Is romantic love a mental illness, as Plato said, a story that ends in death or the highest human achievement?

Sarah Vine and Tania Kindersley

There are 21 dictionary definitions for the word love. Every woman may come to a point in her middle life when she suspects that she doesn't understand the first thing about any of these. Poets, philosophers, playwrights and pop singers from Socrates to Stevie Wonder have had a great deal to say about love.

It is the sweetest thing; it is a red, red rose; it is a battlefield; it is a drug, a delusion, a lunacy. It is the answer, and the question. It is a balm, and a piercing arrow. H.L.Mencken compared it to perceptual anaesthesia; Keats wrote that it was his religion; Shakespeare called it a familiar, a devil, an ever-fixed mark, a smoke, a fire, a sea, a madness, a fever, a choking gall; it is like sunshine after rain, and does not bend.

Of the various loves, romantic love is the most complicated and inexplicable. It can come on when you least expect it (and with the most unsuitable person), it can cast you from the heights of ecstasy to the abyss of despair, it can roar in you one moment then dissipate as quickly as breath on glass. It is what drives you to offer yourself to another human for the rest of your natural life, but only a few years later you may look back and have no memory at all of that initial ecstasy. Romantic love can be so confusing that sometimes you simply want to give up on the whole thing and concentrate on the nature of dark matter, or macroeconomics, or something else less tiring.

A little biology can be helpful here. In the first throes of romantic love you are under the influence of a powerful chemical cocktail: dopamine (which makes opiates look like aspirin) is rushing through your veins. As if that were not enough, a perfect mixture of vasopressin and oxytocin, the attachment hormones, are raging around your body. Much of this was discovered through extensive study of prairie voles, who mate for life, spend a great deal of time tenderly grooming each other and nesting together, and studiously avoid meeting other potential partners.

If only all men were just like prairie voles, we say, but if wishes were horses we would all be Lady Godiva.

Aside from the chemical cosh, you also have the small-brain problem. MRI scans have shown that falling in love involves only a very tiny part of the brain, a much smaller part than is used when, say, operating heavy machinery. Researchers at University College London have remarked wryly that it was fascinating to reflect that Helen of Troy could have launched a thousand ships through the agency of such a limited expanse of cortex.

It is vital, therefore, to bear in mind that when falling in love and choosing your mate you may be making a decision about the rest of your life based on only a fraction of your cognitive function. This limited section of the brain is also the exact same part that responds to cocaine, which means that you may select a partner for life, move to Anchorage and decide to make many babies, all based on the same area of the cortex that enjoys an illegal substance that makes you talk accelerated gibberish all night long.

Plato said that love is a mental disease. Modern researchers agree enthusiastically, categorising love as a form of madness and echoing what psychologists have been telling tearful patients for years. (There are certain shrinks who refuse to treat people in the early throes of love because they are too insane to do a thing with.) Currently, scientists are having a genteel academic squabble over whether love most closely resembles the manic phase of bipolar disorder or the characteristics seen in obsessive compulsive disorder.

There is also a school of thought that insists love is a cultural phenomenon. As the great French cynic La Rochefoucauld said: “People would not fall in love if they had not heard love talked about.” The culture keeps up a rapid-fire bombardment of the power and the glory of romantic love, and yet it seems curious that so many of the Greatest Love Stories Ever Told - Cathy and Heathcliff, Tristan and Isolde, Heloise and Abelard, Lancelot and Guinevere - end in disaster, if not death and carnage. If we were being really sceptical, we might conclude that it is delusional that “in love” should be regarded as the greatest and most time-consuming aspiration of the modern female.

There is a highly dangerous literary subset to this, most vividly exemplified by Elizabeth Smart's novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept, which privileges true love over all other considerations. You can lay waste to families, other people - entire countries - but it's all fine because you are doing it in the name of Love. If you ever find yourself leaning towards this view, we suggest that you have a strong cup of tea and read something enlightening about pig husbandry until the delusion has passed.

It is only when the insane chemical phase of love dies down that you can tell whether it is the real thing. If it is, it will shift into the deep steady love that gets you through rainy days and financial crises and the small quotidian tasks that make up a life. This is why couples who have been together for 50 years always talk about marrying their best friend.

The mysterious thing about this proper love is that it contains no trace of the early lunacy. It does not make you want to rip the beloved's clothes off at inappropriate moments; it is nothing to do with the wild urge to create a universe with only the two of you in it. Instead, it is the kind of profound affection that makes you smile at idiosyncrasies that anyone else would find pointless, or get the joke that nobody else will understand. This kind of love is built of the bricks of a hundred small memories and moments in time. It is the feeling you get when you read a story in the paper, or see a comical character in the street, or overhear a conversation, and know that there is only one person you have to call and tell. It has nothing to do with extravagant hotel suites, or watching the sun rise, or impetuous trips to distant cities. It is not what you see in the shuttered dark of a movie palace; it is finding romance in the unheralded, the mundane: a sudden surge of adoration because a certain person knows how to fix a dripping tap. It may not be the world well lost for love, or “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?”, but it is less likely to leave your heart in shards on the floor.

Romantic love, however deranged, is still one of the great delights of life. It has given us sonnets and plays and entire sonatas; it has given us The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice and Doctor Zhivago. It lent us Yeats's pilgrim soul and Herrick's sweet infanta, and Keats's bright star. The wild twist in the stomach at the mere sight of the adored one, the random smiling at strangers in the street, the sudden desire to swing from lampposts, all add vastly to the gaiety of nations. (It should be noted that all these symptoms are not just for the very young: the sensible, 40-year-old female can just as easily become unhinged by the glimpse of a delightful pair of green eyes.)

Love can be crazy, delicious, thrilling; it can make you feel as if every atom in your body is dancing. It can bring back lost youth, make you remember forgotten dreams, revive dashed hopes. It's just that it needs to come with a caveat, a health warning, an unromantic but insistent voice of reason. So, the next time you fall in love, you should bear in mind that in those early days you are a little crazy, and it may be wise not to make any sudden moves.

The danger of romantic love

We don't mean danger in the obvious heartbreak way - the cheap betrayals, the broken promises - we mean the dark danger that lurks when sensible, educated women fall for the dogmatic idea that romantic love is the ultimate goal for the modern female. Every day, thousands of films, books, articles and TV programmes hammer home this message - that without romance, life is somehow barren.

However, there are women who entertain the subversive notion, like an intellectual mouse scratching behind the skirting board, that perhaps this higher love is not necessarily the celestial highway to absolute happiness. Their empirical side kicks in, and they observe that couples who marry in a haze of adoration and sex are, ten years later, throwing china and fighting bitterly over who gets the dog.

But the women who notice these contradictions are often afraid to speak them in case they should be labelled cynics. Surely only the most jaded and damaged would challenge the orthodoxy of romantic love. The received wisdom that there is not something wrong with the modern idea of sexual love as ultimate panacea, but that if you don't get it, there is something wrong with you. You freak, go back and read the label. We say: the privileging of romantic love over all others, the insistence that it is the one essential, incontrovertible element of human happiness, traced all the way back to the caves, is a trap and a snare. The idea that every human heart, since the invention of the wheel, was yearning for its other half is a myth.

Love is a human constant; it is the interpretation of it that changes. The way that love has been expressed, its significance in daily life, have never been immutable or constant. The different kinds of love and what they signify are not fixed, whatever the traditionalists may like to tell you.

So the modern idea that romantic love is a woman's highest calling, that she is somehow only half a person without it, that if she questions it she is going against all human history, does not stand up to scrutiny. It is not an imperative carved in stone; it is a human idea, and human beings are frail and suggestible, and sometimes get the wrong end of the stick.

浪漫的爱情真像先哲柏拉图所说的那样是精神疾病，演绎着一个以死亡亦或人类的最高成就作为结尾的故事吗？

“爱”这个字在字典里有21条释义。每位女性在生命的中途，都会面临一个年龄，那时的她开始猜疑自己连爱这些字面上的诠释都没有理解。从古希腊的哲学家苏格拉底(Socrates)一直到当代美国传奇盲人歌手史提夫·汪达(Stevie Wonder)，无数的诗人、哲学家、剧作家还有流行歌手都对爱有说不尽的感慨。[1]

爱是甜蜜的事情[2]、是一朵红红的玫瑰[3]；爱是战场[4]、毒品[5]、错觉[6]、错乱[7]。爱是问题的答案，又是问题的本身。爱是令你心宁神定的芳香之气，又是穿透人心的丘比特箭[8]。 美国语言学家门肯把爱比作知觉麻醉；诗人济慈写到爱是他的宗教[9]；莎士比亚称爱为妖精、恶魔、亘古长明的塔灯[10]，烟雾，火灾，海洋，疯狂，发烧，难以入喉的苦味[11]；爱像雨后阳光[12]，直而不曲。

在 各式各样的爱当中，浪漫的爱情是最复杂而又最令人费解的。它可以在你最不经意的时候冒出来(而且带给你最不合适的对象)，它可以把你从狂喜的巅峰抛向绝望的深渊，它一会儿向你呼啸而来，转瞬间却像镜面上呼出的气息消散无踪。是它驱使你将余生献给另一个人，却在几年之后回想时，丝毫记不得那最初的狂喜。爱情是如此的令人困惑，有时你想索性放弃一切爱情的烦恼，转而潜心研究宇宙[13]，或宏观经济学，或别的轻松事。

有些生物学知识在此是有益的。爱情的第一场阵痛就让你身陷烈性化学鸡尾酒的影响之下：血管内多巴胺(和它相比鸦片就是阿司匹林了)来去匆忙。尚觉不够热闹的附件激素(加压素和催产素的完全混合物)肆虐盛行于你的全身。这些发现大多是通过对草原田鼠的大量研究发现的。草原田鼠和配偶相伴一生，终日体贴地为对方梳理打扮，双宿双栖，极力避免发生外遇，生活作风相当正派。

女人会说，但愿男人都像草原田鼠。但是，要是希望男人都是马匹的话，女人都愿是戈黛娃夫人了(Lady Godiva)。[14]

除 了爱情的化学棍棒效应，还有个小脑问题。核磁共振(MRI)扫描显示，堕入爱河所激活的只是很微小部分的大脑区域，比操作重型机械时所激活的大脑区域小得多。英国伦敦大学学院的研究人员用挖苦的口吻评论说：特洛伊的美人海伦能够仅凭被她激活的这么有限的脑皮层区域，居然使上千艘战舰发动了起来，想到这真令人神往。

因 此要记住紧要的是，当你恋爱选择配偶的时候，你仅是在凭借认知功能的小部分做出一项攸关余生的重大决定。被爱情所激活的这小片大脑皮层正是被可卡因所激 活的那片区域，这就意味着你选择人生伴侣，移居到阿拉斯加的安克雷奇，然后决定生许多孩子，这一系列的决定和你决定享用非法毒品导致彻夜胡言乱语所用到的 大脑皮层区域是完全相同的。

柏拉图曾说，爱是一种精神疾病。现代研究人员纷纷表示强烈同意，并将爱分类为一种神经错乱，重复着心理学家多 年以来一直对哭泣的患者的忠告。(有一些精神科医生拒绝为爱情病痛的早期患者治疗，因为患者太过疯狂不能专注于一件事上。) 目前，科学家们正风度彬彬地展开一场学术争论：爱是否更类似于躁郁症的躁狂阶段，还是更类似于强迫症中显现的特征。

还有一种思想学派坚持认为爱是一种文化现象。正如法国伟大的愤世嫉俗的拉罗什福科说过： “如果人们没有听说过有关爱的谈论，就不会恋爱。” 文化业持续着它连发轰炸般的势头推崇着浪漫爱情的力量和荣耀，但似乎好奇的是迄今为止那么多的伟大爱情故事 - 比如凯西和希斯克利夫，特里斯坦与伊索尔德，爱洛绮斯和阿贝拉，兰斯洛特和关妮芙之间的爱情都是以灾难结束(如果不算死亡和屠杀的话)。如果我们真持怀疑态度，我们可以得出这样的结论：“‘恋爱’应被视为现代女性最伟大和最费时的愿望”这一观点只不过是一场妄想。

奉行这一观点的是一类非常危险的文学作品，最生动的例子就是伊丽莎白·史玛特的小说《我坐在大中车站哭泣》，这本小说赋予真爱以特权凌驾于其他一切考虑之上。你可以毁掉家庭、毁掉其他人、毁掉整个国家，只要是以爱情的名义，这一切都没问题了。如果您发现自己认同这种观点的话，我们建议你喝一杯浓茶醒醒脑，读一些有启发性的有关养猪的书，直到你的妄想消散为止。

只有在爱情化学阶段的疯狂渐渐平息之后，你才能够识别这份爱情是否是真实的。如果是真实的爱，它会转化为深沉而又稳定的爱，帮你度过困难的日子、金融危机、以及那些编织生活的点点平凡小事。这就是为什么50年的老夫老妻总是说和最好的朋友结婚。

崇 高爱情的神秘之处在于，它没有早期精神错乱的痕迹。它不会令你在不适宜之时想剥去心爱人衣物；它不是那种想独创二人世界的野性冲动。相反，它是一种深切的情爱，令你赏识外人无谓的独特气质而含情脉脉，领会无人能懂的幽默笑话而前仰后伏。这种爱是由千百块细微的记忆瞬间砖砌而成的。它是这么撩起的一种感觉：每当你读到报上一则趣闻，在街上遇见一个滑稽怪人，或者无意中听到只言片语，你下意识中世上只有唯一的那个人是你必须倾诉分享的，这就是那种感觉。它不是奢侈的酒店套房，不是观赏日出，也不是遥远都市的冲动一游。它不是电影院里一屋漆黑中看到的经典片段；崇高爱情是在默默无闻的平凡之中找寻浪漫：只是因为那个人会修水龙头，你的内心就会油然而增的一股爱慕。它也许不像那一切为了爱而丢失世界的爱情那么经典[15]，或像是“我想将你比作迷人的夏日[16]”这些诗句世代传颂 ，但它绝不会令你的心碎掉落一地。

爱情虽然有些疯狂，但仍不失为人生中一条亮丽的风景线。它带给了我们十四行诗、歌剧还有各种奏鸣曲；它孕育了我们《了不起的盖茨比》，《傲慢与偏见》以及《日瓦戈医生》这些名著。它借与了我们叶芝那朝圣者的灵魂[17]和赫里克那甜蜜公主[18]，还有济慈那颗耀眼的明星[19]。瞥见爱慕对像时那扭起肚子翩翩起舞的姿势，大街上对着偶遇的陌生人的相视一笑，凝视着路灯突然想凭着灯柱荡一秋千的欲望，所有这些都给民族增添了无尽的欢乐。(应该指出的是，所有这些疯狂的症状并不只局限于年轻人身上：40岁明智的女性同样容易被令人心醉而又年轻的明眸一瞥搞得心神不定。)

爱可以是疯狂的、美味的、惊心动魄的；它可以让你觉得好像身体的每一个原子都跳着舞。它可以带回你淡忘的青春，让你回想起遗忘了的梦想，重新燃起破灭了的希望。只是它需要附上一个忠告，一个健康的警告，一个不浪漫但执着理智的声音。所以，下次你一旦恋爱，你应该记住，在那些爱情初期的日子里你是有点疯狂的，明智的话就避免任 何冲动的决定。

爱情的危险

我们指的不是那种明显令人心碎的危险-廉价的背叛，破碎的承诺- 我们指的危险是：当明智受过教育的女性陷入教条的束缚，固守着现代女性终极目标就是浪漫爱情的信条时，潜伏着的黑暗无知的危险。每天，成千上万的电影、书 籍、文章以及电视节目反复输灌着这个信念-如果没有恋爱，生活如同荒漠。

然而，就像一只充满智慧的老鼠在壁脚板之后发出吱吱的声响，也有妇女接受这种颠覆正统的想法：也许这高高在上的爱情不见得就是通往绝对幸福这一天堂之路。她们的阅历经验开始发挥作用，他们观察到在爱慕和性的迷雾之中结婚的夫妇，十年后，却在互相摔碗，为些微的财产而激烈争吵。

但是，那些注意到这些反 差的女士们往往害怕谈论此事，以免被别人认为自己是愤世嫉俗的女人。当然，只有那些最厌倦和最受伤害的女士们才会挑战浪漫爱情的正统。公认的智慧认为现代的性爱无疑是最终的灵丹妙药，但是如果你对此不解的话，那肯定是你有问题。你这怪物，回去找瓶药吃，别忘了吃药前读一下药瓶外的标签。我们认为：给予浪漫爱情特权使其凌驾于所有其他之上，坚持认为它是人类的幸福必不可缺少、不容置疑的一个组成部分，追溯到人类老祖宗的洞穴时代，这是一个陷阱圈套。自车轮发明以来每个人的心灵深处都渴望另一半与之合二为一，这个想法是一个没有凭证的神话。

爱是人类不变的追求，变的是对爱的解释。爱的表达方式、爱在日常生活中的意义，这些从来都不是不可改变或一成不变的。不同种类的爱及它们所标志的都不是固定不变的，无论传统派人士怎么费心给你灌输。

因此，“爱情是女人的最高要求，没有爱情的女人在某种程度上讲只能算是半个人，如果她对此有质疑，那她就是在反对人类所有的历史”，所有这 些所谓的现代观念都是经不住检验的。这不是一个刻在石头上的命令，而是一种人类的想法，而人是容易受到引诱、耳根发软的，有时甚至还会完全搞错。