I slept with Robin one time and I caught feelings. I caught feelings bad! I used protection and everything. Back before the sexual revolution in places such as America and the UK, at least , premarital and extramarital sex were looked upon with scorn, and often treated as though they didn't exist. This may be one of those cases in history where it may have been better to be poor — ordinary people were more usually in love at least at the start of their marriage; they may also have been less likely to be virgins, though records of their lives are so sketchy it's quite hard to gauge what were the norms.
For love or sex-for-the-fun-of-it one could have a mistress , only the Church vociferously frowned upon extramarital sex.
Love within the marriage was considered a lucky bonus, if it grew there. Still, sex was seen as a sacred and special thing , so people still refused to have a physical relationship unless love or at least the need to produce an heir was involved, and doing it within marriage was still the rule. Then, the unthinkable or maybe just long-dreaded happened: some flag-burning liberals acted as if it were OK to have sex Just for Fun!
No Strings Attached! This cultural shift in the morality of sexuality was a reaction to the technological invention of the birth control pill, which gave women substantially more control over pregnancy than condoms offered. Secure from the possibility of being saddled with a kid born out of wedlock for the rest of their lives which culturally back then was considered way worse than it is today from the events of one brief coupling, women could afford to be freer with sex — which meant a lot of love for everyone!
However, TV executives were fearful of what Media Watchdogs and Moral Guardians would say about that, and thus a trope was born, described herein:. If a man and a woman have a sexual relationship that is not based on love, one of them will fall in love with the other.
