Romantic love, something society sees as purely positive, can often cause a person pain unconscious pain, but why? In his Why Do We Hate Love?, Robert Firestone writes, “Being close to another in a loving relationship makes one aware that life is precious […] If we embrace life and love, we must also face death’s inevitability,” meaning that love gives life meaning for people but consequentially, it makes that fact that life will eventually end all the more painful. Losing something meaningless is not painful, but losing something that is important hurts, even if it's just thinking about losing it. Furthermore, the pain from acting love is often unconscious and unknown for the person feeling it. Firestone writes, “Indeed, this paradoxical reaction
