The Blue Monkey Review

Everyone knows dementia, the loss of cognitive function due to disease or old age. In fact, many stressful situations can bring about dementia, and it may be temporary or chronic, mild or acute. Even if you are not personally acquainted with the author, I’m sure you know people who suffer from poor memory, confusion, poor judgment, and perhaps even delusion. These same patterns of dysfunction afflict millions of people every day, but in romantia the dysfunctionality comes in their relation with individuals of the opposite sex—or the same sex, or in some other way, sex is involved. Let’s just say, passionate and / or intimate relations.

Poor or lost memory often afflicts sufferers from dementia (and Baby Boomers everywhere). This also appears in romantia, but it will often occur in the strange form of uneven memory. This condition includes complete loss of some important data (ex.: “when I first met him he was dating a good friend of mine whom he left for me”) and highly acute and accurate retention of other information (ex: “on March 3 at 2:26 A.M., as we returned from the Red Star Brewery and Grill, he told me I was the only woman he ever loved, that he’d never leave me, and the proof of it was that he was opening up to me like he never opened up to anyone before, ever.). And, if this sad combination of conditions doesn’t make the sufferer’s situation seem bad enough, romantia also often includes the appearance of false memories. (ex: “he told me that living together would help us get ready for spending the rest of our lives together.”) Taken together, these cognitive aberrations of romantia have received the entirely new DSM designation of pernicious memory.

The other signs of cognitive decline—confusion, poor judgment, delusion—are universal in human life, though of course much more acute in those suffering from dementia. Remember, though, that romantia sufferers (romantiacs), unlike the demented or members of the Bush administration, show cognitive decline only related to straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered relationships. I can give examples of each, though I encourage readers to send in examples they know from personal experience (of other people, of course),

Poor judgment:
“I thought his binge drinking made him, you know, fun, interesting.”
“She said she was over him and that they only saw each other because they still had mutual friends.”

Confusion:
“I always spent more money when we went out. Even now I don’t know how I ran up this much debt.”

Delusion:
“He’s the smartest person I’ve ever known. And the kindest. And the most honest.”
“There’s no one else like her. She’s my soulmate.”
“S/he completes me.”

Now that the American Psychiatric Association has recognized romantia for what it is—a disease entity—we can hope, at least, that some relief for the romantiac is on the horizon. But it’s a distant horizon, and hoping for more would be, well, demented. All longitudinal studies, all clinical reports (sadly, all double-blind studies quickly fell apart), all observation, and the common experience of people everywhere leave little room to expect much more than amelioration. As world-renowned expert, Leonard Cohen, commented after his exhaustive review of the research literature: “there ain't no cure for love.”