In the Name of Love

In cyberspace, confidence in personal relationships is acquired by genuine conversations and not by expensive makeup. Conversation, rather than name and title, makes the difference. The emphasis upon written communication in online relationships can be perceived as a reaction to the excessive role given to visual content in modern society.

Positive illusions may help people to fly together "on the wings of love," but quite often the wings are not strong enough to carry them both together.

We have become slaves to many tempting romantic and sexual possibilities available in modern life. The chains of potential possibilities prevent us from enjoying or even being comfortable with our present lot and are often harder to escape than the chains of the present.  

Many testimonies, as well as fictional works, describe situations in which people find themselves hating the person they love. This might initially appear to be contradiction, for how can one love and hate the same person at the same time? A discussion of this problem requires making a distinction between logical consistency and psychological compatibility. Hating the one you love may be a consistent experience, but it raises difficulties concerning its psychological compatibility.

Despite various challenges to the requirement for exclusivity in love, this constraint does have a basis, as it expresses a genuine psychological concern. Married people who are having an extramarital affair may still feel intense jealousy if they suspect their lovers of having an additional affair. The bad news for our future is that jealousy will be part of romantic relationships for a long time; the good news is that people will gradually give less weight to it.

Drawing boundaries is essential for human society: living with other people implies limiting our desires. Drawing romantic boundaries is particularly difficult since many people perceive love as comprehensive, uncompromising, and unconditional. However, normative boundaries are often perceived to have no relevance to love: “all is fair in love and war.” Are we then allowed to crack a few romantic boundaries?

Modern times are difficult for lovers—perhaps more so than in most previous eras. Two major reasons for this: there are hardly any constraints preventing leaving the current romantic framework and there are many tempting accessible alternatives to the current romantic relationship. Accordingly, romantic bonds tend to be frailer and briefer than in the past.

Empirical evidence clearly suggests that humans are capable of loving and having sex with more than one person at the same time. Nevertheless, it is not obvious how to explain this phenomenon as emotions are typically partial and exclusive.