A philosopher offers her new theory on the nature of romantic love that brings together its humanistic and scientific components and explains how our acceptance of non-traditional relationships--including homosexual, interracial and non-monogamous ones--will continue to evolve in the future.--Publisher's description.

"What is love? A pounding heart? A mystical connection? Love, we are told, can be felt but not defined. No wonder so many of us fall back on the advice that love is something we shouldn't overthink. Though trying to understand love feels like an insurmountable task, the reality is that we urgently need to think more about it. Love is of immense importance and many of us frame our whole lives around it. Tidy definitions of love describing it as "just chemicals" or "just a construct" are unsatisfactory. As philosopher Carrie Jenkins reveals in What Love Is, love is both a physical phenomenon preserved throughout evolution--which explains the palpitations, butterflies, and adrenaline rushes--and a constantly changing social convention. In an era in which interracial, queer, and now polyamorous love are becoming more "normal," our ideas of love may not match our parents' ideas, even if our bodies' experience of love remains similar. Drawing on a trove of cultural, scientific, and personal reflections, Jenkins frees us to see love as layered: it is as political as it is physical, as emotional and intellectual as it is chemical. What Love Is will help each of us decide for ourselves how we choose to love."--Jacket.