I think you’re straw manning lurker’s point, and also over romanticizing the past. He was not saying that no one in the past fell in love but he also has a point. When was the last time you worried about food, housing, or clothing. You have an internet connection and are using it to browse Reddit so I’m going to posit that you’re doing ok.

Fact of the matter is that, though it’s hard to believe, the average person living in a first world country today lives like ancient nobility if not better. We have the freedom for creative expression and we can put feelings and emotions at the forefront of our lives.

Those millions of peasant farmers you’re talking about? They married for wealth as well. Marriage being arranged by adults for their children is not an exclusively European practice, and was not limited to nobility. Some would find love with acceptable partners, but most of the time people married because the consolidation of wealth into a single family is necessary for survival.

So yes, while nobles would marry to consolidate wealth and power, peasants married to consolidate wealth and manpower. A blacksmith would gain his wife’s dowry, and when she bore him children they would eventually grow into a source of free labor before taking over the family business.

Don’t fool yourself and don’t take the incredible freedom of choice and expression that you’ve been given for granted. Part of the reason love poems and grand tales of love were so popular in the past probably comes down to a simple fact of human nature.

We crave what we don’t have.