Within anthropology and sociology three primary theoretical lenses have arisen for examining love in cultural and transcultural contexts: (1) The social- structural perspective that examines how features of a society’s organization and beliefs give rise to particular conceptions of love and how changes to social structures further transform expectations and experiences of love; (2) The bio-social theory of love which merges social structural perspectives on cross-cultural variation with evolutionary psychological and cognitive perspectives aimed at explaining why certain aspects of love are culturally universal; and (3) The critical perspective of love that highlights how cultural constructions of love and the social structures that formed them give rise to social inequalities. After synthesizing these three perspectives we examine how they have influenced the findings of the latest ethnographic and empirical studies of love and its cross-cultural variability and continuity. We thereby compare the fruits each theoretical perspective has born as tools to interrogate love as both a psychological essence and cultural experience.