Love. We want it. We need it. We seek it out, but when it goes sour or doesn't measure up to our own standards of what it should be (traditional or perverse), love can destroy us. It's a deceptive friend, capable of transforming into an ugly monster when we least expect it. What's worse is that if you've given it your best, it knows your greatest weaknesses.

If we're lucky, at some juncture in our lives we'll fall in love with another human being. When that happens we permit a kind of madness to take us over and find ourselves thinking and doing things we would under normal circumstances perceive to be insane. How far would you go to prove to someone that you love them? For some, it's enough to devote their lives to that person through the institution of marriage. Some wear vials of each other's blood around their necks, others go much further. We've all heard people say "I would die for you" or "I would kill for you." Some people actually mean it.

Inasmuch as we like to romanticize the ineffable experience of love, it can be explained as a biologocal and cognitive process, not too different from the state of fear. The physiological reactions the feeling of love produces are a byproduct of messages transmitted by the amygdala, a part of the limbic system of the brain that performs a primary role in the processing of memory, emotional reactions... and aggression. That's right, the "fight or flight" response to fear- which reminds us to leap out of the way when we're about to get hit by a speeding car- is coming from precisely the same intuitive structure that generates the pleasant feelings of love. In other words, love and fear have the same biological origins and similar physiological reactions (increased heart rate, perspiration, stimulation). It's our cognitive understanding of the two that is fundamentally different- one feelis good, the other doesn't.

Perhaps this is why love and suffering are inexorably linked. Anyone who's ever lost a partner through death or a broken heart knows what I mean. If you've never been in love you wouldn't understand, but the armchair psychologist in me says the reason for that is - wait for it- fear. Put simply, we're all afraid of being hurt. Being crushed by someone emotionally isn't like breaking a leg; your leg will heal in six to eight weeks, but your heart could remain fractured for years. And that trusty amygdala will make damn sure you never feel that kind of pain again because, it's keeping a mental file of things that hurt and will make you flinch before you enter into a contract of love again (just like it does with the speeding car).

Editor-In-Chief of Rue Morgue,
Jovanka Vuckovic