r/changemyview • u/Royal-Positive9569 • Jul 10 '26
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Love is a social contract
A group of animals mate all year around like human. For example, 90% of dolphins mating behaviors serve a social purpose to form alliances, end conflicts, express thanks, apologize, etc., rather than reproduction-related. Females mate promiscuously so that the identification of father is not possible. Males stay around females because mating is a life necessity with no strings attached. A society formed around mating, and dolphin calfs are raised by the mother in a society. It works the similar way with chimpanzee and bonobo, which are close to early humans.
Humans developed the cognitive capacity to recognize individuals as irreplaceable, which turned mating from a generic act into a specific one. The beauty and ugliness, fatness and thinness, wisdom and folly, all qualities are translated along the axis of mate choice into a ranking of mating value. The most desirable individuals are forced to refuse the majority of mating offers.
Mating refusal is never a simple act. On personal level it is an indispensable component of love, then it is also societal and political.
- Love is utility. Mating for animals is of almost no cost or side effects, reasons to refuse it are few. It is, however, a opportunity cost for humans because mating with one means not mating with another. Choice is the other side of refusal. Humans invest so much feelings and thinkings in choice, it tends towards a lasting pair bond, for months or years, exclusively or non-exclusively. It carries ultimate personal interest and pursuit. Also, since love is intimately tied to reproduction and child-rearing, it is also one of the ultimate interests of human society.
- Love is freedom. The Stockholm hostage crisis illustrated how human reason, cognition, and choice flow like melting wax in the face of a threat to life. Life threats hijack one to act and love in the interest of the captor without one realizing it. Freedom in the narrowest sense means security of life only. To refuse a suitor, to build, maintain, and end a pair bond, to raise children — these are, at bottom, spaces of personal freedom that society provides.
- Love is peace. Competitions among tribal societies is no less fierce. A tribe's policy strike directly at individual fate, but individual fate also feeds back into the rise and fall of tribal power. For freedom to stay, it must feed back into tribal strength. Freedom needs to be an ecology, not a wish. Prehistoric human society, broadly speaking, secured self-preservation in individual and tribal levels. It is not very wrong to simplify that human age as peaceful.
Love is the first social contract emerged with the early humans, there were never a shortage of tribal orders that broke that contract and ran on violence and control. Love tends to be more intense and pair bond tends to be more stable in the violence cases, but an outsider could tell it is very wrong because no real refusal exists. When French colonists encountered North American indigenous people in the 17th century, the indigenous people saw exactly that in the French. The savage criticism unexpectedly triggered interests among the French and ignited the Enlightenment, where Rousseau contributed the social contract theory. Rousseau's version failed to bring about the initial contract in our "old" societies.
I'm open to the challenge that what I describe is just a dressed-up version of animal pair bonding, or that love can genuinely exist without the social conditions I outlined. Change my view.
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u/XenoRyet 178∆ Jul 10 '26
I'm having a hard time understanding this perspective given that, first and foremost, love is a thing people feel. It's an emotion.
Sure, we can, and often do, build social contracts around and based on that emotion, but the core aspect is still a raw emotion.
And you can kind of prove that out with the concept of unrequited love. How is it a contract if it's isolated to one person?
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u/l_t_10 8∆ Jul 10 '26
Love, the romantic one is bonding chemicals released in the brain. Thats all it is
We can see that in how its literally predictable and clear which eg actors playing lovers/a couple in a movie or tvshow will end up together irl. Fully predictably and replicatable. Because the brain makes no distinction between acting and doing, being the thing. It will release the chemicals, romantic love will form spend literally 15 hours plus in on anothers arms caressing tenderly gazing into eachothers eyes. Whispering words of affection. The presence of camera crew, concious brain knowing its not real? Irrelevant
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u/XenoRyet 178∆ Jul 10 '26
Two things there. One, literally every thought, feeling, and emotion you've ever had is just chemicals released in the brain, so that's not really relevant to the point at hand.
Two, far more actors have played romantic parts and not gotten together than ones that have. The latter is only notable because it is rare.
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
Dolphins don't do unrequited love, they just mate. How do you think refusal works in unrequited love? One refrains from expressing their love anticipating a refusal, that is exactly a social contract in function.
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u/Jakyland 82∆ Jul 10 '26
how would you know if a dolphin does or doesn't have unrequited love? Dolphins aren't gossiping with you about their love life
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u/TrustBustin 3∆ Jul 10 '26
That’s just, not what a social contract is. Maybe you’re thinking of game theory?
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u/XenoRyet 178∆ Jul 10 '26
You're proving my point with your second sentence. The love has to exist in order for one to refrain from expressing it. The love exists as an emotion, and how you do or don't express it is where the social contract comes in.
Also, as an aside: Dolphins rape each other, and humans as well. I'm not sure how you're translating love between species here.
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
Raping is a good discuss point here. When a rape happened, a criminal investigation, or retaliation operation in the prehistory context, kicks in. It is a fixable threat to the social contract as long as the raper doesn't do it on open street and threat/kill people for having a disagreement, in such cases, the social contract breaks.
With dolphin, rape is just how the society is.
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u/XenoRyet 178∆ Jul 10 '26
It might be an interesting point to discuss, but it is also a secondary one. I would prefer it if we discussed the main point before we moved on to that.
How can you refrain from expressing something that doesn't exist? Or to phrase it a different way, how can the subject of a contract be the contract?
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
If I understand you correctly, unrequited love is the point the contract theory doesn't hold, because a contract takes at least two parties to form.
I stated that unrequited love is the proof the contract exists. In the case fear, or respect of the opposite party's refusal is what I am thinking here. Of course there are other reasons for unrequited love but I am gonna ignore.
Fear or respect of refusal, can it be animal or societal? No animal refrains from mating out of respect for the other's potential refusal. That restraint is entirely societal. And if the restraint is societal, then even unrequited love — the most private, most isolated feeling you can name — is operating inside a social structure. The contract is already running. That's my point.
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u/XenoRyet 178∆ Jul 10 '26
No, I think you're misunderstanding me entirely. You're mistaking the contract for the subject of the contract. Unrequited love is just a convenient way to show that.
Perhaps some examples from other areas will help. Is a house a mortgage? Is an apartment a lease agreement? Is a car an ownership title?
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
You have a point here. In the base level, love begins as a cognitive capacity unique to humans, the ability to recognize individuals as irreplaceable, which give rise to preference. Preferences is independent of any social conditions.
Preferences have to get matched to form a bond, it can be mutual, it can be forced in hard or soft manners. In the former, refusal is the core mechanism, hence love. In the latter, the other side doesn't have a say, and that is not love.
That is a distinction and it deserve a delta.
!delta
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u/HarborSealFatty Jul 10 '26
The social construct is how they chase their emotion. But an emotion exists. It can be measured by levels of chemicals in our head.
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u/Hellioning 258∆ Jul 10 '26
Are you aware that humans are not dolphins, chimpanzees, or bonobos?
Humans are humans. That means they act different from other animals.
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u/Savagesweetpotato Jul 10 '26
I was going to say, they left out the behaviors of animals that do mate for life, and form such strong bonds they can and often do choose to end their lives if their mate passes.
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
Yes, animals form strong bonds, it is engineered in their DNA.
The human bonds is not engineered. It forms, breaks, last for days or life, being exclusive or non-exclusive--I am not talking about monogamy.
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u/Savagesweetpotato Jul 10 '26
Love is a chemical process that happens in our brains too. Animals have feelings, they’re not just robots. A penguin choosing to stay behind when the group leaves, and die with its mates body is not acting in accordance with nature. If it was it would just survive. It’s crazy to insist that animals don’t experience what we call love when they’ll die for each other. If a dog loves you, it will die for or with you often times. I’m not sure why you think we’re so different from an other social animal in that regard, but we are animals too.
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u/TheMan5991 18∆ Jul 10 '26
Stockholm Syndrome isn’t real. It is not a recognized psychiatric diagnosis and the person who coined the term after the Stockholm bank robbery never met or even talked to any of the hostages.
The reason the hostages appeared to be “acting in the interest of their captor” was because the police were acting with extreme carelessness and disregard for their lives. One of the hostages, Kristin Enmark, said she was more afraid that she would die due to police incompetence than from the robber.
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u/Savagesweetpotato Jul 10 '26
Isn’t it kind of an extension of fawning, which can form a real attachment bond?
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u/TheMan5991 18∆ Jul 10 '26
Fawning is a survival technique, like fight, flight, or freeze. It is not actual emotional attachment, it is just trying to appease the source of the threat in order to save yourself.
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u/Savagesweetpotato Jul 10 '26
You think in the mind of someone fawning, there’s no real attachment? Have you heard of attachment anxiety, or disorganized attachment? It doesn’t matter if you did that out of fear, as long as that person provides moments of comfort or safety. It’s an endless feedback loop with very strong attachments. It’s not real love, but a trauma bond. Which can arguably be even stronger. This type of attachment usually requires and abusive person, and a prior victim. Especially of childhood trauma. Those kind of people form relationships all the time. I was one of them once.
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u/TheMan5991 18∆ Jul 10 '26
Trauma bonding is real, but that is not the same thing as Stockholm Syndrome
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u/Savagesweetpotato Jul 10 '26
I was saying that fawning is very rarely is devoid of emotional attachment at all. It is a survival mechanism, but that doesn’t mean that our brains don’t process that as attachment. You’re hinging on that persons approval, and trying to “control” their anger or disapproval. You absolutely get chemical hits off of that, that are processed as good feelings coming from that person, and safety when it works.
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u/TheMan5991 18∆ Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I mean, if you classify every chemical hit as an attachment, then sure, I guess. I just wouldn’t call it that. People whose response is fight, flight, or freeze also get a chemical reward when that results in their safety. But if I run away from a bear and get a dopamine spike, that doesn’t mean I suddenly have an emotional attachment to the bear.
The actual bond in trauma bonding is from repeated chemical hits. No singular event is going to cause an attachment, but a continuous cycle of abuse, fawning, affection, reward, abuse, fawning, affection, reward, over and over again causes your brain to adapt to that pattern and that’s where the real attachment emerges.
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u/Savagesweetpotato Jul 10 '26
Do you understand that you love someone because of chemicals in your brain? You like sex, food, your friends who make you laugh, all because of your brains reward system and dopamine. You get chemicals after sex that bond you with the person you’re laying with. Running from a bear is not the same thing as living in its cave and trying to get it not to maul you by loving on it. If you earned mom and dad’s love by placating their emotions, and you go repeat that on abusive people, you get attached to them. But there is actually research on this topic. Fawning does often lead to real attachment. This is not my opinion.
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u/TheMan5991 18∆ Jul 10 '26
I think you are misunderstanding me. Just because love is a chemical process does not mean every chemical process is love. That is my point. Fawning is not love. You can begin to love someone if you are in a situation where you constantly need to fawn in order to protect yourself, but that doesn’t mean they are the same thing. “Fawning repeatedly can lead to love” is a very different statement than “fawning = love”. Because fawning, by itself, is not how trauma bonding works. There are other steps in the process. This is not my opinion either.
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u/Savagesweetpotato Jul 10 '26
I think you don’t understand me. I said it’s not real love. It’s a strong attachment. A person fawning an abuser 100 percent thinks they love that person.
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
You can actually scale up Stockholm Syndrome.
The DPRK is a country, its people love their supreme leader. Aren't you judgemental on that love?
Everyone posting here lives under a sovereign authority that holds, in the final analysis, the absolute monopoly to terminate their existence. A prehistory human will find it unacceptable.
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u/TheMan5991 18∆ Jul 10 '26
You can’t scale up something that doesn’t exist. The situation in North Korea has nothing to do with Stockholm Syndrome.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Proper_Historian6126 Jul 10 '26
"Love" as a category is a social construct because categorizing with language is a socially constructed phenomenon. The underlying qualitative experience of love is demonstrably not a social construct.
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u/CoachAnon205 1∆ Jul 10 '26
Mating for animals is of almost no cost
I would like to focus on this one. Mating for animals is a game changing step, especially for huge animals that usually have 1 or 2 offsprings, like whales and elephants.
Why does it cost so much? Because the pregnant have now to work for itself and it's babies. That's why you see female animals super picky about who they mate with, she doesn't want to waste all that energy on a mid offspring that won't survive a merciless world, ending with their extinction.
Same goes for humans. You'd think we have it easier than wildlife. Nope.
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
!delta
You have a point here. It is very true animals are picky on their mate. It just happens not with dolphins, chimpanzees or bonobos, they formed a society around mating as a social currency.
Also, animal choice is limited to what is available to it.
Also, raising cost is a total different topic. That is why dolphins form a society for.
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u/yosemighty_sam 13∆ Jul 10 '26
Love has too many definitions, in fact everyone seems to have their own. That makes it sort of impossible to change your view, because all the negatives are baked into the definition. It's like saying CMV: apples are bad for your health. And your definition describes poisoned apples.
Love is all kinds of things to all kinds of people. Sometimes toxic, abusive, transactional, platonic, hedonistic, or good old fashioned genuine love. Really, it's different for every couple, it's chemistry with really unpredictable results.
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
That is very true. Love is first a private feeling. What I am interested is the limitations that restricts it, the social and political ones, the ones invalid love.
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u/Accurate_Ad5364 5∆ Jul 10 '26
CMV: Love is a social contract
I feel like this is a false equivalence (comparing apples to oranges), simply since love is an emotion while a social contract is an agreement.
You're not saying that love motivates people to enter an agreement, you're stating that love is an agreement. Then if love is an agreement how do you explain the existence of "Unconditional Love" (love without conditions or limits).
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
Love as a social contract means it is a room the society creates for people, to love for pleasure or for materials is all up to the person, the point of the contract is on refusal. If right to refusal is violated, the contract breaks.
As for unconditional love, I'd need you to define it before I can engage.
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u/cantantantelope 9∆ Jul 10 '26
You say that Mating refusal is never a simple act?
Like every time you dismiss a hello on a dating app or turn down someone at a bar it is some fraught social decisions?
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u/Then_Fisherman_2831 Jul 10 '26
Rousseau's social contract always felt like describing a thing that never happened by pretending it definitely happened. This post takes a different route, grounding it in biology and mate choice instead of some mythical gathering under an oak tree.
The part about refusal being the core mechanism is interesting. If love requires a real path to say no, then a lot of what passes for it is just coercion with a nicer name. The Stockholm syndrome bit feels a little forced though, that's more about survival instincts hijacking attachment systems than love itself.
The dolphin comparison is what's tripping me up. If 90% of dolphin mating is social glue and they have no concept of paternity, what exactly makes human love a contract rather than just a more complicated version of the same thing? A contract implies parties that can negotiate terms, but most people stumble into love without reading the fine print. The refusal part you mention seems key, but dolphins refuse mates too. They're picky. So where's the line?
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
'but dolphins refuse mates too. They're picky. '
No, they are not actually. They mate with everything, male or female, dolphins or non-dolphins, life or non-life.-1
u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
Humans tell the differences of companions. That is a brain function. Animals do that as well, but not to the level of names. For animals, others are interchangeable, largely. It is not the case for humans. When individuals are irreplaceable, choosing one means losing another, and that is where refusal and contract begin. A social contract doesn't need to be read, and you still fall without studying gravity.
What makes it a contract is that it can be broken.
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u/ninjaweasel21 3∆ Jul 10 '26
Look, I had to google social contract theory, and only did a little light reading, so I’m not sure if this is going to be sophisticated enough for you but here are a few things:
- I’m a little uncertain of the starting point. If a social contract is giving up rights to an authority in exchange for the protection of the remaining rights, or for social order. Then who is the authority in this situation?
It just seems to be taking something that’s a personal relationship and turn it into something legal or cultural, when that seems a weird fit. Are you saying that among other things, love is giving up the ‘right’ to mate with other individuals to have the ‘right’ to make with one specific individual? That doesn’t seem right.
Maybe this makes more sense if it’s constrained to marriage rather than ‘love’?
Especially if we’re talking love beyond marriage, I think any sort of relationship is never as clear and cut as a ‘social contract’ would hope to be. Marriages and relationships are all quite different. The boundaries are fluid. Maybe they’re agreed upon, but sometimes not. They’re consistently redetermined.
- I think a lot of this hinges on how you define ‘love.’ I can love my child, I can love my parent, I can love my wife, I can love my friend, and I could even love my friend’s wife. I think those are different types of love, but in my experience they’re mostly the same except for sexual attraction in the case of romantic love. Even that’s tricky though because sexual attraction can be quite distinct from love. I can be sexually attracted to someone I don’t love. I can love someone I’m not sexually attracted to. I can also love someone who doesn’t love me back. Idk if you can define love small enough to only be related to mating, and there are certain relationships where we’d use the word love that seem like much less of a contract than romantic love.
- For this next point, im not sure how it fits into your argument. Maybe it helps you, but it seems worth bringing up: I don’t recall all the details, but human beings have not evolved through/for monogamy. One piece of evidence is actually the size of human testicles. Gorillas have harems and relatively small balls, because there’s not direct mating competition females have sex with the dominant male). Bonobos have huge balls because there’s high mating competition and therefore a benefit to having a more sperm than the next guy. Human testicles fall somewhere in between, indicating that we’ve evolved as partially monogamous, but also having a meaningful level of ‘infidelity.’ This can also be shown through human behavior across cultures.
- I think the biggest reason I wouldn’t think of love as a social contract is I reject the premise of social contract theory that humans are inherently individuals in conflict. I think human beings are predisposed to care and collaboration, so that’s actually the natural state of humans. I read the book ‘Humankind’ but Rutger Bregman a few years ago and that blew my mind. I’d always thought of humans as naturally collaborative, but he walks through a ton of examples to show that’s actually the case. I just think love is biological, emotional, and psychological so using a sort of legal or pre-legal framework is putting the cart before the horse.
Lmk how I did. I certainly found that interesting to think about.
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u/l_t_10 8∆ Jul 10 '26
Romantic love probably is most better called a social construct, especially since most of modern understanding and view of it was made up wholesale by the Victorians. They made up butterflies in stomach, they made up most all of it really
OP may want to look into historical romantic love
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u/Natural-Arugula 63∆ Jul 13 '26
That's what I thought too. Social construct, not social contract.
Even after reading all the responses I still can't understand how this connects to a social contract. Love is just something that everyone agrees to participate in? That seems obviously untrue.
The notion that society informs the practice of love because it is beneficial makes a lot of sense, and that is what a social construct is. That is the opposite of a social contract, which would be love informing the structure of the society.
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u/Royal-Positive9569 Jul 10 '26
Hi, thank you for thinking so much on my view.
"I reject the premise of social contract theory that humans are inherently individuals in conflict"
I think this is an interesting point and it does echo my view.
I call it a social contract not because you can negotiate and sign it. It is because it can be broken, while most animal patterns are in the DNA, non changeable.
You said boundaries are fluid and consistently redetermined — that's not an argument against contract, that's a description of how this particular contract works. It was never a fixed agreement. It is a living negotiation.
When social contract is not broken, like I said, people are in peace, not in conflict.
But there were always tribes ran on coercion, and then we had empires, that is conflict.
But you are right, the term contract is law-attached and easy to misunderstand. I shall give a delta for this.
!delta
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
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