The final turning point arrived when legal scholars reframed the issue using the concept of emotional risk management. Modern societies regulated countless activities based on their potential to cause harm. Governments required safety standards for vehicles, pharmaceuticals, food production, and financial markets. Each regulation acknowledged that certain behaviors, left entirely unrestrained, could produce systemic damage.
Romantic attachment, these scholars argued, had become analogous to a hazardous substance. In normal conditions, love enriched human life but under the extreme circumstances revealed by the pandemic—mass isolation, digital mediation, social fragmentation—it produced psychological reactions capable of destabilizing entire populations. If governments accepted responsibility for protecting citizens from other forms of collective risk, could they ignore this one?
The argument did not demand the elimination of romance. It demanded risk mitigation. Permanent romantic bonds, the scholars proposed, should be treated as high-risk emotional contracts requiring strict regulation. Casual relationships, by contrast, posed significantly lower danger because they limited the depth of dependency formed between participants. The distinction provided policymakers with a path forward. Love would not be banned but its most dangerous form—permanent exclusive attachment—would be.