In the worst case, they can become deadly. Lovers can become distracted, unreliable, unreasonable, or even unfaithful. Other times, love’s pull is so strong that we might follow it even to the point of hardship or personal ruin ( Earp, Wudarczyk, Sandberg, and Savulescu 2013). When our feelings are returned, we might feel euphoric. Love can be thrilling, but it can also be perilous. Contemporary film expresses a similar sentiment: as Jake Gyllenhaal’s character famously says in Brokeback Mountain, “I wish I knew how to quit you.” And everyday speech, too, is rife with such expressions as “I need you” and “I’m addicted to you.” These widely-used phrases capture what many people know first-hand: that when we are in love, we feel an overwhelmingly strong attraction to another person-one that is persistent, urgent, and hard to ignore. Ovid was the first to proclaim: “I can’t live with or without you” ( Amores III, xi, 39)-a locution made famous to modern ears by the Irish band U2. Throughout the ages love has been rendered as an excruciating passion.
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