I've searched around on LW for this question, and haven't seen it brought up. Which surprises me, because I think it's an important question.
I'm honestly not sure what I think. One one hand, love clearly leads to an element of happiness when done properly. This seems to be inescapable, probably because it's encoded in our DNA or something. But on the other hand, there's two things that really make me question whether or not love is a good idea.
1) I have a very reductionist viewpoint, on everything. So I always ask myself, "What am I really trying to optimize here, and what is the best way to optimize it?". When I think about it, I come to the conclusion that I'm always trying to optimize my happiness. The answer to the question of, "why does this matter?" is always, "because it makes me happy". So then, the idea of love bothers me, because you sort of throw rational thinking out the window, stop asking why something actually matters, and just decide that this significant other intrinsically matters to you. I question whether this type of thinking is optimal, and personally, whether or not I'm even capable of it.
2) It seems so obsessive, and I question whether or not it makes sense to obsess so much over one thing. This article actually explores the brain chemicals involved in love, and suggests that the chemicals are similar to those that appear in OCD.
Finally, there's the issue of permanence. Not all love is intended to be permanent, but a lot of the time it is. How can you commit to something so permanently? This makes me think of the mind projection fallacy. Perhaps people commit it with love. They think that the object of their desire is intrinsically desirable, when in fact it is the properties of this object that make it desirable. These properties are far from permanent (I'd go as far as to say that they're volatile, at least if you take the long view). So how does it make sense to commit to something so permanently?
So my take is that there is probably a form of love that is rational to take. Something along the lines of enjoying each others company, and caring for one another and stuff, but not being blindly committed to one another, and being honest about the fact that you wouldn't do anything for one another, and will in fact probably grow apart at some point.
What do you guys think?
Something feels to me really wrong about that last sentence. Not that it hypothetically couldn't be technically true, but it's certainly not a way I would recommend to anyone. Associating love and closeness with fear and guilt... that's how I model a strongly religious person or a victim in an abusive relationship... and it's a state of mind I definitely do not endorse. (I try keeping an open mind that there may be some specific situation where it isn't as bad as it seems to me, but I give it a low probability.) For me, feeling safe is an opposite of fear, so an idea of a "crushing fear and guilt" as a way towards love makes as much sense as stabbing oneself with a knife as a way to achieve health (yes, there may be a very specific situation where...).
Considering this and your previous comments, I update towards belief that you simply don't have an experience with the emotion, and the verbal explanations just don't click because there is nothing to connect the words with. (Alternatively, you may have the experience with the emotion in some other context, but something in your mind prevents you from even imagining it in the context of a sexual relation.) Which sounds like a horrible thing, so I'd recommend trying... uhm... a) speaking about this topic with a psychologist; b) finding a couple with a good long-term relationship and either ask them or just spend a lot of time around them to learn by copying; c) speaking about this with someone you trust, e.g. on the next LW meetup, but personally, not online, because an online debate does not transfer emotions well.
(I apologize if this offended you, of course there is a chance that I am completely wrong, but the value of information is possibly very big here.)
Wait, you mean actually feel safe, as in you can relax just as much as when you're alone with a good book, not just be aware that the person is allied to you? How does that jive with "using your conscious decision to behave nicely to the other person even if at the moment you don't feel emotionally compelled to"?
I was abused as a child. You seem to be very distressed about this, so let me make it clear that my life is pretty good and I don't have any awful traumas or anything. But all sources of advice about how to move on and go on about one's l... (read more)