mare-of-night comments on Is love a good idea? - Less Wrong
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If your gut reaction is that romantic relationships aren't for you, being aromantic is a thing. It's uncommon, but it seemed worth saying.
Based on conversations I've had with non-rationalists about their romances, some of them make poorer decisions when romance is involved, and others don't. From what I've seen, it looks like the people who are usually the sanest under other circumstances are also the least prone to making poor decisions about romance and regretting it later. It really, really depends on the person.
In my experience, during the addiction-like phase, you get some pretty intense emotions, but you don't loose control of yourself or stop caring about other things. I get really happy about things that ordinarily wouldn't be a big deal (ex: person started a conversation with me in chat, which means they were thinking about me), and get tempted to invest more than I should, but that's about it. Given that most people in romantic relationships don't strain their other friendships or have difficulty at work because of it, I suspect my experience was similar to most peoples'.
I think the core issue here is that the stories we like to tell about how love and romances work are different from the reality. When you analyze the story closely, you realize it wouldn't actually be a good story to live. But the way romances actually go is different from the way humans like to say they go in most of the aspects you didn't like.