Jealousy, possessiveness, fear, anxiety, tears and pain. Also, mutual praise and gratification, expressions of affection, kindness, understanding, sexual pleasure.
Romance is primarily a relationship between personalities. Between images. On the other hand, love is more of a faculty and is not exclusive, though its expression may be. As Erich Fromm points out in "The Art of Loving", it is a fallacy to assume that the problem of human relationships is solved when we discover a person whom we "can love" and who loves us.
An important question to ask is: What is pacified in romance? What need or desire is satiated in romance? Is it a masked sexual or reproductive urge of the organism? Or is it a device, an artifact to sustain the ego?
Let us ask a deeper question as to whether pleasure and separate-ness are related. If we discover the relationship between the sense of "me" and pleasure, perhaps that will clarify our discussion.
What is pleasure? It is a pleasant sensation. What is pleasant to us? Is it something habitual? Habitual includes the genetic too. In adventure too, the pleasure of the feeling of adventure is not new, only the outward expression of adventure is.
How does a habit lead to pleasure? For a child, which is not much more than an animal totally dependent upon its circumstances to sustain it, food and warmth is pleasant. That is, the fundamental habit of the human organism is to survive.
As we go along in life and mature, mere survival is not enough, apparently. We seek "fulfilment." We seek "happiness", "creative expression", etc.
The problems begin when we associate our happiness with something which fails to deliver, as it were. We buy things, clothes and automobiles. We travel around the world, read books, stimulate our mind with images, sounds, smells, tastes and touch.
But it is the nature of sensation to be impermanent. It goes away after some time.
Hence, pleasure depends on constant effort to sustain itself. It involves constant discovery of new heights of sensations, which too, pass away.
The passing away of pleasure and efforts to regain it are pain.
Disenchantment with a particular pleasure is quite normal. Disenchantment with pleasure and the whole domain of sensation to provide happiness, on the other hand, is extraordinarily rare.
So this is pleasure.
What is separation and its relation to pleasure?
Is separation pleasing? On the other hand, is pleasure dependent on separation?
Some teachers have pointed out that separation is the most fundamental habit, and hence, the most pleasing (and painful) pattern, of the mind. Is that so?
What is separate? My body, my actions, my possessions, my beliefs.
What is common between separation and pleasure? Habit and the desire for continuity. Pleasure is habitual. Habit leads to separation. Continuity (continued survival) is pleasant. Separation leads to a feeling of continuity.
How does habit lead to separation? The world is in flux. We distinguish ourselves by recognition. Recognition of certain patterns, a certain face, a certain belief-system, a certain kind of body, a certain pattern of response.
Without these patterns, we are not. A changing entity is not distinguishable. If we had a body which was changing all the time (which it actually does), what would be call our own? In actuality, there is only a /pattern/, a certain relationship between the cells, that we call our own self.
The habitual inter-relationships of our cells and beliefs.
So, we strive to keep ourselves constant, since we want to exist and continue.
Probably the above is all wrong. I don't know. I have to find out more about all this, and mind is ignorant, at best.
Romance can exist only between personalities, or in other words, between patterns. It therefore requires separation.
Romance leads to pleasure, since the separation (i.e. the personality) is affirmed and praised.
The one-ness with the other (felt in romance) is another perplexing issue. I cannot say anything about it since I have never been able to feel such a thing.
Speculation is futile.