When Good Things Go Wrong in Love

Romantic love draws upon some of our finest qualities: kindness, friendship, patience, generosity, openness, wisdom, sexual desire, and a willingness to sacrifice for another person. Yet love is also vulnerable to infidelity, selfishness, jealousy, and emotional hurt. How can such admirable virtues coexist with love's darker tendencies? And can virtues themselves sometimes become part of the problem?

We often assume that if a quality is good, more of it must be better. Yet this is rarely true in human life, and especially not in romantic life. A virtue that enriches a relationship in moderation may damage it when expressed without limits, balance, or wisdom. Here, I examine three romantic virtues—sexual desire, sacrifice, and patience—and argue that each can contribute to flourishing love, but each can also become harmful when taken to an extreme.

Too Much Sexual Desire

"Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell." —Joan Crawford

sexual desire

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Sexual desire is often compared to a raging fire. Both are described as intense, swift, and potentially insatiable. Fire and sexual desire have constructive as well as destructive aspects; in both cases, the difference between warmth and disaster may depend on how intensity is managed. A strong fire can warm a house, but it can also burn it down. Similarly, intense sexual desire can enrich romantic love, but when it becomes obsessive or difficult to regulate, it can undermine the relationship and, in some cases, resemble an addiction. When integrated into a broader emotional bond, sexual desire can deepen intimacy, pleasure, and romantic connection.

The spontaneous nature of sexual desire does not mean that it is entirely immune to learning, habits, or social conventions. People can sometimes learn to cultivate sexual attraction toward their partners, just as they can develop strategies for managing or reducing sexual impulses.

The lesson is not that strong sexual desire is bad. Rather, sexual desire serves love best when it is integrated with commitment, self-control, and consideration for the beloved. Even a powerful romantic virtue can become destructive when it dominates the relationship.

Too Much Sacrifice

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it." —Oscar Wilde

When we sacrifice, we give up something meaningful in order to obtain or preserve something else. Romantic sacrifices involve giving up a significant non-romantic value for romantic reasons—for example, devoting less time to one's work in order to spend more time with a beloved. At its best, sacrifice is a voluntary choice that goes beyond what duty requires.

Close relationships inevitably involve situations requiring sacrifice because partners have different desires, interests, and values. These conflicts may be minor, such as choosing a restaurant, or major, such as deciding whether to have another child or where to live. Two common ways of dealing with such conflicts are sacrifice and compromise.

Many people regard sacrifice as an expression of genuine love. In close relationships, willingness to sacrifice is associated with greater relationship satisfaction and stability. People often interpret sacrifice as evidence of caring, trust, respect, and loyalty. Willingness to sacrifice can therefore strengthen security and reinforce the sense that the relationship matters.

Sacrifice can also benefit the person who makes it. Giving to a partner may strengthen self-respect, deepen gratitude, and encourage reciprocity. In this sense, generous giving can benefit both partners.

Yet sacrifice has limits. It can become harmful when it is excessive, chronic, or one-sided. Problems arise when one partner repeatedly gives up important personal goals, values, or desires for the sake of the other, particularly when the sacrifice is not reciprocated. In unequal relationships, the less powerful partner may be especially likely to sacrifice, sometimes while suppressing or "silencing" their own opinions and desires.

Healthy sacrifice says, "I am willing to give something up for us." Unhealthy sacrifice says, "I must give myself up for you." The first can deepen love; the second can gradually destroy the self that love is supposed to nurture.

Too Much Patience

"Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise; because of impatience we cannot return." —W. H. Auden

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Patience involves the ability to endure waiting, difficulties, or frustration without becoming excessively annoyed or upset. Passion, by contrast, involves excitement, intensity, and a tendency to experience emotions strongly. Profound romantic love requires both qualities: the excitement of passion and the calmness that allows love to endure over time (Ben-Ze'ev, 2019).

The heart is often impatient with matters that seem to have merely superficial or extrinsic value. When something does not matter deeply to us, we want to achieve our goal as quickly as possible and are reluctant to invest unnecessary time and effort.

In profound love, however, there may be less need to rush. When we are deeply satisfied with our relationship, waiting can become tolerable, and even meaningful. The general mood of a patient heart is one of calm and peaceful joy. For the impatient heart, distance and delay may be intolerable. For the patient heart, temporary distance need not threaten togetherness.

Yet here too, patience has limits. Being patient does not mean accepting everything a beloved does. Patience toward temporary difficulties can sustain love; patience toward persistent disrespect, betrayal, or abuse can undermine it. Indeed, excessive tolerance may sometimes signal not wisdom but fear, dependency, or a lack of boundaries. As one married woman put it, "I would not call my behavior tolerant, as I was not tolerant toward my lover when he behaved in a wrong way (from my perspective). I love him too much to manifest tolerance."

This apparent paradox is important. Deep love does not necessarily make us more tolerant of everything our beloved does. Because the relationship matters so much, some behaviors may matter more, not less. Patience is therefore a romantic virtue, but not an unlimited one.

Our contemporary culture can make patience particularly difficult. We are accustomed to quick rewards and immediate gratification, from instant coffee to instant communication and, increasingly, expectations of instant romantic fulfillment. Yet love rarely develops according to the timetable of a smartphone.

The Limits of Virtue in Romantic Life

"I never promised you a rose garden; along with the sunshine, there's gotta be a little rain sometimes." —Joe South

The complexity of romantic love means that seemingly opposing tendencies often need to coexist. We desire our beloved intensely while exercising restraint. We sacrifice for the relationship while preserving our individuality. We practice patience while maintaining clear boundaries. Love flourishes not through the triumph of one virtue over another, but through their delicate balance.

This raises an important question: If virtues are valuable, why should they ever be limited? One answer is that flourishing relationships require not only reducing vice but also regulating virtue. A virtue pursued without proportion can undermine the very good it is meant to serve.

Sexual desire, sacrifice, patience (and other virtues) are all valuable qualities. Yet none is universally beneficial in unlimited amounts. Their value depends upon context, timing, degree, and their relationship to other important values.

The central issue, therefore, is not whether a quality is good, but when it is good, how much of it is good, and how it fits within the broader fabric of a relationship. This is one of the deepest paradoxes of romantic life: the very qualities that help love flourish can, when unchecked, contribute to its decline.

A flourishing relationship requires more than passion, generosity, or patience. It requires practical wisdom—the capacity to recognize when a virtue has reached its appropriate limit. In love, as in life, the challenge is not simply to cultivate virtue, but to cultivate it in the right measure.