So, I've spent most of my childhood and young adulthood idealizing romance, believing it was the be all and end all of a relationship. And of course, now things have changed.
I know that feel.
Define romance in your own words?
I'm sure it's different for everyone. Conventionally, romance is flowers and candles and all that stuff media and culture tells us about.
For me, romance is based on intention and feelings of intimacy, thoughtfulness, and deep connection. I base romanticness on how connected, warm, and fuzzy I feel with someone. I'd find having a farting contest pretty romantic if it was just the two of us. That's intimacy >>>>. The idea of "just the two of us" is a pretty romantic concept in itself, come to think of it. I think that might be the foundation of what romance is about.
Is romance necessary for love?
I'm sure this would depend entirely on the person as well as on their working definition of romance. I think that romance is not necessary for love, and that you can be romantic without having real love, but romance will only feel truly deeply romantic if there is love behind it as a source.
And do you think presonality type affects how important romance is or isn't to love?
I think different personality types might generally have difference in preference for how romance is expressed. For example, two INTPs who are dating might find it supremely romantic to just be using their laptops separately while in the same room and chilling together, while most people of some other types would find nothing romantic about that. Again, it would depend on the individual more than anything I'm sure. As another example, if I was out on a fancy dinner date with my boyfriend, I would feel the romance from the sense of togetherness of us doing an activity alone together, from the harmony between our bodies, and from the intimate conversation. If my best friend, who must be an SJ of some sort (typed as ISTJ in the past) was on a fancy dinner date with her boyfriend, I'm guessing she would get more of a sense of romance from the effort her boyfriend put into sorting out all the little details of the date and making it a very suave and classy experience for her--maybe one that she imagined herself having in the future as a young girl.