Motivation behind the definition of symmetric form.

Question

Define a bilinear form on $V$ is said to be symmetric iff $\langle x,y\rangle=\langle y,x\rangle$ for all $x,y\in V$.I want to know why suddenly people became interested in symmetric forms.What is the motivation behind studying symmetric forms?I am a graduate student studying bilinear forms and I have no idea about the motivation of symmetric forms.Does it come from the inner product or from somewhere else?