Extremities of love: The sudden sacrifice of career, family, dignity

Bizarre love might be defined as that which is not explainable as simply an extreme case of the usual. We first examined various theoretical perspectives on extreme love, including developmental history and personality and a self-expansion motive. We then reanalyzed several previously collected data sets finding predicted perceived qualities of the beloved for extreme lovers, an increased propensity to unrequited love with increased love, and qualitative differences in associations with expansion-related variables between extremity love and what would be expected from a linear trend of love intensity. Results provided only mixed support for a developmental/personality interpretation, but results (especially the predicted nonlinearities) fairly consistently supported a self-expansion view of the motivation for extreme love as the seeking to merge one's individual identity with another's in order to achieve a new self that is imagined to be expanded completely, perfectly, beyond all limits of individuality.