Love is not special. Not on a universal scale.
To evolution, coupling seems a natural defense against entropy. This is not true, of course. Atoms bond because it is a net release of energy. Construction increases entropy; every brick in the tallest skyscraper costs more in chaos than it earns in order. And every relationship eventually adds to the universal balance of heartache.
But atoms bond, molecules form chains which tangle into proteins, cells form and cluster. The resultant animals partner: one more layer of complexity.
Even species that don't require sex to multiply tend to form kinds of relationships. This is particularly true among the sentients in the universe, for whom procreation of thoughts is almost more important than passing on genes. Even the nonbiologicals—though they’ll often eschew the word “love” like it’s some kind of highly infectious organic disease—are aware that they’re more powerful together than apart.
Love is not rare in the cosmos. Monogamy, though not so universal, is common, too. Two is a good size for a relationship because larger groups grow unstable quickly.
And so love is woven into the fabric of spacetime. It is a great attractor for the dynamic equations that describe the progression of matter through space. And it is one of the most pervasive examples of convergent evolution on one of the grandest possible of scales.
Divergent, however, are the many expressions of love.
Many species do mate for life. But Zikors of Zikron II are known for both the intensity of their love and the frequency with which it changes. The Zi experience intense relationships that last days before ending as quickly as they’d begun. Used to relationships that last lifetimes (or close to it), many members of the galactic community have long devalued the love of Zikors. They equate the quick relationships to what would colloquially be called “flings” or “hookups” and dismiss fleeting love as lesser, or at least less real.
Xenopsychologists, however, mostly reject this notion. The literature has many ways of measuring love—or things approximating it—and on all of those tests Zi relationships consistently outperform the average. Indeed, in many ways Zi love is measured to be more “real” than the lifelong monogamies of those species who look down upon them.
In other species, passionate love often ends explosively. Heartache and bad breakups are signatures of meaningful couplings that have come to pass. The Zi reject this, too. Their relationships end cordially and often with the two partners remaining lifelong friends. Scholars often attribute this ability to separate amicably to their famously long and nearly photographic memories. The more poetically inclined argue that a Zi relationships never truly ends, because the partners will remember the intensity of the love as vividly as they’d experienced it for the rest of their lives. And so love is not about finding a deep and meaningful relationship to last a lifetime, but rather to add to a growing collection of such loves, in order to sustain the most hungry hearts in the galaxy.
Indeed, among Zikors, long monogamous love is seen as a sexual perversion. Society views that kind of relationship as unnatural and impure, in contrast to love that burns bright and hot and quick and then collapses to give the fuel for the next couplings in an intense and chaotic dance of love and loss and memories not unlike the chaos of fusion and fission that burns in the hearts of stars across the universe.
The Thani of Epsid VI, in great contrast to the chaotic Zi, enjoy quiet loves full of long silences. They mate for life. And by a curious quirk of biology, they communicate with the same organ they use for sex. That organ is deformed irreparably after use, and thus the Thani—upon consummation of their love—lose the ability to speak.
Once they mate, they can never speak again.
This has many profound implications for Thani society. Politics, for example, becomes a game of the young. Many species across the universe are governed—to differing degrees of dissatisfaction—by elders closer to death than birth. For the Thani, the very fact that there is a “next” generation means that the elders have lost their voices and given way to newer and younger orators. Imagine your planet if it were governed entirely by those who had not yet had children of their own, and maybe then you can begin to understand just how far-reaching and consequential this is for the Thani.
Politics aside, the character of love changes drastically.
The more responsible and meticulous members of the species draft out long contracts with their spouses before having sex for the first time. Prenuptial agreements carry a much different kind of weight on Epsid VI. Divorce is rare among the Thani. This is likely because finding another partner after having lost one’s voice is even rarer. So these contracts are not about what happens after a partnership ends, but rather they are intended to outline how the relationship should function in the meantime. The longest of these contracts can fill tomes and contain details as essential as where they will live and what kind of home they will buy and how many children they will have alongside those as trivial as who is responsible for grinding the blork jurg on workday mornings. Across the universe, couples often spend a lifetime learning how to communicate effectively with each other. For the Thani, all of this communication happens up front.
Not all Thani, though, are so responsible. Reckless youngsters in poor areas often find themselves mute and alone from an early age. In the unfortunate case, this is because they are taken advantage of. In the common case, this is because they lack access to proper sexual education and resources aimed at teaching them about healthy relationships and family planning, and because they are surrounded by similarly mute friends and neighbors and family members that make such reckless behavior seem normal. And because those same mute community members quite literally lack the language to tell these children that they regret the decisions they made.
And, lastly, some Thani are so afraid of losing their voice that they never love at all.
The Rinds are a multi-system species occupying a small part of the outer rim of quadrant three of the Andromeda galaxy. Rind babies are born aside a small external organ which their mothers immediately and instinctively begin to hold and protect before even acknowledging the newborn. The Rinds have a non-auditory language based on the modulation of electromagnetic waves and have no written alphabet, so this organ does not have a name which can be written here. However, because of the extreme importance it plays in Rind culture, scholars often choose to name the organ the “rinde.” The closest translation would be something akin to “heart” or “soul”.
The rinde is still a mystery to modern science, but it is known that every Rind has a matching internal organ—responsible for maintaining some important homeostatic regulation of their bodies—which is somehow entangled with the state of the rinde. It is hypothesized that this entanglement is quantum in nature, but biologists are hesitant to accept that evolution alone could engineer such a delicate and complicated relationship.
It is also known that a Rind cannot survive if their rinde is not properly cared for. There are precise constraints on rinde temperature, external pressure, and lateral acceleration that must be maintained for optimal health outcomes, and the organ itself is fragile and can be punctured easily. Fortunately, all members of the species have an additional pouch-like structure on one of their appendages which can fit a rinde and regulate it to the proper conditions.
A Rind can care for their own rinde and many, indeed, do just that. There are many benefits, however, to having another Rind regulate one’s rinde. These benefits are physiological and psychological in nature. Rinds that give their rinde to another report greater life satisfaction, happiness, and also tend to be healthier and live longer.
While their pouches are still developing, their mothers play this role: mothers will develop an auxiliary pouch during pregnancy into which they can deposit their baby’s rinde. Once the child reaches early adolescence they will have a fully developed pouch of their own and will be given their rinde to hold onto for themselves. In many Rind subcultures, this is accompanied by a kind of coming-of-age religious ceremony in which the mother returns the rinde to the child.
But Rind long for the comfort of having another hold their rinde, and this becomes a central component of their relationships. Partnerships are solidified with a marriage-like ceremony in which the two Rinds exchange rindes. This is an incredibly intimate affair, with each Rind effectively giving a piece of themselves to the other. It is also an incredible display of vulnerability. If anything happens to the rinde that they have given up, or if it is not properly cared for, they will die.
This is all to say that Rinds are known for wearing their hearts on their sleeves and for giving their lives to those they love.
Heartbreak is a serious affair in a world where lovers literally give each other their hearts, and the implications of this biological fact in Rind law and society are complex and numerous. Lover’s quarrels can easily end in tragedy if one Rind, in the heat of the moment, removes their partner’s rinde from their pouch and forgets about it overnight. When physically separated, the death of one Rind can also result in the death of their partner as the rinde in their pouch quickly destabilizes. Political assassins often target spouses, knowing the end result will be the same. Suicides turn into homicides, and murders have twice the impact. In some jurisdictions, it is illegal for a Rind to engage in “risky or life-threatening behavior” (definitions vary by place) without the express consent of their partners, whose life is also implicitly at risk.
Although some subcultures vary, much of society frowns upon Rinds who exchange rindes frequently and carelessly—though it’s still somewhat common for teenagers in budding, casual relationships to do so—and upon polyamorous relationships where partners shuffle rindes at random within the group. Sometimes, after years of courtship, lovers find that their rindes do not fit in each other’s pouches, and this is considered a great tragedy.
Recent medical breakthroughs have made it possible to sustain a rinde indefinitely in a kind of artificial incubator. This has major public health implications. Mothers dying in childbirth or in the early years of a child’s life used to be a death sentence for young Rinds, but the incubator makes it possible to artificially maintain a rinde until the child develops a pouch of their own. If one spouse dies in a remote location, the incubator can be used to safely return the rinde of the surviving partner.
Beyond the obvious medical applications, the incubator also has utility in Rind love. If a Rind’s rinde doesn’t fit into the pouch of their spouse, the incubator can be used to facilitate some kind of pseudo-transfer of rindes. Proponents of using the machine in this way argue that it enables previously forbidden loves. Opponents suggest that the love was forbidden for a reason and that incubator-assisted relationships are less real and pure than their natural counterparts.
Some particularly radical and progressive Rinds have chosen to exclusively use the artificial incubators in their relationships, regardless of whether or not their rindes fit into their partners pouches. These couples leave their pouches empty—rindes safely incubated at home—while they go about otherwise normal lives. The couples argue that artificial incubation enables them to reap the physiological and psychological health benefits of rinde separation (the incubators maintain the rinde exactly as though it were held onto by a loved one) while avoiding the conservative and outdated notions of being tied—almost physically—to one’s partner at all times.
Opponents say these nontraditional relationships lack the true love that comes with caring for another’s rinde. That these partners lack something essential in their relationships by giving up the biological imperative to trade rindes. Some say they should not be allowed to have children, arguing that it is impossible for parents who do not hold each other’s rindes to understand the kind of connection and love necessary to raise a child.
The couples, on the other hand, say this enables them the freedom to define their love in powerful new ways. They argue that the rinde represents an antiquated overly-conservative institution and that, if anything, their love is more pure because it doesn’t require a primitive physical component in order to feel real. Modern love, they argue, is defined by something more powerful and more meaningful than the quirks of biology that have defined Rind love for most of the species’ history.
Humans are a multi-planetary single-system species in an isolated part of the Milky Way. They spend their adolescence dating a variety of mates before tending to settle down into a lifelong partnership during adulthood. Their relationships are full of the normal amount of communication and miscommunication. They enjoy silence, and they enjoy filling silences.
Humans do not give away any physical part of themselves when they fall in love. Instead, they give away just the idea of themselves. Rather than giving away their heart, they give away the idea of their heart. And in many ways, this is much worse.
They have no laws protecting against heartbreak. With no outwardly physical reminder of their partnerships, they often think of love as a purely psychological affair. They do not quite understand what they give away and what they gain when they engage with one another. And they do not see love to be the serious thing that it is.