My love is as a fever, longing still      

For that which longer nurseth the disease,  

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, 

The uncertain sickly appetite to please.

            — William Shakespeare, Sonnet 147 

Romantic love is a disease, a temporary madness. Obsessive, passionate, it makes us lose sleep and our appetite, it makes us crave another human being, sending us on a rollercoaster of violent feelings that range anywhere from elation to depression. It makes us do crazy things. Indeed, given its psychological profile, one might wonder why it hasn’t been classified as a mental disorder in the DSM-5.
Of course, romantic love is so commonplace that few stop to think of its pathological aspects. But what sort of thing is romantic love? I am not talking about the love for one’s parents, country, pet turtle, or chocolate. I mean instead the kind of love one finds between Romeo and Juliet, Abelard and Heloise, Audre Lorde and Frances Clayton.

Philosophers, such as Robert Solomon and Berit Brogaard, psychologists, such as Phillip Shaver, Hillary Morgan, and Shelley Wu, as well as ordinary people, think that romantic love is an emotion. One reason for this is that emotions are felt. That is, there is a particular feeling to a given emotion. For instance, when we feel afraid, we feel small and wish the frightening thing disappeared. Since fear isn’t typically a pleasant emotion, it is considered to be "negative". On the other hand, when we feel joy, we feel excited, elated, and open to the world. Since it is enjoyable to feel joy, it is "positive". Certainly, romantic love can be felt. However, it is much harder to pinpoint a paradigmatic feeling of love, and characterize it as a positive or negative phenomenon. For it feels thrilling in an anticipation of a reunion, cozy when snuggling on the couch with popcorn and Netflix, deeply intimate when making love, being engrossed in a conversation, or facing adversities together. But it also feels painful and devastating if it is unrequited, agonizing when betrayed, perhaps even shameful when it is directed at someone whom the lover herself deems unworthy. The heterogeneity of the hedonic character of romantic love makes it misleading to identify it as a specific emotion.