Ask yourself this: what would your life be like without love stories? No romance novels. No romantic TV series or movies. No daydreaming, even. How would you feel?

Bereft?

I know that I would be! Since I read my first romantic fairy-tale as a young child, I’ve been in love with love stories. Romances make me feel wonderful: uplifted, comforted, dreamy, inspired, hopeful.

According to recent research by the University of Oxford, a romantic like me may be addicted to love, and so if I were to be cut off from romance, I would experience the feelings of withdrawal.

The Oxford English Dictionary offers two definitions for the word ‘addicted’:

1. Physically and mentally dependent on a particular substance
2. (informal) Enthusiastically devoted to a particular thing or activity

Of course, those of us who adore romance stories consider ourselves in the latter category. Certainly I am ‘enthusiastically devoted’ to dreaming, writing and reading romance.

But could one cross the line into being ‘dependent’ on romance stories?

The University of Oxford study is entitled: ‘Addicted to love: What is love addiction and when should it be treated?’ The researchers set out to consider how love may be viewed as an addition:

‘These phenomena—including cycles of alternating ecstasy and despair, desperate longing, and the extreme and sometimes damaging thoughts and behaviors that can follow from love’s loss—bear a resemblance to analogous phenomena associated with more “conventional” addictions like those for drugs, alcohol, or gambling.’ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5378292/)

The New York Post entitled its article on this study ‘There’s a dark side to being a hopeless romantic’ (http://nypost.com/2017/05/10/theres-a-dark-side-to-being-a-hopeless-romantic/). The point is that addictive love can disrupt daily life and have a significant impact on mood and personal growth.

Can an ‘addiction’ to romance stories have the same damaging effect?

I am reminded of Mrs Stuart in Louisa May Alcott’s 1873 novel Work: A Story of Experience. Upon discovering a room ablaze and a servant just standing there and laughing, she exclaims:

‘She must go, Horatio, she must go! I cannot have my nerves shattered by such dreadful scenes. She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.’

Can romance books turn your brain? Perhaps, if you were to let them. Remember the two definitions of addicted: while there is nothing at all wrong with being ‘addicted’ to romance stories in the sense that you are enthusiastically devoted to them, it is not ideal to be dependent on them, to become so devoted to the romance genre that you confuse fiction for reality.

Any ‘hopeless romantic’ knows, deep down, that while they can completely surrender as they read, giving themselves up to romance, at some point they must close the book. They re-enter a world in which romance is not always quite as readily available and sublimely magical as on the pages of a book (or on the big screen). However, they re-enter that world uplifted, comforted, dreamy, inspired and hopeful.

The aim, then, with romance: be enthusiastically devoted. Always.