The transcendent, transcendence, and transcendental ideals

[prime]

Romantic love is properly defined as an experience of transcendence and is elaborated in cultural configurations of three basic types. The first is in hierarchical and internally competitive societies where marriage is a political matter and romantic relations are always adulterous and often non-sexual; the second is in individualistic, fragmented and fluid societies where love and marriage go together; the third is in highly structured disharmonic societies where romantic ties between youth are severed by arranged marriages.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0263276498015003011