Love shouldn’t be blind or mad. Instead, fall rationally in love



Blind, all-consuming love goes against your interests and impedes your flourishing. Submit your love to rational scrutiny
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,’ he told her 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.’ Staying with your abuser out of love, as Steiner did, is irrational because it vitiates prudential – or ‘self-regarding’ – concerns, which are the hallmark 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
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