The Dark Side of Romance: Is Love Worth It?

Is love all you need? Current societal narratives tell us that romantic love is an ‘ultimate concern;’ it’s the highest goal a human being can attain. We’re all after it; many, if not most, books, poetry, music, and films revolve around it. Ultimately, beyond everything life offers, we all want a romantic relationship providing us with an undying love that allows us to live happily ever after and washes away our sorrows.

But unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases, romantic love isn’t what it’s promised to be. It’s not a source of long-lasting happiness; it’s not an answer to our unhappiness and loneliness. And according to some, falling in love, despite its euphoria, does more harm than good. Losing oneself in a vortex of uncontrollable emotions varying from extreme joy and passion to numbing agony can wreak havoc on mental and physical well-being. There’s scientific evidence that falling in love can be harmful.

Also, according to Buddhism, romantic love is detrimental to attaining happiness, which is ironic, as society often views romance as the ultimate ingredient for happiness. Hence, most of us desperately seek a romantic partner that allows us to enter that experience. But falling in love has serious downsides. And even though this goes entirely against the social narrative, the idea of avoiding falling in love (or romantic love) is worth examining for the skeptics among us. This video explores reasons not to fall in love.

(1) Romantic love is addictive. When we fall in love, we experience the world differently. The people we don’t like we deem slightly more likable, and the job we usually hate doesn’t seem so bad. The sky looks more beautiful, colors pop up more vividly, and many of our problems and worries disappear like snow in the sun. It’s no surprise that people chase the experience of falling in love. There’s nothing like it. It seems to eclipse all other experiences, good or bad, suddenly unmasking their insignificance.

It’s like our previous life has always been in shambles and that everything falls into place and that our pale existence gains color and our emptiness turns into fullness. We see love as something supernatural and mystical, and humanity has so far dedicated countless poems, love stories & songs, operas, plays, films, and television series to this profound occurrence. British philosopher Bertrand Russell stated: “I believe myself that romantic love is the source of the most intense delights that life has to offer. In the relation of a man and woman who love each other with passion and imagination and tenderness, there is something of inestimable value, to be ignorant of which is a great misfortune to any human being.”

According to science, we experience falling in love so intensely because our brains release different chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin, which are associated with emotions like lust, excitement, euphoria, and attachment that play their parts in attraction and bonding. Interestingly, some scientists compare falling in love to using intoxicants like drugs. Biological anthropologist and senior researcher Dr. Helen Fisher argues that romantic love is like cocaine. “From ecstasy to withdrawal, the lover resembles an addict” is the subtitle of her article in the science magazine Nautilus, which tells us that the kind of craving that comes with being in love is a central component of all addictions.

She bases her conclusion on brain scans which show that, when in love, the same regions in the brain are activated as when using drugs. And so, the lover shows behavioral patterns similar to that of an addict. I quote: “As their obsession builds, the lover seeks to interact with the beloved more and more, known in addiction literature as ‘intensification.’ They also think obsessively about their beloved, a form of intrusive thinking fundamental to drug dependence.” So, like a drug, love is addictive. And, as with drugs, we need our fix. We need that person to experience and perpetuate the high we crave.

And if we don’t get it, we’ll get withdrawal symptoms comparable to those of addicts. And to get someone we love out of our systems, we must go through a phase of abstinence to weaken our attachments to the drug we crave – in the lover’s case: the person they are in love with.

(2) Being in love distorts reality. Falling in love with someone implies an infatuation with the person one loves. Consequently, we wear so-called love goggles (or rose-tinted glasses), through which we see the person as much more beautiful and desirable than they truly are. This ‘Love Goggle Syndrome’ leads to us not seeing the flaws of the individual we’re captivated with. And so we might fall for abusive people, narcissists, and psychopaths that have anything but our well-being on their agendas.

We may even think that the person we’re infatuated with is ‘the one’ when, logically, it’s doubtful that there is such a thing as ‘the one.’ There are probably millions of other candidates that’d be a better fit than the person we’re with. Yet, when we’re in love, we tend to view a completely ordinary human being as ‘special’ and uniquely fit to be with us. We even sacralize love and give it an esoteric meaning as if it’s ‘meant to be,’ undoubtedly something higher than just biology.

Love goggles also lead to us taking risks and making unwise and irrational decisions. We lie and present ourselves differently to appear more desirable, set our values and boundaries aside, and behave in ways we’d usually never entertain, whatever it takes to be with the person we crave for. We may also fall in love while married; this experience could be so strong that we’re willing to risk our marriages by cheating.

Perhaps more positively: when we’re in love, obstacles become possibilities. Whether it’s money, cultural differences, religion, the wish to have children (or the lack thereof), psychological problems, or physical distance: what we’d typically view as dealbreakers, we now see as hurdles to overcome. Unfortunately, we tend to downplay the significance of these hurdles and underestimate the problems they could pose in a relationship, leading to trouble and heartbreak.

I quote: “Lovers also distort reality, change their priorities and daily habits to accommodate the beloved, and often do inappropriate, dangerous, or extreme things to remain in contact with or impress this special other. Even one’s personality can change, known as ‘affect disturbance.’ Indeed, many smitten humans are willing to sacrifice for their sweetheart, even die for him or her.” Especially the threat that our lovers could leave us could lead to us acting in ways we later regret; we might stalk them, make a scene in public, or even use violence.

So it seems that being in love can make a sane and intelligent person crazy and stupid. We become slaves to the ‘irrational,’ defenseless in the face of our biological impulses. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that “directly after copulation, the Devil’s laughter is heard:” meaning that in the abrupt clarity that arises after orgasm, after our lusts and desires for our partners have reached their conclusion, we realize that, yet again, we succumbed to biology. The bodies we’ve copulated with suddenly seem much less appealing – why on Earth did we go mad for a sack of bones and flesh? It’s a sobering image, disappointing, but probably more realistic than the perfect, godlike image of the person we created in the first place.

Similarly, when we take off our love goggles, we’ll see how delusional we’ve been during our frantic efforts to be with someone in the heat of romance. We might then look at an ex-lover and think: “how in the world could I’ve fallen for that person.” How did our human biology trick us into being temporarily infatuated by someone who, when we look at this individual with sober eyes, is absolutely bland – or in some cases, even downright unattractive?

(3) Romantic love can be excruciatingly painful. When there’s a high, there’s always a low. This rule of nature makes no exception when it comes to falling in love. As falling in love can be an intense and enjoyable experience, its flipside is equally fierce, namely, extremely painful. It’s no surprise that romance often, if not always, goes hand in hand with despair, deep sadness, and other forms of emotional pain. Just by looking at the many songs, poems, and stories about ‘heartbreak’ humanity has brought forth, we can see that pain is an undeniable part of the romantic experience. Broken hearts have led to periods of depression, intense and prolonged weeping, and even suicide and murder.

The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule… wrote author and historian Anita Brookner. When we fall in love, we set ourselves up for a situation that will unavoidably result in hurt, whether it’s sadness, anger, jealousy, or other problematic emotions. The root of this hurt is what the Buddhists regard as ‘the root of all suffering:’ attachment and the corresponding desire for the thing we’re attached to. When we’re attached to someone or something, we consider that being or thing a condition to be happy, which causes problems.

Stoic philosopher Epictetus explained this as follows: “Remember that following desire promises the attainment of that of which you are desirous; and aversion promises the avoiding that to which you are averse. However, he who fails to obtain the object of his desire is disappointed, and he who incurs the object of his aversion wretched.” Regarding romantic love, it means that we need to be with the person we love to be happy. For a human being, it’s probably the ultimate form of attachment. The person we’re in love with becomes our world.

And thus, logically, losing that person, or even the possibility of losing that person, could lead to immense suffering. According to Buddhist monk Ajahn Sona, romantic relationships and attachment go hand-in-hand; one cannot exist without the other, as in, we cannot be in romantic relationships without being attached. I quote: “So, you’ve got a relationship going, and then you change, or they change, or something, and then one of you wants to leave, and the other one doesn’t. And then there’s inevitable suffering. If you stay, you suffer. If you leave, they suffer. And just flip a coin. That’s the dreadful nature of attachments, and so it’s not always possible to work it out without someone getting hurt.”

So, that’s the dangerous experience of emotional dependencies. But does that mean we should avoid falling in love altogether? It’s a difficult question to answer. In Nietzschean terms, it’s like the age-old fight between Dionysus and Apollo: should we follow our primal, animalistic tendencies or avoid them by walking down the path of wisdom and serenity? From a rational viewpoint, if we want happiness, as in contentment and inner peace, it’s probably better to avoid falling in love altogether.

We won’t have the emotional highs, but we don’t suffer the excruciating pain either. And, free of such intense emotional states, we maintain clarity of mind. But there’s more to life than logic and reason, as our primal instincts are anything but logical and reasonable but still intrinsic to who we are. Without the phenomenon of falling in love, bonding between couples wouldn’t occur, the flame that ignites us to start families would be absent, and life, in general, would be much less captivating.

And how many accomplishments, from great works of art to the forging of empires, has humanity brought forth propelled by romantic love? Regardless of how insane it may be: isn’t there something more to romantic love, aside from it being an inconvenient source of suffering? And that to be ignorant of its value is, as Bertrand Russell stated: “a great misfortune to any human being?”