Here's a description of courtly love. Very much exactly the same as the emotional affair we all know to be so dangerous.
The conventions of courtly love are that a knight of noble blood would adore and worship a young noble-woman from afar, seeking to protect her honor and win her favor by valorous deeds. He typically falls ill with love-sickness, while the woman chastely or scornfully rejects or refuses his advances in public, but privately encourages him. Courtly love was associated with (A) nobility, since no peasants can engage in "fine love"; (B) secrecy; (C) adultery, since often the one or both participants were married to another noble or trapped in an unloving marriage; and (D) paradoxically with chastity, since the passion could never be consummated due to social circumstances, thus it was a "higher love" unsullied by selfish carnal desires.
