I had this wacky train of thought come to me.
Hope viewers of this post find it entertaining/interesting.
The whole idea of romantic relationship is a societal/cultural/civilizational/human-organization based construct.
If all humans just lived wild,
Males would randomly have sex with 100s of women, and probably have 30-40 children each or more.
The male would not know who his child is.
Also, there seems to be no easily observable causality linking the sexual act to the consequence of pregnancy, and the consequent children that come from that.
There is just a wild instinctual desire for the male.
Similarly women too feel this same wild desire, in certain time periods, and depending on their mood they may run away, resist, or allow the sex to happen.
The man in his prime years would probably be more motivated, since he can easily manage to do 1 or 2 every day without any time-off periods.
The things is, after the sex, the woman too may not be able to causally connect the act of sex to the pregnancy that happens after.
Could she not take it as something that just naturally happened from God?
So the causality is not known from either side, male or female.
The female would bond with the child from the oxytocin and breastfeeding period, and that bond may result in the child and mother recognizing each other.
But there is no way the child will know the father, and neither will the father know.
It could be anybody.
If the woman has had sex with 5 men in a day, and gets pregnant, how would she have any idea who caused the child OR if the 5 acts had anything to do with the child at all?
The first symptoms of pregnancy after all come much later, probably a fortnight later at least, right?
Another aspect is that, if the child grows up away from the mother from a young age, it is doubtful if the mother can recognize the child.
The child may recognize the mother, because her age may not change her appearance as much in the 15-45 zone, but even that may not be easy.
So it seems like the entire notion of civilization/society is to regulate birth and to ensure the spread of resources to everyone.
By putting the responsibility on the father, the father is deterred from following his raw instinct and seeking new mates.
Similarly, a responsibility is also put on the mother, to take care of the child for much longer than she might have otherwise done.
The socialization/enculturation/civilization process is to suppress the sex instinct’s wildness, and instead redirect it into the structures of society, that is, to gain status/position/rank and then seek out the opp-sex of similar status/position/rank etc.
This I guess spawns the whole matrix of mating/romantic fantasy and social status/rank/position/specialness.
The fantasy of being the elite and mating with other elite,
Like the notion of kings/queens, emperors/empresses, prince/princesses and so on.
Names are used in societal organization to TAG the person.
It is an identifier similar to your debit card number, social security number and so on.
Similarly even the roles of mother/father are tags society puts on folk.
Like XXX is the mother of XXXX —–OR—— XXXX is the father of XXXX.
Also the agreement of marriage itself, is really a contract/agreement that serves the children who will be born from the mating of the 2.
Marriage was essentially a system created for the bringing up of children.
Nowadays people use it for companionship, but that is a conscious contract of sort, and it does not have much binding, since both the parties are independent.
It is only the child that is born helpless, and needs a lot of nurture at least till the age of 10.
There seems to big rift in the way “natural biology drives/impulses/instincts” operate and in the way we view everything from the “societal/cultural/civilizational lens”.
The former is generally subsumed into the latter in the process of socialization.
I guess, based on seeing the consequences, ramifications, and aftermath, birth causation etc. – Wise people with vision created systems such as culture/society/civilization to organize and regulate the different drives so that the system could serve in the longer term as a win-win for everyone.
Society/Culture then seems like a long distance vision of how people can live together and mutually fulfill all their needs .
As more needs get satisfied, people may become conscious of finer and subtler needs, which would gradually make their way into modifying society’s formal or informal structures.