Guilt, like pride, shame, and embarrassment, is an emotion of self-assessment; all these emotions, too, are social emotions, in that they involve reference to (real or imagined) relations to other people and our place in the social order. Given that guilt involves--one might even go so far as to say that it is at least in part constituted by--relations between the guilty party and some other party or parties, it is natural that it might arise in the context of love, understood as a loving relationship. Insofar as love is indeed a relationship--this, I think is a controversial claim: you might consider other entries on this site on love for other perspectives on love--then it would be natural that guilt, shame, and other social emotions would arise in the context of that relationship. What's distinctive of guilt, however, is a feeling of responsibility for an action that one regrets, an action, moreover, that violates authority or breaks rules--including, in this context, the rules constitutive of a loving relationship. Although it may be natural to feel guilt in the context of a relationship--including the relationships with other people that might be taken to be constitutive of morality--there is, however, a deep question whether guilt is justified. Indeed, Nietzsche sought to banish guilt as a manifestation of 'bad conscience'; in his rich and wonderful book, Shame and Necessity, Bernard Williams gives a genealogy of guilt and its relation to shame. One suggestion that can be derived from Williams's book--a suggestion, moreover, which I take very much to be in the spirit of Nietzsche--is that guilt should perhaps be reconceived in terms of shame: rather than feeling guilty for what one has done, and seeing it as requiring reparation, in order to, as it were, make the social fabric whole again, perhaps the party in question should conceive of the action as reflecting who s/he is, and therefore calling instead for reparation. Regardless, however, of whether such a reconceptualisation can and should be undertaken--considerably more argument is needed in order to settle the matter, of course--it is unlikely, as a matter of natural fact, that social emotions should be extirpated, at least as long as there continue to be social relations.

I do not think it is possible to both love and hate someone at the same time. Love requires a kind of psychological 'embrace' and 'protectivenes' while hate requires a kind of psychological 'rejection' or 'attack'.

I would reject the possibility of loving one aspect of a person while hating another aspect of that person, since I think we must love whole people and not just select parts of people (otherwise, it is not love but selective liking).

It is certainly possible, though, sometimes to hate a person that one usually loves -- to have a strong and stable disposition to love someone while occasionally slipping into hate instead.

Indeed, since hate is usually a defensive response to a felt threat, and since the loss of love is usually experienced as a very great threat, it is no surprise that we can find ourselves hating (however fleetingly) the very people we have loved.

For these questions, you would probably be better off asking an older person whose wisdom you respect, than someone with a philosophy degree. However, since they are questions I also have wondered about, I will attempt an answer. The beginnings of love happen when you find that you are not just concerned with what the other person can do for you, but find yourself concerned with their good. When love grows, you find that your concern for their good is equal to and inseparable from your concern for your own. This stretching beyond concern with your own good is one of the main things valuable about marriage. It will more likely happen with someone you admire and who has strengths that complement your weaknesses. Intellectual and social similarities do not seem to me to be as important, even though dissimilarities can be a source of tension sometimes. Which of these men do you feel this loving way about and feels this way about you? One way to tell is to observe if you are kind to each other and willing to make some sacrifices for each other and to respect each others point of view even when you disagree. The person you love and who loves you will surely lack some things you want, but these can be found in friends and family. One person cannot be everything for you, but can still be the one for you.

My Loving Friend,

Man, do I wish I head that back-story that is "more complex"! It seems to me that there are several possible scenarios that have brought you to this point, and the details of those scenarios might make a difference in what I am about to say. But lacking the details...I press onward!

First, let's take it as a given that your partner in the committed relationship does not know you have found extra-curricular love, and will be hurt to discover this, and you are anxious to avoid this hurt.

Nonetheless, I believe it is your duty to tell this person right away what has transpired. A list of reasons why you should disclose this information:

the physical: if this love with the other person has been consummated, you are introducing a third person's sexual history into your relationship. This might have health consequences for everyone.

the historical: you forged a responsibility to him/her when that commitment was made. The fact that you cannot uphold it "forever" may be disappointing or liberating, but it is still a commitment. You have a responsibility to see the commitment through to its proper end, even if that end isn't exactly the "'til death" sort of end you both may have had in mind at the time you made it.

the empathetic: even though you have found love with another, I take it from your question that you don't want to hurt your current partner. You think you can avoid hurting him/her by keeping mum about your true love. But this necessarily will involve some sort of lying - or at least misrepresenting your feelings about the relationship. I think it was Kant who said that a lie is worse than outright violence, because with lies the victim doesn't even understand he is being victimized. This plays your partner for a fool, who then is doubly hurtful when she or he eventually learns the truth - and the truth always surfaces. It is most sensitive and respectful to just come out with it now.

the self-interested: It seems unlikely to me that you will find any sort of personal happiness until this situation with the committed partner is finally resolved.

You have an obligation to the commitment. Fulfilling this obligation means treating your partner with empathy and respect and honesty. If you do this, I think you have a chance at finding happiness

If you do tell you partner in the committed relationship that you have found love elsewhere, you might still be surprised with how it all ends. Your partner might feel a weight has been lifted off of him, glad to finally be free of you! Or else your partner might be devastated and angry. Or perhaps this person will be eager to go to counseling to fix the problem. If there is some shared family life between you (children, relatives, friends, pets, property) I expect your revelation will cause deep pain for both of you. However, I think it would be dishonorable to not take your partner's feelings seriously, no matter what they are. Good luck in the days ahead!

The statistical norm might be defined by what is true of the majority. But why on earth would we want to define the moral norm solely in terms of what the majority of people do? That would mean that, by definition, vegetarianism, atheism, and marriage between different races was wrong. It would mean that you were morally wrong if you were an abolitionist in the South or fought for equality for women in America in the early 20th century (I'm not sure when that became the majority position) or fight for equality for women in many countries today. For that matter, it would make it wrong to be a Jew or a man who goes to college or a firefighter.

Perhaps what you mean is that homosexuality could be considered biologically "non-normal" (it's not clear exactly what that might mean, since whatever we do is allowed by our biology). That may not be true, depending on what one means by biologically normal. But even if it were, it would not make it morally wrong, since lots of biologically "non-normal" behaviors may be moral, including, for instance, monogamy and vegetarianism.

I'm tempted to say that when it comes to love, all is mystery, and leave it at that. But that would be a little too quick, perhaps.

You ask several questions, so I will try to reply to them one-by-one.

(1) If you show all signs of loving someone, you probably do. However, we make a distinction between infatuation and real love, and so the real test of which of these it is will be a matter of time. Infatuation dies pretty quickly, whereas love is more durable.

(2) A good part of love probably really is "just in your head," or, more likely, in your biochemistry more broadly. When we are engaged in this way, there are very significant differences in cognition, sensation, emotion, and all of the neurological and endocrinological systems towhich these are related. It certainly isn't love if it doesn't change you in lots of ways!

(3) You also want to know what it is about your beloved that brings out these reactions in you. The answer seems to be that it is lots of things. But there is a risk of cart-before-the-horse here. It is probably true that how someone looks sometimes plays an important original role in the process of falling in love. But it is also true that falling in love plays an important role in how someone looks to you. Here's an autobiographical example from my own past. When I was in high school, I started dating a very nice girl who had a very large chip our of one of her inciser teeth. At first, I found this unfortunate--the only obvious flaw in my fair beloved! But then an oddd thing happened--I came to love that chipped tooth, and when she told me her parents were taking her in to have it capped, I was very dissappointed! I was going to miss that little irregularity!

(4) The same can be said (cart-and-horse) about peersonality traits. In some cases, these serve as initial attractants, wwhereas in other cases, these are matters for reassessment after the relationship has already gotten going.

(5) The right reasons for loving someone have to do with the sorts of things that create the possibility for personal growth--both at the sexual level and also at the emotional and intellectual levels. The wrong reasons, very roughly, are those that create the possibility of personal deterioration. We tend to look for those who share our same values, but this, too, can be a cart-and-horse matter: Those we love can help us to change our values. Those we should love would help us to change our values for the better; and those we should not love would help us change our values for the worse.

(6) Apart from the issue of values, we do well to love those with whom we are compatible, sexually, emotionally, and intellectually. The most dangerous kinds of love-affairs are those with toxic inconsistencies here: for example, falling in love with someone wwith whom we feel deeply sexually compatible, but with whom we are deeply emotionally or intellectually incompatible. Again, because love can change us profoundly, it may be that such incompatibilities ccan be worked out between the people in love. But strong initial incompatibilities are very serious negative indicators, to be sure, especially because lovers are notoriously wishful thinkers--the experience of strong attraction always somehow seduces us into thinking that what isn't really right will somehow become right if we are just patient and supportive. Well, sometimes that works, but...

As I've noted here before, we should surely distinguish loving someone from being in love with them. I might delight in the "sheer goodness and well being of" my daughter, miss her presence, especially when I'm feeling low -- that's evidence of love, but not of being in love.

It is only too easy to be in love with someone you don't really love in Charles's sense (which is why I don't think his reply will do as an answer to a question about being in love). You can be obsessed, lustful, unable to get the other person out of your mind, your heart leaps at their glance, you are wildly jealous of glances bestowed elsewhere, but for all that you don't really care for the other in the right way, or delight in their well-being etc. ("If you really loved her", we might have to say to the man in love, "you wouldn't treat her like that.")

Being in love, as Romeo memorably says, can be a "madness ... a choking gall and a preserving sweet". Proust is depressingly good on this!

I suggest one of the ways is by monitoring when you feel happy or sad. When you are with someone (Skippy), do you feel happy? When Skippy is not around, do you feel sad? If so, this is one of the marks of love. Further reflection will then be in order: what is it about being with Skippy makes you happy? Maybe Skippy likes you and you like being liked. This would not be enough, I suggest, to indicate whether you actually love Skippy her or himself. When you get to the point of realizing that you are delighting in the sheer goodness and well being of Skippy and that when you are sad, you miss the presence of Skippy, then I think you have quite a bit of evidence that: you are in love.

Without meaning to take a stand on anything, I think it is worth mentioning that, in most actual "polyamorous" relationships, things are not as Eric describes, where one partner "receive[s] 100% of the relational attention from two [others], while they each have to settle for about 50% of" the former's. Rather, people who enter into such relationships are very often bi-sexual and bi-amorous, and so each partner distributes his or her attention to both of the other two. Of course, that probably makes the relationship even more emotionally complicated.

The other remark it may be worth making here echoes one of Allen's. One often hears it asked: If we allow gay marriage, why not polygamous marriage? Partial answer: The laws on marriage really do assume, in ever so many ways, that a marriage is a relationship between two people. There are, for example, no provisions whatsoever for the dissolution of part of a marriage, in which two of the married parties might decide to continue without the other. But, as the Massachusetts Supreme Court observed, there really aren't any such deep assumptions about the gender of the parties. That is why essentially no changes were needed when Massachusetts started allowing same-sex couples to marry. Other, that is, than changing the language on some forms. If one were going to allow polygamy, then lots and lots of laws would need writing and changing. That is not in itself a reason not to allow polygamy, but it is a reason to think the cases are different.

Other Addendum: No doubt Eric is right that polyamory, as usually practiced, probably wasn't what the original questioner had in mind. Or, at least, those to whom he was speaking.

Why might someone think that polygamy is inherently incompatible with genuine love? One very plausible reason is that it sounds like you are asking your 'true loves' to enter into an inherently unfair and inequitable relationship... you would receive 100% of the relational attention from two women, while they each have to settle for about 50% of your relational attention. That means you receive quadruple the relational benefits (from the two of them combined) compared to what each of them can expect to receive individually from you. That sounds like a wonderful arrangement for you, but not a very good deal for them.... and asking them to be involved in that doesn't sound very loving. I don't deny that it is possible to have deep sentiment for multiple people at the same time, I'm just saying that it looks like you're asking them to enter into a type of relationship that is objectively unfair and not likely to be in their best interests (and why would you do that if you truly 'love' them?).

There are probably other problems with this sort of relationship. For one thing, polygamous romantic relationships are even more emotionally complicated than traditional dyadic relationships and have a lot more room for potential conflict. It is hard to see why someone would voluntarily accept one of the 'inferior' roles in these relationships. This might explain why this model for relationships occurs most frequently in societies that are either male centered or where there is gross economic inequality (or both).

Now, I could imagine some unusual societal circumstances where a polygamous model for relationships makes pragmatic sense. Suppose we have a society where men tend to die at a significantly younger age than women do: I'm not talking about a situation where women die at 77 and men die at 70.... I'm talking about something much more extreme than that. Let's say there is a society where due to war 20-25% of the men die in battle before their mid-twenties. It might make sense for such a society to accept polygamy since 20-25% of the women would have no chance to marry (and presumably have children) at all if they insisted upon monogamy. In such a situation it still seems the polygamous model for relationships is objectively 'unfair,' but allowing polygamy in such a society might be better than the alternative (a situation where 20-25% of the women have no chance to marry or reproduce).

Addendum: Richard Heck brings up an interesting possibility (that I thought of, but did not comment upon because I saw no indication that this was the original question's intent): could a polygamous/polyamorous relationship be more equitable if two ot its members were bi-sexual/bi-amorous?

At least, this would eliminate the inherent structural inequality in traditional polygamous relationships, while leaving open the practical questions concerning whether the day to day workings out of such a relationship would really be stable and positive for all involved. Besides the obvious three way struggles over the remote control, menu, and finances that such an arrangement would entail, the most difficult aspect seems to be whether each of the three members could treat each of the other two fairly and equitably long-term. It seems that it would be difficult long-term for all three members to avoid choosing a 'favorite' among the other two...and if the third member starts to feel like a 'third-wheel' it is easy to see how jealousy and instability would result.

In any case, I think we've done a good job answering the original question... why does the questioner find that many women react negatively to his suggestion that he could really be in a long term loving relationship with two women? Probably because the women he is talking to are not bi-sexuals and therefore for them a polyamorous relationship would entail the deeply unattractive structural inequalities that I mentioned earlier.