Who do we thank for Red-hot Lovers?
Firstly, we need to define Red-hot Love: Romance that’s full of passion, drama, intensity and lovesickness.
We need to thank the courtly lovers of the Middle Ages for Red-hot Love:
- Without them we might not have drama kings and queens, princes and princesses and a lot of the high maintenance lovers of the world.
- We may have missed out entirely on the knight in shining armor rescuing the poor fellow or the damsel in distress with his/her love.
- We could be lacking the exquisitely sensitive, heartbreakingly appealing gentle lover who stumbles and falls in matters of love.
- It’s possible that we wouldn’t have developed the ever popular game of playing hard to get.
- And where would we be if they hadn’t developed lovesickness into a prescribed ritual?
Arguably, we may not even have Ashley Madison if it wasn’t for the courtly lovers. For all of their Courts of Love, Laws of Love, Code of Chivalry and high culture of love, they specialized in adultery. They openly promoted and condoned emotional affairs and turned a blind eye to sexual ones. They developed a system, complete with rules, for affairs. The typical love relationship was between a single gentleman and a married lady; he was probably a knight in service to her husband. When you think about the complications in that situation, it makes the drama, intrigue and betrayal in Ashley Madison look like a walk in the park.
And we might not even have Tinder.
Tinder is conceived to be exactly the opposite of what the courtly lovers were all about. They promoted one love and no sex as a means of keeping their emotions at a high pitch. But today we recognize that love is a lot of trouble: It’s complicated, time-consuming and it can go wrong. Sex or a date via Tinder is meant to be easy: It’s a straightforward swipe left or right, it’s instantly available on your phone and it usually produces some type of sex or date. On the surface of it at least, Tinder thumbs its nose at courtly love and Red-hot Love.
Courtly love in the Middle Ages set the stage for us to have Red-hot Love and we’ve been nurturing it ever since.