It sounds shocking to say that love is a matter of the will, a conscious and irrational choice—a delusional yet active decision by the individual.

How could it be that a feeling so potentially damaging to the self is chosen freely? Why doesn’t this rob love of its great hold on us? When we see a friend who is lovesick, are we not supposed to feel pity for them since they are in the clutches of something beyond their control? Or when we are in love, don’t we like to believe that it could not have been otherwise, that there are greater forces at work against which we cannot and should not battle? I think the cure—once a person’s stomach lining has been thoroughly damaged by the barrage of emotional stress associated with this emotion called “love”—lies in the realization that we are responsible for our feelings and what we choose to do with them. This is the philosophical antacid that nature provides to those poor souls afflicted with the devastating pangs of love.

LOVE IS NOT PASSIVE, NOR IS IT A FORCE OUTSIDE US THAT WE CANNOT CONTROL.

I

There are many who deem love a merely as a passive sensation and hold that what we love is what we find agreeable to us. They are bold in attempting to explain something that appears so absurd and seemingly inexplicable through the lens of science. These persons make two assumptions: (i) that we can explain love and (ii) that love is something beyond our choice embedded in the laws of nature.

There are some who go further in making these assumptions and hold that we are determined by an evolutionary model that calculates all our choices. This is a position common among naive biological hacks, the same persons who say our notions of beauty or morality are based purely on what we deem as beneficial to the survival of our species (e.g. in the case of Beauty, men supposedly prefer doe-eyed, full-lipped females because these facial features suggest youth and fertility). Newsweek magazine’s pseudo-Daniel Dennetts want us to believe that there is no self beyond what the body or “mind” (generally under an evolutionary model) dictates. Expounding on the different secretions of love, these thinkers reductively believe it to be a matter of neurons.

II

Those who disregard all things beyond the body unimaginatively mistake love for “comfort.” They are passive and focused on the corporeal, but they are not in love. These are generally persons who are in relationships that are ignorant of and do not celebrate the great cultural, human heritage of “love.” It is true that love does not have to be a burning poetic passion all the time; but the most “human” thing these persons could possibly aspire to is the search for comfortable companionship. They will not drink of the divine ambrosia man has created in this phenomenon called love, but fill their hungry stomachs from the filthy trough of mere animal instinct laid before them. You will hear both parties express (in order to add a “human” dimension), “I cannot open up to someone emotionally if I do not open up physically,” or “We started hooking up and then he kind of just grew on me.” “Necessity” being sated, they then label whatever semi-civilized aspect borne thereafter with the word “love.” The self is passively determined by immediate desires and the search for these to be satisfied.

III

There are yet others who see love as an imperative for that far worse imperative of our current culture, a vague sense of “happiness.” For them, love becomes a duty and a force impelling the lover to action.

It is evident that our culture supposes that in order to lead a fulfilled life, we must find love. It is true that love, like health, enhances our experience. There is a problem, though, in the insistence that love has to work. It becomes beyond our choice to stop caring, struggling and fighting for it. They believe that a feeling of love entails a sort of duty to make this love “happen.” Even in couples where both persons love each other in equal amounts, it is not always the case that they should keep alive this manifestation of each other’s love, (i.e., the concrete, monogamous and exclusive relationship).

These persons will define themselves as “romantics” and speak of the force of love beyond their control, or Love (exclusively romantic) as a sort of god to be worshipped, whatever the price. Sometimes they might define love as some foreign, mysterious and enchanting force that can disappear at any moment. There is a contradiction in all of these statements, which lies chiefly in describing love in cultural, poetic terms while at the same time deeming it as something beyond human comprehension.

IV

We must realize that love is in great part an active matter of the will. We will be able to see this most clearly in the case of the person who does not have to love, but continues to do so. Let us imagine the case of someone whose love is not materialized or reciprocated in any way; imagine the most lovesick fool. Bad timing, physical limitation, misuse of words, a lack of prudence or shrewdness, strategy or manipulation—one or more of these have contributed to the person’s lack of love being returned. What, however, in full knowledge of hopelessness, allows the lover to keep loving? Is the person completely and incomprehensibly blind in their devotion or is there a hidden and defiant element of freedom?

This freedom is very subtle and it lies in the choice to be deceived. Love is the active faculty of the imagination working in tandem with the will in order to choose to be deluded. We see the passive voice here—“to be deluded”—but we shall see that the greater part of love is to be deluded by ourselves. We form a fictive narrative when we are in love in which the imagination goads our feeling.

The narrative of the love story itself begins with the welcoming of untruth. Let us examine the first stage, that of seduction, which lays this groundwork. Do we not choose to be lied to by some over others? Imagine yourself at a party, being hit on by a ridiculous braggart—you easily accept that you are being fed lies because this person does not interest you on any level. Now imagine yourself on that first date with someone you find physically attractive. The person quotes your favorite author, exaggerates their aspirations and “projects,” pretends to care about what your sibling studies, etc. and we are at some level aware of all this. Let us suppose also that the person is not all that great. The “What if?” that arises when the physical presence of the person is gone is the first instance in which we are allowed to enter into the realm of imagination. We allow ourselves to be seduced by “possibility.” We are not yet in love with the person, but what our imagination has conjured up is already making us choose to allow things to happen.

THE MANIFESTATION OF OUR WILL LIES IN THE FORMING OF THE FICTION.

Does it not cause us pain, though, to simply live in our minds? Love is an active choice of the individual to participate in a fiction, and it is when she realizes this that the lack of its materialization in the world of phenomena seems harmless, or at least less painful. We want our ideals and the workings of our imagination to leave their stamp upon the world of things—everyone wants their will to be manifested in their actions. We do not want to live in the clouds—a retreat from the outside world into our mind, believed to be separated and free, is not favored all of the time, although many believe it is the key to a certain sort of happiness, where man is free from the contingency of the external. What is the case with love? If it is a matter of the will does it not cause us pain when it is not manifested, materialized or reciprocated?

This is where the separation between love and desire lies. Desire lies in the realm of phenomena. Desire fetishizes the material and wants it to be arranged in a certain way. But in the case of love-delusion, desire is eventually transcended. This comes when we realize just how paltry the reality really is. Reality does not deserve our fiction—“This is not the man I fell in love with, why should I want to be with him?” Reality is disappointing, sullied and, often, simply not worth it. Sometimes the mere contemplation of an ideal is even preferable, although it can become too distracting. Once faced with the hideousness of naked reality, there comes a point, even after having dragged on for so long, that nothing fruitful can come from letting it occupy our mind.

`