Beware Those We Fall in Love With

The word ‘madness’ tends to bring to mind distinctly lurid and macabre associations: psychiatric wards, staring eyes, murder weapons, hideous features …

But after a certain amount of time on the planet, a more complex and troubling reality is likely to emerge: there is far more so-called madness than we think, and much of it looks nothing like it does in the movies. It dwells in seemingly ordinary people beneath extremely innocent surfaces. And when we are falling in love with the wrong person, we are particularly blind to its presence. It can exist alongside great intelligence, physical charm, educational certificates, technical mastery and professional competence. We may miss all its cues until it’s far too late to take averting action. And the places where we are most liable to encounter this folly – and to suffer most from its effects – are relationships.

It is in the confines of intimate relationships that we tend to come across behaviours that challenge most of our assumptions about sanity. It’s after a few years with someone that we may become acquainted with utter refusals to listen or change, with dramatic absences of integrity or accountability, with advanced failures to communicate and understand feelings, with elaborate inclinations toward deceit and betrayal, with sadism and cruelty – all of which, in their own ways, do merit, at least in colloquial conversation, a term like ‘madness’, or if we’re more professionally inclined, descriptions like ‘borderline’, ‘narcissistic’, ‘dismissive avoidant’, and so on.

The Hidden Costs of Falling in Love with the Wrong Person

The labels may help for a little while; but it’s sympathy for the wider problem that we really need. We deserve public acknowledgement of – and preparation for – how much psychological trouble we are liable to run into in the course of a so-called ordinary life; how few potential partners there truly are who have emerged from their childhoods with a capacity to act and behave morally and thoughtfully.

It is tempting to tie this dark verdict to the gender we’re attracted to. We may say, in despair: all men are crazy. Or all women are mad. One can sympathise with this attempt at demarcation – but the truth is likely to be yet more thorny; psychological disturbance is widespread, regardless of gender. The people we don’t form relationships with may be just as troubled – we simply have less incentive to get to know them well.

A New Philosophy of Romantic Vigilance

We should be worried by how initially normal most people know how to seem. They’ve learnt the codes and the cues. They tell jokes, they are upbeat, they have impressive résumés. It can be years down the line before we’re in any position to realise that they were fundamentally oriented towards emotional starvation; that they could not communicate their reality; that they had no grasp of their inner lives; that they had no stable core; that they could not take responsibility; that they lacked integrity and morality.

We may ask ourselves: how might I foresee issues going forward? The truth is that there is no foolproof defence. We need a new philosophy. We should tell ourselves: the great majority of people will be very nice at a public level and for the initial months; they won’t cause active disturbances, they won’t steal or bludgeon anyone to death. They will pay their taxes and show up at work on time. But if we know them from close up, they are at risk – at considerable risk – of acting in appallingly obstructive and dispiriting ways. Falling in love with the wrong person isn’t just bad luck; it’s a reflection of how hard it is to see psychological complexity clearly. This isn’t cynicism or bitterness; it’s a vigilance born of experience. We can trust up to a point, we can have some fun too; but we must never, ever – in love – not be extremely careful.