:

“Now when you’re studying people who are single, does that mean that they can’t have relationships, that they can’t have intimacy with other people?”

“Speaking of Psychology: Living a happy single life,” Episode 215

In his answer to the question, Geoff MacDonald explained that single men and women have lots of opportunity for relationships and intimacies with their friends and family relationships.

Being single, they still have romantic and sexual connections. Culturally, over the last few decades, social norms of relationships have shifted toward more variety and flexibility. Currently, social norms allow more opportunities for casual relationships and sexual encounters. The line between dating and not dating is blurry. For instance, people can be some kind of “friends with benefits.”

What Is a “Friend with Benefits” Relationship?

What kind of relationship does a “friend with benefits” have?

As Geoff MacDonald comments,

“We know that there are a number of single people who tell us that they’re sexually active. And what we do know is that single people who are higher in sexual satisfaction tend to be happier with singlehood.”

The data, on the other hand, suggests that

“Singles who are happier with their sex lives are also more likely to end up in relationships down the road.”

As Geoff MacDonald further explains, it is possible that

“…being with people in sexual and romantic relationships, it’s not shopping for a product where if you don’t like it you take it back. The human heart works such that relationships are kind of sticky. And even when you are in casual sexual relationships, for example, next thing you know you’re leaving a toothbrush, and next thing you’re leaving a set of pajamas, and next thing you know it’s easier to just move in because you’re already spending three nights a week there.”

So, it is likely that

“even though sexual satisfaction is definitely something that’s associated with happiness in singlehood, that might also indicate somebody who’s on the road to being in a committed romantic relationship.”

Geoff MacDonald, “Speaking of Psychology: Living a happy single life,” Episode 215

How “Progression Bias” Works

“Progression bias” is the tendency of people to make decisions that sustain relationships rather than dissolve them. For example, Samantha Joel and Geoff MacDonald (2021), in their recent study, showed emerging evidence of a progression bias in romantic relationships.

People are biased to make pro-relationship decisions over the course of relationship progression, according to the authors. In other words, they feel predisposed to making choices that favor the initiation, advancement, and maintenance of their romantic relationships.

Progression bias takes place in the contexts of relationship initiation, investment, and breakup decisions.

“getting into a relationship is often easier than getting out of one, and why being in a less desirable relationship is often preferred over being in no relationship at all.”

(Joel & MacDonald, 2021, p. 317).

“Progression bias” occurs in a situation:  

“when you get into a casual sexual relationship, and then it’s all of a sudden you find yourself more and more committed.”

Geoff MacDonald provides a couple of reasons why this “progression bias” can occur in the course of relationships. One of these is the evolutionary explanation.

In the cases of such relationship development, the mere exposure effect can be another psychological mechanism at work, supporting the progression bias.

Why Is Gratitude Important?

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Gratitude is more than just saying “thank you.” It entails recognizing and appreciating the people and what they do for us. It is the appreciation for whatever our lives bring us. Gratitude makes us feel better and lifts our mood. It improves our lives and relationships in many regards.

As Buddha, the religious teacher of South Asian culture (the 6th or 5th century BCE) and founder of Buddhism, taught,

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.”

– Buddha, the teacher and founder of Buddhism, a religious and philosophical system of southern and eastern Asia, live in India, approximately the 6th–4th century BCE

National Cultural Traditions of Gratitude

The customs of gratitude appear to be highly valued across civilizations and cultures. People expressed their appreciation in the ritual of “giving thanks” to God, spirits, mother nature, and others.

People of many societies in history and nowadays celebrate Thanksgiving or similar festival holidays on various dates. It is a good cultural custom to give thanks and appreciate what we get and what others give to us.

As William Bennett, an American politician and commentator, told

“Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that thankfulness is indeed a virtue.”

– William Bennett, American teacher and scholar, born 1943, New York, USA

American Thanksgiving is probably among the most important holidays of the year. Americans have greatly celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday for centuries.

As John F. Kennedy, an American politician and the 35th president of the United States, once said,

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.”

– John F. Kennedy, (1917–1963), American political leader and president of the United States

Or in another place, he said:

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”

– John F. Kennedy

Even though it falls on different dates, people in other countries also celebrate this Thanksgiving holiday. Among those countries are Canada, Grenada, Liberia, and Saint Lucia. Germany and Japan both celebrate festivals with names that are very similar.

Gratitude Is the Appreciation of Giving and Receiving

In many cases, gratitude is clearly involved in interpersonal relationships. Social bonding implies reciprocal giving and receiving. These kinds of actions are important for the proper creation of people’s obligations and the maintenance of interpersonal bonding in human communities.

An appreciation of giving and receiving is a vital part of fair and equitable relationships. This is why it is very important to express gratitude for what other people do for us. Gratitude is not only a kind gesture; it is frequently necessary for a normal and adequate relationship.

As Aafke E. Komter, a professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, wrote,

“Beneath the warm feelings of gratitude resides an imperative force, a force that compels us to return the benefit we have received”

(Komter, 2004, p. 195).

How People Experience Gratitude

How do people subjectively experience gratitude? The intensity and expression of gratitude are determined by an appraisal of the situations, actions, contexts, and outcomes of what a benefactor did for a recipient. People may express gratitude differently depending on how they perceive the value of what another person has done for them. Appreciation also varies depending on the benefactor’s intention and the degree of sacrifice applied in giving (McCullough & Tsang, 2004). People tend to be especially grateful and express gratitude when they receive something they want and when they feel that the giver was sensitive to their personal needs and wishes. (Algoe, Haidt, & Gable, 2008).

As an American writer and humorist, Mark Twain (1835–1910) once noted,

“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”

– Mark Twain, 1835–1910), American writer

People experience gratitude as thematic patterns of somatic feelings and an array of appraisals. The experience of gratitude also involves various emotions, such as joy, love, awe, happiness, awakening, release, peace, security, and feeling blessed. People frequently experience the somatic response to gratitude, the feelings of overwhelming emotions, and tearfulness. These emotions are frequently accompanied by a sense of taking your breath away, bursting with emotion, and fullness (Hlava & Elfers, 2014). 

These feelings and emotions are associated with sensations of being emotionally overwhelmed. Here are some examples:

“I start tearing because I’m so—it’s an overwhelming emotion. It’s an overflowing with joy kind of feeling.”

(Joe)

“My eyes fill with tears, but I do not feel sadness. I feel at a loss for words and am filled with gratitude and love.”

(Zoe)

“I just burst into tears, and I was crying, I mean, in addition to just the positive feelings of just gratitude and excitement.”

(Louise)

How Gratitude Affects Our Relationships

Gratitude is very beneficial for our relationships and can transform interpersonal connections.

Expression of gratitude plays an important role in relationship building (Algoe et al., 2008) and relationship maintenance (Hlava, 2010; Kubacka, Finkenauer, Rusbult, & Keijsers, 2011). Gratitude affects the experience of relationship boundaries between “self” and “other” (Hlava & Elfers, 2014). The expression and feeling of gratitude strengthen our bonds with those who have helped us (Algoe & Haidt, 2009).

Please, remember this saying of William James (1842–1910), an American philosopher and psychologist:

“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”

– William James (1842–1910), American psychologist and philosopher

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Need to Belong and Love

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Everyone has a “need for love” of some kind. For women and men who believe that love is bonding, the “need to belong” is basically the “need for love.” Those who have a strong desire to belong to a group tend to think that love is a form of bonding.

Just imagine being dropped on an island alone for the rest of your life, like Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist of a novel by English writer Daniel Defoe (c. 1660–1731). You have food, a place to sleep, and comfort, but there isn’t a single other person around and no way to bond with loved ones. For the majority of men and women, these would be extremely challenging living conditions. For some, it is more challenging than for others.

The Basic Social Need to Belong and Be Accepted

As the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle noted, humans are social animals. Therefore, they have the need for social bonding, the need to belong, and the need to be accepted by others, like a tribe, kin, family, parent, or mating partner.

Many people are acutely aware of their lost connections to significant others when they are separated from them by being away from family or in a foreign country. Being rejected by a significant other is an especially challenging feeling.

Evolutionary Benefits of Belonging

Love as community bonding is the key survival mechanism that brings people together and strengthens bonds between them. Living in a community gives them a better chance to survive due to the support they provide to each other. Consequently, the need to belong is intrinsic to the nature of some animals and humans.

Love as Social Bonding

Love as a form of social bonding has biological and cultural evolutionary roots. In this sense, love is helping another survive and thrive. The acts of love are feeding, protecting, supporting, and caring about others. In other words, in a practical sense, “love” is doing something good for another person (Wierzbicka, 1999).

Social bonds increased the likelihood of survival for our ancestors. This bonding encouraged parents to keep their kids close and shield them from danger (Esposito et al., 2013). Attachment as bonding kept children close to their parents. As adults, those who had close relationships were more likely to survive, reproduce, and help their children grow up to maturity. To be without kin nearby would be detrimental (see Karandashev, 2019; 2022 for a review).

Physical and Psychological Survival Due to Social Bonding

Individuals have a better chance of surviving in a physical sense, such as maintaining sustenance and security, when they are a part of a social group. People who live in tribal communities feel safer in social relationships than those who live alone. Social cooperation provides the members of a community with better access to food. And they are better able to protect themselves from predators and aggressive foreigners.

In later stages of human evolution, the needs for psychological security and emotional bonding evolved into the most fundamental human motives. Having positive social connections helped not only with physical survival but also with psychological resilience.

People in traditional collectivistic societies tend to feel a higher need to belong compared to people in modern individualistic societies. Cultural values of Eastern-Asian collectivistic societies encourage the need to belong, connections, and kin relationships.

I extensively reviewed the evolutionary origins of bonding, the need to belong, and the need for love elsewhere (Karandashev, 2022, chapter 3).

The Basic Needs to Belong and to Love

Even though some people are more social than others, this deep need to belong is a fundamental human motivation (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). An individual’s need for social bonding motivates their desire to belong to and be accepted by a group or another person. It is fundamentally the desire for other people’s love. 

As Wystan Auden, a British-American poet (1907–1973), wrote,

“We must love one another or die.” 

(W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”).

What Is Unique About Italian Typological Beauty?

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Many Italians believe their people are the most beautiful compared to other cultures and other regions of their own country. The Milanese, for example, claim that the men and women in their cities are the most beautiful. But the Venetians, Florentines, Romans, and Neapolitans all extol their own virtues of beauty. We can’t trust what Italians say about their own region or country because local pride makes them biased. Anyway, we shall acknowledge the unique qualities of Italian beauty. What is unique about it?

The origins of the unique Italian beauty can be traced back to times of cultural mingling with Greeks and Africans in the south and barbarian invasions in the north of the country.

What Makes Italian Beauty So Special?

In one of his letters, the English poet Lord Byron (1788-1824) extols an Italian beauty of oriental type. He also portrayed Italian culture as natural: “the garden of the world,” where “even the weeds are beautiful.” In Italy, the cosmetic value of fresh air and sunshine is striking. Italians live in a garden, where the sun is mellow and the air is balmy.

What Characterizes Italian Personal Beauty?

Many commonly acknowledge that Italian beauty is of the brunette type. The origin of this Italian type goes back to the cultural mingling that occurred as a result of contacts with Greeks and Africans in the south and barbarian invasions in the north of the country. With the exception of Rome and the Roman Campagna, the natural type of the Latin population is extremely rare.

The Brunette Beauty Type

As Henry Finck and other authors of the 19th century noted (Finck, 1887/2019), the mixture of races created the brunette type of Italian beauty. He compares it to the brunette German beauty type. 

Henry Finck says that according to general consensus, in Germany, brunettes are much more common in the south than they are in the north. Therefore, we can conclude that mixing in the brunette type enhances the blonde type.

It is still unclear whether the admixture of northern blondes improves the brunette type of northern Italy.

Henry Finck commented that according to others’ opinions, it is true that beautiful women abound in Venice, Milan, and Bologna. Naples and Capri, the brunette paradise, are also widely regarded as the regions where Italian beauty is at its best. Here, mostly dark-skinned people have mixed, so the eyes are always a deep brown color.

Many people do not express much admiration for Italian blondes. In Northern Italy, the introduction of blonde blood created lighter tints of the iris. Many people do not favor this type of beauty.

In the same way, these features are also present in South Germany. But the dark eyebrows, long black lashes, and more flexible and rounded limbs typical for this region neutralize the impression of these characteristics.

Italian people are also well-known for their emotional expressiveness. In another article, I show how the climate and cultural traditions of Italy make Italian brunettes so expressively beautiful.

Italian Beauty: The 19th Century’s View

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The question of research interest is whether the standards of beauty are cross-culturally universal or culturally specific to certain nations. Let us investigate the archival legacy of love scholarship (Finck, 1887/2019).  Let us look at how Henry Finck and other authors he cited portrayed Italian beauty in the 19th century.

The form, complexion, and physiognomy in different parts of Italy are more pronounced than in France.

What Are the Origins of Italian Beauty?

As the 19th-century French scientist and writer Louis Figuier noted,

“The barbarian invasions in the north, and the contact with Greeks and Africans in the south, have wrought much alteration in the primitive type of the inhabitants of Italy. Except in Rome and the Roman Campagna, the true type of the primitive Latin population is hardly to be found. The Grecian type exists in the South, and upon the eastern slope of the Apennines, while in the North the great majority of faces are Gallic. In Tuscany and the neighbouring regions are found the descendants of the ancient Etruscans…. The mixture of African blood has changed the organic type of the Southern Italian to such an extent as to render him entirely distinct from his Northern compatriots, the exciting influence which the climate has over the senses imparting to his whole conduct a peculiar exuberance.”

Some scholars have claimed that the aesthetic intoxication that comes from meeting a new type of person causes the raptures and ecstasies of some writers. A few years of living in a place is enough to get rid of these illusions. We can’t trust what the Italians say about their own country because they are biased by local pride. For example, the Milanese say that their city is the most beautiful, while the Venetians, Florentines, Romans, and Neapolitans all toot their own horns.

In one of his letters, an English poet, Lord Byron praised an Italian beauty of the Oriental variety that he had met and adds:

“Whether being in love with her has steeled me or not, I do not know; but I have not seen many other women who seem pretty. The nobility, in particular, are a sad-looking race—the gentry rather better.” In another place he writes that “the general race of women appear to be handsome; but in Italy, as on almost all the Continent, the highest orders are by no means a well-looking generation.”

Are Italian Men More Handsome Than Italian Women?

An Italian anthropologist and physiologist, Professor Paolo Mantegazza, believed that the men were more handsome in Italy than the women.

A Scottish scholar of the 19th century, Sir Charles Bell, noted that

“Raphael, in painting the head of Galatea, found no beauty deserving to be his model; he is reported to have said that there is nothing so rare as perfect beauty in woman; and that he substituted for nature a certain idea inspired by his fancy.”

In the late 1600s, French philosopher Michel de Montaigne traveled to Italy. He was surprised by how few beautiful women and girls he saw. At the time, women and girls were kept in more isolation than in France.

A German author, Dr. J. Volkmann, said in 1770 that,

“there are few beautiful women in Rome, especially among the higher classes; in Venice and Naples more are to be seen. The Italian himself has a proverb which says that Roman women are not beautiful”

(quoted by Ploss, P. 512).

What Aphrodisiacs Are and What They Do for Love

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Aphrodisiacs are substances and foods that heighten erotic arousal, sexual attraction, and pleasure in love and sexual relations. Aphrodisiacs can enhance the sensual pleasure that both men and women get from their sexual relationships. The term “aphrodisiacs” comes from the name of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

The Cultural History of Aphrodisiacs

People have used aphrodisiacs in their sex and love affairs throughout the history of many civilizations and cultures.

Throughout the course of human history, aphrodisiacs have been sought after and used by people. They have created them using a variety of materials, including foods, plants, and minerals. There have long been aphrodisiac superstitions in many different cultures around the world.

How People Use Aphrodisiacs in Modern Love and Sexual Encounters

The history of human cultures has preserved the recipes for making aphrodisiacs from plants, minerals, and foods. This variety of substances is what men and women have used to boost sexual desire, erotic attraction, and enjoy sex and sensual pleasures in love relationships.

The hedonistic wish of great sex has always been appealing to people in their lives. So, it is not surprising that they were interested in something that would increase desire and pleasure in sexual affairs.

Subsequently, cultural beliefs evolved that aphrodisiacs could increase the qualities of sex, making it more desirable, exciting, and pleasurable. However, researchers still need to investigate whether or not aphrodisiacs are actually capable of doing what they promise to do. According to some studies, substances like aphrodisiacs may even have adverse side effects (Brunetti et al., 2020).

The Types of Aphrodisiacs

Among the substances that people commonly use as aphrodisiacs are

  • Certain sorts of herbs, such as sage and cloves.
  • Some kinds of food, such as dark chocolate and oysters.
  • Alcohol and psychoactive substances, such as marijuana.
  • Supplements that contain the ingredients yohimbine, ambien, ginseng, and horny goat weed.

How Aphrodisiacs Work

People widely use certain types of food that evoke the senses of sight, smell, and taste. They believe that spicy foods and substances work as aphrodisiacs. For instance, chili pepper tends to boost body temperature and, therefore, induce feelings of arousal.

Kendra Cherry, for example, reviewed some types of aphrodisiac foods and natural supplements that can boost libido and sexual pleasure.

What Foods Are Aphrodisiacs?

There are two categories of foods that can be used as aphrodisiacs: those that are easily accessible and those that are extremely uncommon and difficult to find. Studies haven’t linked specific foods to changes in libido or sexual performance. Nevertheless, it may be worthwhile to order or cook certain kinds of food that can be presumably conducive to feeling energetic and excited. All these can boost sexual motivation and emotions.

Certain foods may contain properties that are advantageous to your sexual life. Omega-3 fatty acid-rich foods, for example, can help improve blood flow throughout the body, including the genitals (Omega-3 Fatty Acids Fact Sheet for Health Professionals/National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements)

Some sources mentioned specific kinds of food and substances as having an aphrodisiac effect. Among those are various nuts and fruits, such as figs, pine nuts, almonds, walnuts, watermelon, bananas, pomegranates, strawberries, and honey. Various kinds of vegetables, such as asparagus, avocado, saffron, garlic, pumpkin, and celery, can also have an aphrodisiac effect.

There isn’t much scientific evidence that these foods actually affect sexual desire. Yet they can enhance positive emotions, pleasurable feelings, and well-being because they contain potassium, zinc, and phytochemicals.

Aphrodisiac Effects of Dark Chocolate and Wine

Dark chocolate and coffee can have a possible aphrodisiac effect. Some studies have shown that they may improve blood flow, while other studies found no aphrodisiac evidence for dark chocolate (West & Krychman, 2015, West et al., 2014).

Alcoholic beverages have an effect on enhancing sexual arousal. Regular yet moderate consumption of red wine is good for better sexual health in women. Daily consumption of one or two glasses of red wine increases sexual desire and sexual performance in women. Low to moderate alcohol consumption can reduce inhibitions and increase desire. It is still worthy of note that excessive alcohol consumption can hinder sexual performance (Mondaini et al., 2009; Prabhakaran et al., 2018).

The Use of Aphrodisiacs in Sex and Love Affairs Across Cultures

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Men and women have used aphrodisiacs to increase erotic attraction, arousal, and sexual pleasure in love affairs for many centuries and in many different cultures around the world.

What Aphrodisiacs Are and What They Do for Love

Aphrodisiacs are foods and substances that increase erotic attraction, arousal, and sexual pleasure in love affairs. Due to aphrodisiacs, men and women may experience enhanced sensual pleasure in their intimate relationships.

People have sought and used aphrodisiacs for thousands of years of human history. They have made them from many things, such as minerals, plants, and foods. The beliefs in aphrodisiacs have been known across many cultures of the world.

Aphrodisiacs Across Civilizations

Men and women in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and other civilizations have used aphrodisiacs to boost sexual desire and potency and augment the pleasure of sensual experiences in love. The word “aphrodisiacs” has its origins in ancient Greek culture. It derives from the name of the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite.

Men and women of ancient Rome widely used aphrodisiacs in their art of love. Ovid’s poems of“Ars Amatoria”­ written in the first century BCE, depicted the self-indulgent and stylish lives of the Roman upper class. According to Ovid’s writing, the use of aphrodisiacs was a vital skill in their art of love and sexual affairs.

Ovid’s Poem about Aphrodisiacs

Here is Part XII of Ovid’s Book II, advising men and women of the ancient Roman society on how to use aphrodisiacs.

“There are those who prescribe eating a dish of savory,

a noxious herb, my judgement is its poisonous:

or mix pepper with the seeds of stinging nettles,

or crush yellow camomile in well-aged wine:

But the goddess who holds high Eryx, beneath the shaded hill,

doesn’t force you to suffer like this for her delights.

White onions brought from Megara, Alcathous’s city,

and rocket, herba salax, the kind that comes from gardens,

eat those, and eggs, eat honey from Hymettus, and seeds from the cones of sharp-needled pines.”

Kline, A. S. (2001). Translation of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria: The Art of Love.

Aphrodisiacs Across Human Cultures

People across many other cultures in history have used foods and other natural substances to increase love attraction, sexual desire, and even fertility. According to many cultural beliefs, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, thyme, and ginger have the capacity to enhance arousal, sensual pleasure, and sexual performance.

Therefore, these aphrodisiacs have continued to be popular for thousands of years in many cultures for love and sexual affairs. Aphrodisiacs are likely to continue to be popular among those looking to have better sex lives and love relationships. However, modern researchers need to explore their effects more to understand how certain foods and substances can affect sexual functioning and relationships.

Sexual Love in Cultural Contexts

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As I explained in another article, many scholars and laypeople equate sex, sexual love, and erotic love. However, I believe researchers should distinguish between these concepts because they mean somewhat different things (Karandashev, 2022). Sexual love is

  • intense feelings of sexual desire, interest, and attraction;
  • various sexual emotions and feelings;
  • various sexual acts between two individuals.

Sexual love is biologically rooted and, therefore, cross-culturally universal. Nevertheless, its cultural understanding can be specific. People in different societies deem sexual love in their cultural contexts.

What Does “Coitus” Mean for Sexual Love?

The roots of the word “coitus” convey the meaning of “a coming together.” So, the broader meaning of coitus extends beyond physical satisfaction. For men and women, the intimacy of intercourse is more important than the intensity of masturbation (Hite, 1976/2004, pp. 61-78; 1981/1987, pp. 485-502).

The Greek and Latin Origins of the Western Lexicon of Sexual Love

The Latin word “libido” and the Greek word “epithymia” conveyed the meaning of sexual love in Western cultures. Their meanings include yearning, longing, and the desire for sensual self-fulfillment. The sexual love in the words “epithymia” and “libido” conveys the meaning of the desire for sensual pleasure of the body and the gratifying release of sexual energy. All other feelings and emotions of love are of secondary importance in the case of sexual love (Tillich, 1954; Larson, 1983).

What Is the Greek “Epithymia”?

The term “epithymia” refers to “the longing for coitus, the hungering and thirsting for sexual closeness and union with a partner” (Karandashev, 2022). The general physical attraction to a partner is essential in this case. A lover centers his or her emotions not only on sexual desire and the partner’s body but also on the person as a whole. Coitus gives not only physical but also emotional satisfaction (Larson, 1983; Lomas, 2018; Tillich, 1954).

The Sexual Love of “Epithymia” in Other Cultures

Many other cultures of the world express the term “sexual love” in a way that is similar to the Greek word “epithymia.” For instance, Eastern cultures have their own lexical equivalents for sex and sexual love. Some of them appear surprisingly similar.

The Arabic Origins of the Sexual Lexicon

Professor of Linguistics Zaidan Ali Jassem discovered that the “love and sexual terms” in English, French, German, Greek, and Latin could have Arabic origins (Jassem, 2013). For example,

“English, French, Greek and Latin erotic (Eros) comes from Arabic ‘arr ‘intercourse, making love’; English, French, and Latin abhor obtains from Arabic kariha/’akrah, kurh (n) ‘hate’ via /k & h/-merger; English and German love/lieben derives from Arabic labba (‘alabba) ‘to love, live/stay’, turning /b/ into /v/; English hope (hobby) and German hoffen is from Arabic 2ubb ‘love, hope’, turning /2/ into /h/ and /b/ into /f/ in the latter”.

(Jassem, 2013, p. 97).

The modern Arabic terms for sex and sexual love are الجنس والحب الجنسي (aljins walhubu aljinsiu).

The Sexual Love Lexicon from Other Cultures of the World

Here are several other examples from other cultures around the world.

In the Philippines, the word “kilig” refers to the subjective experience of butterflies in the stomach when a person thinks of or interacts with someone sexually attractive and desired.

In the indigenous language of Yagán (Chile), the term “mamihlapinatapai” refers to the way people express unspoken mutual desire through their appearance.

According to American historian and ethnologist Daniel Brinton (1837–1899), several American languages have their own special lexicon of sexual love, which is different from the words for sex and other forms of love (Brinton, 1886).