Dating
Love

The prospect of love often entails anxiety, sometimes with a fear of commitment and a fear of intimacy for persons of both sexes. One woman said "being really intimate with someone in a committed sense is kind of threatening" and described love as "the most terrifying thing." In her Psychology Today column, research scientist, columnist, and author Debby Herbenick compared it to a roller coaster:

There's something wonderful, I think, about taking chances on love and sex.... Going out on a limb can be roller-coaster scary because none of us want to be rejected or to have our heart broken. But so what if that happens? I, for one, would rather fall flat on my face as I serenade my partner (off-key and all) in a bikini and a short little pool skirt than sit on the edge of the pool, dipping my toes in silence.

One dating adviser agreed that love is risky and wrote that "There is truly only one real danger that we must concern ourselves with and that is closing our hearts to the possibility that love exists."
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