Romeo demands that Rosaline choose to love him. What's your opinion about love? Do you believe it can be chosen, or is it always random?

Romeo demands that Rosaline choose to love him. She'd believed that "love was something that happened without one's choosing; it was unconscious and inevitable." What's your opinion about love? Do you believe it can be chosen, or is it always random?

I do believe love can be chosen - or, rather, one can learn to love one's chosen partner. Arranged marriages often work out just fine, with partners learning to love one another over time. I've never really trusted the type of love that's based on hormones; that type of love often fades. I'm much more a fan of rational, gradual love (i.e., a slow burn vs. a blinding flash that quickly fizzles).

I know that love can be chosen and one can learn to love someone who was c hosen for them. I think true love is random.

True love is something that grows over time. The attraction Romeo has for each of the girls is lust. When he tell Rosaline that she can chose to love him, it’s because that is exactly what he has done. He saw a desirable woman and chose to love her. Except it’s not true love that evolves from a relationship. Even if it’s described as love at first sight, it’s usually more than sight - a date where it’s discovered that interests and personalities are similar. Something beyond ‘sight.’

To love is a choice made daily. To feel true love and to be loving toward another is often the more emotional behavior that cannot always be controlled.

I do think love can be chosen but I think in the case of this book it wasn't really love on either side. Obviously Romeo's "love" was a manipulation in order to trick Rosaline into giving him what he wanted - her virginity, her father's money, her mother's ring. And I think Rosaline was so lost with the death of her mother and distraught from the abandonment of her father that she was just looking for affection and misidentified that as love on her part.