Ah, romantic love - beautiful and intoxicating, heartbreaking and soul-crushing, often all at the same time.

Why do we choose to put ourselves through its emotional wringer?

Does love make our lives meaningful, or is it an escape from our loneliness and suffering?

Is love a disguise for our sexual desire, or a trick of biology to make us procreate?

Is it all we need?

If romantic love has a purpose, neither science nor psychology has discovered it yet.

Love is involuntary. Brain science tells us it's a drive like thirst. It's a craving for a specific person. It's normal, natural to "lose control" in the early stage of romance. Love, like thirst, will make you do strange things, But knowledge is power. It's a natural addiction and treating it like an addiction can help you.

But over the course of history, some of our most respected philosophers have put forward some intriguing theories. Love makes us whole, again.

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato explored the idea that we love in order to become complete. In his "Symposium", he wrote about a dinner party, at which Aristophanes, a comic playwright, regales the guests with the following story.

Humans were once creatures with four arms, four legs, and two faces. One day, they angered the gods, and Zeus sliced them all in two. Since then, every person has been missing half of him or herself.

Love is the longing to find a soulmate who'll make us feel whole again, or, at least, that's what Plato believed a drunken comedian would say at a party. According to the Nobel Prize-winning British philosopher Bertrand Russell, we love in order to quench our physical and psychological desires. but without the ecstasy of passionate love, sex is unsatisfying. Our fear of the cold, cruel world tempts us to build hard shells to protect and isolate ourselves.

Love's delight, intimacy, and warmth helps us overcome our fear of the world, escape our lonely shells, and engage more abundantly in life. Love enriches our whole being, making it the best thing in life.

Love is a misleading affliction. Siddhārtha Gautama, who became known as the Buddha, or the Enlightened One, probably would have had some interesting arguments with Russell.
Buddha proposed that we love because we are trying to satisfy our base desires. Yet, our passionate cravings are defects, and attachments, even romantic love, are a great source of suffering. Luckily, Buddha discovered the eight-fold path, a sort of program for extinguishing the fires of desire.

But

While the desire to love and be loved is perfectly normal, the intoxicating feeling of being “in love” can be addictive for some individuals. If you’ve ever been in love, you know how powerful it can be. Suddenly your world is completely turned upside down. You feel an excitement – an energy, if you will – that makes everything seem new and wonderful. Some people describe it as feeling like they were walking on air. It’s natural to want this euphoric feeling to last forever.

It’s important to understand that love addiction has very little to do with real love. In fact, it’s actually the opposite. While it might seem that love addicts are eagerly looking for love, the reality is that love isn’t really what drives them. You see, real love involves intimacy, which requires a willingness to be vulnerable. Love addicts are scared of intimacy and the vulnerability that goes with it. Instead, they are seeking the “feeling” – the intoxicating high or infatuation that accompanies a new relationship.