The cooling of desire and the weakness of will. Irony, commitment phobia, ambivalence, disappointment – all central themes of this book and central features of the experience of love – constitute the four main components of what I have called the de-structuration of the will and desire, whose orientation has shifted from the formation of intense bonds to the formation of cool individuality. All four components have in common the fact they express the difficulty of mobilizing the totality of the self in desiring another, the affirmation of autonomous selfhood in the deepest recesses of subjectivity, and the more general cooling of passion. Indeed, the very capacity to activate desire, to settle on a love object, to subscribe to the culture of love, has changed. It is desire itself that has changed its intensity and the ways in which it radiates from the self. First, faced with greater choice, desire relies on highly cognized forms of introspection and self-scrutiny. Second, comparisons between different possible choices dampen strong emotions. Third, desire now takes place in a cultural environment dominated by proceduralism: that is, abstract and formal rules by which to conduct relations to others and one’s own emotional life. Fourth, while pre-modern desire was governed by an economy of scarcity, it is now governed by an economy of abundance caused both by sexual normative freedom and by the commodification of sex. Finally, because desire has migrated to the realm of imagination, the possibility to sustain desire in real interactions is threatened. In that sense, desire becomes both weaker and stronger: weaker because it is not backed up by the will – choice tends to enervate rather than embolden the will – and stronger when it migrates to the vicarious realm of virtual and vicarious relationships.