This brings us back to Sandel’s theory. If romantic love comes from friendship in evolutionary terms, there’s a chance that we have been thinking about love all wrong. As he puts it: “In our own lives, we may have underestimated the importance of same-sex bonds and friendship.”

While falling in love with a partner can be one of the greatest feelings in the world, so too can falling in love with a friend. And if Sandel’s theory is anything to go by, these two types of love aren’t actually all that different. In fact, they might even come from the exact same place.

So, perhaps it’s time we all rethought what romance and friendship mean to us. And maybe it’s time we finally embraced the idea that our friendships can be just as meaningful, and just as powerful, as our romances.

Romantic love and friendship may have more in common than we thought