Unrequited (32 page)

  68       
 
causing her physical symptoms:
Tallis,
Love Sick
, 13.

  68       
 
perishes as his ship sails away:
Ackerman,
A Natural History of Love
, 31–39.

  69       
 
would be adulterous, disreputable, and illegal:
Wack,
Lovesickness in the Middle Ages
, 9–10.

  69       
 
to ever marry their paramours:
Jérôme Carcopino,
Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire
, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 94.

  69       
 
the standard cure for lovesickness:
Oribasius, drawing on the work of Rufus of Ephesus, a famous physician of the late empire, recommended therapeutic intercourse for melancholy. Later, Arabic and European physicians promoted therapeutic intercourse as a cure for obsessive love. See Wack,
Lovesickness in the Middle Ages
, 10.

  69       
 
but these were options available only to men:
Carol Thomas Neely,
Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 102.

  70       
Antiochus was instantly cured:
The story of Stratonice and Antiochus is from the “Life of Demetrius” by Plutarch in
Plutarch’s Lives
(New York and Pittsburgh: Colonia Company Ltd., 1905), 134–36. Excerpt reprinted at http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/sappho/stratoni.htm.

  70       
 
the buildup of sperma:
“The cure for love is frequent coitus,” proclaimed the ninth-century physician Muhammad al-Razi, who was echoed by Ibn al-Jazzar, Avicenna, and a number of other Arabic practitioners. Wack,
Lovesickness in the Middle Ages
, 11.

  70       
 
Arabic medical handbooks into Latin:
Ibid.
,
xiii.

  70       
 
a term that translates as “heroic love”:
Jacques Ferrand,
A Treatise on Lovesickness
, trans. and ed. Donald A. Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 75.

  71       
 
primarily affecting noblemen:
Wack points out that even though physicians in the early Middle Ages held that
amor hereos
was a disease of noblemen, female vulnerability to the condition was evident in the literature of the time. Lisa, an apothecary’s daughter, in Chapter X of Boccaccio’s
Decameron
, falls in obsessive unrequited love with King Peter of Aragon. She wastes away “like snow in the rays of the sun.” See Wack,
Lovesickness in the Middle Ages
, 109.

  71       
 
Discussions of “erotic melancholy”:
Peter of Spain wrote extensively about the differences between male and female sexual physiology and lovesickness, also called “erotic melancholy,” in his
Questions on the Viaticum
. He concluded that while men may be harder to cure because they suffer more intensely, women fall prey to the disease more often. Historian Mary Wack speculates that his interest in women stemmed from the fact that more women, particularly well-to-do ones, were showing up for treatment. Wack,
Lovesickness in the Middle Ages
, 123.

  71       
 
less likely to interfere with rationality:
Ferrand,
A Treatise on Lovesickness
, 312.

  72       
 
The prospect of sexual humiliation:
Ferrand,
A Treatise on Lovesickness
, 264.

  72       
 
before she has brushed her hair and primped for the day:
Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset,
Sexuality and Medicine in the
Middle Ages
, trans. Matthew Adamson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 85.

  72       
 
“what you love so much is nothing but vileness and filth”:
Ferrand,
A Treatise on Lovesickness
, 318.

  73       
 
Women who were attracted to other women:
Cheshire Calhoun, “Family Outlaws: Rethinking the Connections Between Feminism, Lesbianism, and the Family,” in
Feminism and Families (Thinking Gender)
, ed. Hilde Lindemann Nelson (London: Routledge, 1997), 139.

  74       
 
Tait took his place in the marital bed:
For a detailed account of Mary Sidgwick Benson’s life, see
The Impossible Life of Mary Benson: The Extraordinary Story of a Victorian Wife
(New York: Atlantic Books, 2012).

  74       
 
under the 1857 law:
The 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act made divorce a civil matter and established the Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes to decide divorce cases. Before then, a divorce could be granted only by an act of Parliament, a burdensome and expensive process that made divorce prohibitive for the middle class. See the introduction and prologue to
Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: the Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
by Kate Summerscale (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012); the subsequent summary of the Robinson case and Isabella Robinson’s life is based on details from this book.

  76       
 
the place where we sought ecstasy, contentment, and awe:
See Tallis,
Love Sick
, 106. Sociologist Anthony Giddens also argues that modern love is “unique in its ‘one and only’ and ‘forever’ qualities, and in its insistence on the beloved as the source of a mystical sense of completion for the love. Overwhelming sexual desire, predominant in the passionate love of earlier social worlds, has become etherealized in romantic attraction and integrated into a larger narrative of a shared life course made meaningful by love.” Lindholm,
The Future of Love
, 18.

  76       
 
the wild state the Romantic era so venerated:
Tennov,
Love and Limerence
, 175–79.

  81       
 
“relationship obsessive-compulsive disorder”:
See Guy Doron, M. Mizrahi, O. Szepsenwol, D. Derby, “Right or Flawed: Relationships Obsessions and Sexual Satisfaction,”
The Journal of Sexual Medicine
(2014). doi: 10.111/jsm.12616.

  82       
building a body of research:
See Albert Wakin and Duyen B. Vo, “Love-Variant: The Wakin-Vo I.D.R. Model of Limerence,” at http://www.persons.org.uk/ptb/persons/pil/pil2/wakinvo%20paper.pdf.

  82       
 
gave them a shock of recognition:
Telephone interview with Albert Wakin, October 14, 2011.

  82       
 
“a perfectly horrible addiction when it’s going poorly”:
This quote, which occurs in some form in several of Fisher’s recent publications on love, is taken from her February 2008 TED talk, found at http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_studies_the_brain_in_love.

  83       
 
Both groups had serotonin levels 40 percent lower than the control group:
Donna Marazziti, H. S. Akiskal, A. Rossi, G. B. Cassano, “Alternation of the Platelet Serotonin Transporter in Romantic Love,”
Psychological Medicine
29 (1999): 741–45.

  83       
 
what they can do to get back the rejecter:
My description of the research on the impact of romantic rejection is based on the following sources: Helen E. Fisher et al, “Reward, Addiction, and Emotional Regulation Systems Associated With Rejection in Love,” 51–60; Fisher’s February 2008 TED talk; and a website Fisher and her colleague, neuroscientist Lucy Brown, put together on their research on love: http://theanatomyoflove.com/.

  84       
 
“New Love: A Short Shelf Life”:
Sonia Lyubomirsky, “New Love: A Short Shelf Life,”
The New York Times
, December 1, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/opinion/sunday/new-love-a-short-shelf-life.html.

  84       
 
“Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss”:
John Tierney, “Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss,”
The New York Times
, January 12, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/13tier.html?_r=0.

  84       
 
not overvalue passion and romance:
Tallis,
Love Sick
, 257–88.

  84       
 
rival or exceed those of couples in marriages of choice:
Jayamala Madathil and James M. Benschoff, “Importance of Marital Characteristics and Marital Satisfaction: A Comparison of Asian Indians in Arranged Marriages and Americans in Marriages of Choice,”
The Family Journal
16 (July 2008): 222–30.

  85       
 
a significant contrast to the historical examples:
Since I first spoke with Samara (her real name, which she requested I use) in 2011,
she wrote and published a self-help book about getting over romantic rejection. The book includes some of the material she shared with me. See Samara O’Shea
, Loves Me . . . Not: How to Survive (and Thrive!) in the Face of Unrequited Love
(New York: February Books, 2014).

  85       
 
“chemical breakup” remedies:
Brian D. Earp, Olga A. Wudarczyk, Anders Sandberg, and Julian Savulescu, “If I Could Just Stop Loving You: Anti-love Biotechnology and the Ethics of a Chemical Breakup,”
American Journal of Bioethics
13 (2013): 17.

  86       
 
strict rules on masturbation and sexual intercourse:
Yair Ettinger, “Rabbi’s Little Helper,”
Haaretz
, April 6, 2012, http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/rabbi-s-little-helper-1.422985.

  86       
 
antidepressants in order to endure their spouses:
Louisa Kamps, “The Couple Who Medicates Together,”
Elle
, April 18, 2012, http://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/the-couple-who-medicates-together-654677.

  86       
 
sufferers are under the delusion:
Historically, as I’ve discussed, erotomania referred generally to obsessive unrequited love or excessive sexual desire. In the present-day definition of the term, people with erotomania, a type of delusional disorder also known as de Clérambault’s syndrome, have an unshakable belief that another person—often a celebrity or someone of higher social status—is in love with them. Erotomania, a rare condition diagnosed more often in women than in men, is interesting in that it seems a distorted, pathological manifestation of the resistance that more everyday forms of unrequited love can entail: This love will break down divides and transport me to a better world. But because erotomania is a delusion often accompanying psychosis, I’m reluctant to tie the qualities of the disorder too closely with my discussion of more common experiences of unrequited love. The metaphorical resonances of erotomania are brilliantly explored in Ian McEwan’s 1997 novel,
Enduring Love
; see also Robert Lloyd-Goldstein, “De Clérambault On-Line: A Survey of Erotomania and Stalking from the Old World to the World Wide Web” in
The Psychology of Stalking: Clinical and Forensic Perspectives
, ed. J. Reid Meloy (San Diego: Academic Press, 1998). For a discussion of borderline personality disorder, a condition the
DSM-IV
describes as characterized by “a pattern of
unstable and intense interpersonal relationships” and “frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment,” see Randy A. Sansone and Lori A. Sansone, “Fatal Attraction Syndrome: Stalking Behavior and Borderline Personality,”
Psychiatry
7 (May 2010): 42–46.

  86       
 
forces that spur reproduction and make the human experience richer, albeit more challenging and complex:
“Because there is a positive relationship between dopamine (associated with romantic love) and testosterone (linked to sexual desire and arousal) and because there is a negative relationship between serotonin and these catecholamines and the androgens, serotonin-enhancing antidepressants can also inhibit feelings of romantic love. Moreover, because serotonin-enhancing antidepressants have a negative impact on penile erection, sexual arousal, orgasm, and other evolved psychobiological courtship mechanisms, these drugs can also negatively affect one’s ability to signal genetic and psychological fitness, assess and select potential mating partners, pursue preferred individuals, and maintain stable pair bonds.” See Helen E. Fisher and J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., “Lust, Romance, Attachment: Do the Side Effects of Serotonin-Enhancing Antidepressants Jeopardize Romantic Love, Marriage, and Fertility?” in
Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience
, ed. Steven M. Platek et al (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 269–70.

  87       
 
It’s a meritocracy applied to personal life:
Adelle Waldman,
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2013), 79.

  91       
 
“dependence on him that often increases”:
Emma Jung,
Animus and Anima
(Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications, Inc., 1957), 10.

  95       
 
Testosterone . . . goes up in women and decreases in men:
Donatella Marazziti and Domenico Canale, “Hormonal Changes When Falling in Love,”
Psychoneuroendocrinology
29 (2004): 931–36.

  95       
 
How this testosterone fluctuation affects our behavior hasn’t been studied yet:
Marazziti and Canale wrote, “It is tempting to link the changes in testosterone levels to changes in behaviours, sexual
attitudes or, perhaps, aggressive traits which move in different directions in the two sexes, however, apart from some anecdotal evidence, we have no data substantiating this, which would justify further research.” See Marazziti and Canale, “Hormonal Changes When Falling in Love,” 2004.

  95       
 
“as if nature wants to eliminate what can be different in men and women”:
“In Love We’re Not So Different,”
The Daily Mail
, accessed at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-300871/In-love-different.html.