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Eenmaal de keuze gemaakt zorgt de reële en steeds veelzijdiger bevrediging niet alleen voor de versterking van die aantrekkingskracht, maar ook voor toenemende onomkeerbaarheid ervan: hoe meer de liefde zich ontplooit, hoe minder aantrekkelijk andere partners worden, om de doodeenvoudige reden dat bij hen de verwachte bevrediging slechts een vage belofte is. Vreemden kunnen wellicht op zich verleidelijk zijn, maar hun verschijning geeft meteen ook te kennen dat ze niet bereid zijn: niet elke mooie mond wil om het even wie kussen.
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A third series of authors discerns love from romantic love, whereby love is described also the afterglow of the once blazing fire of romantic love. In its full version, this theory ascribes the shift to the transition from sexual to reproductive interest. Thus, for Westermarck, sexuality cannot constitute an enduring bond because sexual attraction is not permanent. The enduring 'matrimonial instinct' is rather based on the parental instinct. Also Havelock Ellis describes how the sexual element whithers away and how love between the parents makes place for love between parent and child. Ortega y Gasset believes that every love begins with romantic love, but that love is a deeper and less stormy feeling. Tennov says that, in the best case, romantic love is transformed in an increasingly stronger love. Liebowitz and H. Fisher describe the transformation of romantic love in kindness. For Alberoni, love is romantic love institutionalised. A variant of this third theory sees the metamorphosis of romantic love in love especially in women. Whereas, as we have seen, Schopenhauer holds that the love of the male disappears after coition, female love is only ignited by fertilisation. Nature is out at reproduction, and the male can beget more than hundred children in a year, while the woman has to restrict herself to one single child. Darwin formulated similar ideas. In 1972, Trivers reformulated this theory in terms of 'differential parental investment'*. Ever since, countless authors regard differential parental investment as the explanation for male polygamy or promiscuity. They overlook that there is a difference between fathers, who want to produce a proliferous offspring, and man who want to seduce females. The males they are talking about, are not out at a proliferous offspring, but rather to get rid of mothers who are not particularly fond of having intercourse with them. Neither does the theory hold in the supposition that men are out at reproduction rather than sexual pleasure. As we shall demonstrate in the next chapter, men that want to become fathers have more to do than merely planting seeds. A father has only sons when he also educates them. A variant of this theory holds that woman is only interested in motherhood, while man's interests are more varied. Thus, Krafft Ebing writes that, after coition, love is referred to the background by other vital and social interests'. Weininger had similar ideas as we have seen. What Michelet writes about women is t
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