Your Love Is Destroying You, but You're Unable to Leave

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In her memoir Crazy Love (2009), the American feminist writer Leslie Morgan Steiner details the domestic violence she suffered during her four-year relationship with her ex-husband Conor.

He choked her, punched her, banged her against a wall, knocked her down the stairs, broke glass over her face, held a gun to her head, took the keys out of the ignition on the highway.

There were clear warning signs early on in their relationship.

While having sex, five days prior to their wedding, Conor choked her until she almost passed out: "His hands tightened around my throat … My eyes began to water. My body began to writhe involuntarily. Panic spread across my chest."

"I own you," Connor told her just before he came.

Although she knew that she was about to marry a dangerous man, Steiner didn’t call off the wedding. She was in love.

As the title of the memoir makes plain, Steiner’s love is deeply irrational, verging on madness. Victims of domestic violence sometimes stay with their abuser out of fear of repercussions and backlash if they leave. This makes sense.

But Steiner didn’t stay out of fear. Not initially, at least. When Conor broke a glass frame over her head, slitting open her face, her only thoughts were: "Don’t let this happen. I do still love him. He is my family."

Mad Love Impairs Your Capacity for Rational Decision-Making

Staying with your abuser out of love, as Steiner did, is irrational because it vitiates prudential – or "self-regarding" – concerns, which are one of the hallmarks of practical rationality.

When Steiner’s memoir was first released, various commenters aired their objections to critical assessments of Steiner’s decision to stay with her abuser on the grounds that we shouldn’t blame the victim.

Even when a victim worships her abuser for reasons of love, they argued, only the batterer is accountable for the harm inflicted.

The critics are right, of course. Steiner clearly isn’t responsible for the abuse she suffered. But her delirious love for Conor impaired her ability to make rational decisions. This is the dark side of love.

As I have argued in my book On Romantic Love (2015), rational love – love that is sane, sound and sensible – is reason-responsive, grounded in reality, and consonant with your overall mindset. These are lofty ideals but not unachievable goals.

Rational Love is Reason-Responsive

For love to be reason-responsive it must yield to reasons against it – reasons that your love is inimical to your interests. Your interests are those states of affairs that further your overall flourishing, or wellbeing. Performing an unpleasant activity might be in your best interest if it promotes your overall wellbeing. Think pelvic exams, colonoscopies and root canals – or breaking up with someone you are madly in love with.

Despite knowing that Conor presented a threat to her safety and wellbeing, Steiner didn’t get out until she had suffered four years of domestic abuse. Instead, she rationalized the beatings and hid her bruises. Her love was immune to reason.

Rational Love is Grounded in Reality

For love to be grounded in reality it must be based on an accurate perception of the beloved, not fantasy, reverie or illusion. Love fueled by a projection of a saint-like idealization on to the beloved is bound to dwindle once the image of unbending perfection disintegrates and the real person, with her unsaintly flaws, is left in its place.

Sustained only by fantasy and illusion, love that idealizes the beloved is void of rationality. Steiner’s perception of Conor is fantastical in its nature. Even after years of battery, she puts him on a pedestal, emphasizing how brilliant, funny and fascinating he is, convinced in her naivety that he is her "soul mate."

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Rational Love is Consonant With Your Overall Mindset

To be consonant with your overall mindset, love must cohere with your beliefs, desires and emotions and not breed internal inconsistency. The love part of love-hate relationships is a paradigm example of love that vitiates this ideal.

To love someone is to have a strong desire to promote their interests. But when you hate someone, you don’t want to promote their interests, and probably want to impede them.

Simultaneously loving and hating someone thus breeds internal inconsistency, or what is also known as "cognitive dissonance." It’s a kind of defense mechanism, where you often suppress your hatred to avoid the uncomfortable realization that your relationship is dysfunctional.

During her four-year relationship with Conor, Steiner’s rationalizations of his egregious behavior become increasingly riven with internal contradictions and efforts to suppress her own anger and hatred.

This post was first published in Psyche.