The neologism is a play on heteronormativity, she tells Science of Us via email, or the social stuctures that take heterosexuality to be the normal way to be. As she explains in her book Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law, the word refers to “the assumptions that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types.” To capture the culture-wide preoccupation with romantic, sexual love, she coined the term amatonormativity. To Arizona State philosopher Elizabeth Brake, privileging such partnerships over all other relationships and lifestyles has toxic, though sometimes hard to see, consequences. This is a primordial example of the centrality of romantic love to the human experience.
Man’s original form was a four-legged, four-armed, double-sexed entity, but Zeus, who thought humans might threaten the power of the gods, had them sliced in half - with, wickedly enough, their heads turned “towards the wound, so that each person would see that he’d been cut and keep better order.” This, Aristophanes explains, is where the standardized aching for a soul mate comes from: “Now, since their natural form had been cut in two, each one longed for its own other half, and so they would throw their arms about each other, weaving themselves together, wanting to grow together.”
Like, anciently so: In the Symposium, Plato has Aristophanes recount the origins of humanity.