Standard fare in the world of fantasy: a potion that will make the object of your desire fall in love with you. Fiona and Shrek dodge the effects of one such brew in Shrek 2. Tate Donovan and Sandra Bullock face a similar experiment in the execrable Love Potion No. 9, presumably drawn from the song.
So now it’s your turn. You’ve just run into Madame Ruth. Do you end up kissing a cop down at 34th & Vine? Do you sneak a drop into Lindsay Lohan’s champagne cocktail, or Brad Pitt’s mimosa? Or do you nobly resist the temptation?
Absolutely not. As tempting as it might be, it would be hollow. More importantly, you are forcibly taking away another person’s freedom of choice. While they might be very happy loving you, they didn’t have the opportunity to choose.
Now, if it were a potion that made you more attractive to the opposite sex or even to an individual, I might change my mind, because we don’t choose our own appearance and it doesn’t violate free will.
Even if the person in question would swear, passionately, that this WAS his or her free will? And by every test you could use, it WOULD BE his or her free will?
I’d use it in a heartbeat, even if it was against their own free will. The only problem I could think of is I’d never be satisified. I’d always find a woman who was hotter. I’d use the potion on them, and the number of beautiful that want nothing but be with me and to make me happy would multiply.
Now that I think of it, it’s not really a problem.
Those never do really work well in the fantasies, do they? Possible side effects include drowsiness, psychotic obsession, codependancy, infanticide, mistakenly falling in love with farm animals, etc.
I’d have to pass.
Now if I could use a Splenda Love Potion- one that doesn’t make somebody fall in love with you, but will just make them perhaps notice you a little more than they otherwise might and give you teensy edge while you do the rest, then you could probably put me down for an ounce or two.
Lasts forever? No way in hell.* I’d be sick to the teeth of the sight of her long before she ever changed her mind about me or showed any sign of independence, spirit, or even response to anything I did. If by definition she loved me no matter what, I could be the most terrible, misbehaving jerk and try to drive her away and she wouldn’t ever leave. If she loved me exactly as I was, she wouldn’t even say, “That’s a good idea, honey, but wouldn’t it be be better to do it this way?” Or “Let’s go learn how to do this together!” Ugh. It’d be like spending eternity with a Smurf stapled to your forehead.
*Okay, one way in hell, and that’d be to mutually take the love potion with the other person.
I wouldn’t. The way I fgure, even if the other person were convinced they loved me, there would still be problems. People who fall in love with each other naturally, generally have personality traits, a way of life, interests in common, and so on that make the whole thing work. While it is possible to stay together based solely on love, I suppose, there’s a good chance it’ll turn out to be two people who don’t like each other, have little in common, but are in love. ‘Oh darling, I love you! I hate every fiber of your being, but I love you!’ Bleh.
I’d also think the potion-giver might run into problems. Are they really in love or just obsessed? A person who truly loves another wouldn’t harm the one they love. Isn’t taking away their free will and forcing them to be with someone they would not choose, harm? Here they are, inexplicably in love with someone they might not actually like, confused wouldn’t be a strong enough word to describe their feelings, and it’s not very loving to make someone confused, possibly even frightened, over their strange reaction. To do all of that sounds selfish, not loving.
A couple of months later, the crush is over, but you’ve got someone you don’t like anymore in love with you for life. Besides the guilt over the whole thing being a lie, you’ve now got to stick with them or dump them and crush them to bits. The guilt over leaving someone who had no choice but to love me and be hurt by that now unrequited love, for the rest of their lives, would eat at me. I doubt I could ever really be happy after that.
Getting real relationships to work is hard enough without the potion baggage thrown in.
What about if BOTH parties take it simultaneously… for instance, a couple gets married, has a kid, and then just starts to lose the “spark”. They are still basically compatible, still respect each other, have a child for whom they want to be together, but just aren’t “in love” any more. I think it wouldn’t necessarily be an unreasonable decision for both parties in that case to take the potion.
(I’m assuming here that this is a “love” potion, not a “lobotomized sex slave potion”… so that if both people in my example take it, they’ll still be functioning ethical members of society who won’t suddenly start doing things like quitting their jobs so they can stay at home all day long and just gaze at each other, or becoming insanely jealous of their spouse’s friends.)
