This chapter discusses the fact that passionate love and sexual desire are universal desires. Passionate love is a universal emotion. Yet despite its universality, culture has a profound impact on people's definitions of love, and on the way they think, feel, and behave in romantic settings. Cross-cultural studies provide a glimpse into the complex world of emotion and allow us to gain an understanding of the extent to which people's emotional lives are written in their cultural and personal histories, as well as their evolutionary history, and in the interaction of the two. There is abundant social-psychological evidence in support of the contention that in most people's minds, love and sex are tightly related—in fact, most people find it hard to imagine passionate love in the absence of sexual desire. The convergence of cultures around the world may be reducing the differences in the ways passionate love is experienced and expressed in our world, but tradition can be tenacious, and the global future of passionate love cannot be predicted with any certainty. The chapter considers futurists' predictions as to the social, economic, and behavioral advances we might expect to see in the next fifty years.(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)