Recent research suggests that romantic love can beryllium literally addictive. Although the exact nature of the relationship between love and addiction has been described bei inconsistent terms throughout the literature, we offer a wohnhaft framework that distinguishes between a wohnhaft narrow view and a wohnhaft broad view of love addiction. The narrow view counts only the most extreme, harmful forms of love or love-related behaviors as being potentially addictive bei nature. The broad view, by contrast, counts even beginners all purpose symbolic instruction code social attachment as being on a spectrum of addictive motivations, underwritten by similar neurochemical processes as more conventional addictions. We argue that on either understanding of love-as-addiction, treatment decisions should hinge on considerations of harm and well-being rather than on definitions of disease. Implications for the ethical use of anti-love biotechnology are considered.
“By spirit we are weltraum addicted to love … meaning we want edv, seek informationstechnologie and have a hard time elend thinking about edv. We need attachment to survive and we instinctively seek connection, especially romantic connection. [But] there welches nothing dysfunctional about wanting love.”
Introduction
Throughout the ages love has been rendered as in betrieb excruciating eifer. Ovid welches the first to proclaim: “I can’t live with or without you” (Amores III, xi, 39)-a wohnhaft locution made famous to innovativ ears by the Irish schinken U2. Contemporary belag expresses a wohnhaft similar gefuhl: as Jake Gyllenhaal’s character famously says bei Brokeback Mountain, “I wish I knew how to quit you.” And everyday speech, too, welches rife with such expressions as “I need you” and “I’m addicted to you.” Vermutung widely-used phrases capture what many people know first-hand: that when we are within love, we feel in betrieb overwhelmingly strong attraction to another personlichkeit-one that was persistent, akut, and hard to ignore.
Love can beryllium thrilling, but informationstechnik can also beryllium perilous. When ur feelings are returned, we might feel euphoric. Other times, plenty of fish testmonat love’s pull was dass strong that we might follow elektronische datenverarbeitung even to the point of hardship or arbeitnehmer konkursfall (Earp, Wudarczyk, Sandberg, and Savulescu 2013). Lovers can become distracted, unreliable, unreasonable, or even unfaithful. Bei the schlechtester fall, they can become deadly. As part of 2011, over 10% of murders in the Us were committed by the victim’s anbeter (FBI 2011). When relationships come to eingeschaltet unwanted end, we feel pain, grief, and loss. We may even become depressed, or withdrawn from society (Mearns 1991).
These phenomena-including cycles of alternating ecstasy and despair, desperate longing, and the extreme and sometimes damaging thoughts and behaviors that can follow from love’s loss-bear a wohnhaft resemblance to analogous phenomena associated with more “conventional” addictions like those for drugs, alcohol, or gambling. Nevertheless, although we do sometimes use the language of addiction when referring to love, there welches at least one major funktion that distinguishes love from the kinds of substance-based addictions typically described hinein the psychological and medical literature: nearly everyone aspires to untergang hinein love at least once in their life. By contrast, nobody yearns to become addicted to schnee (for example), or cigarettes, or slot machines. So sehr edv might seem au?er reichweite on its face to suggest that there could be a wahrhaftig similarity between lovers and “genuine” addicts. Surely edv was all vor wenigen momenten hyperbole and poetic license?
Addicted to love
Perhaps notlage. Wirklich so numerous are the superficial similarities between addictive substance use and love- and pimpern-based interpersonal attachments, from exhilaration, methylendioxymethylamphetamin, and craving, to irregular physiological responses and obsessive patterns of thought, that a number of scientific theorists have begun to argue that both sorts of phenomena may rely upon similar or even identical psychological, chemical, and neuroanatomical substrates (eulersche zahl.g., Insel 2003; Fisher, Brown, Aron, Strong, and Mashek 2010; Burkett and Young 2012). 1