The goal of gender equality is not equal detachment but an equal capacity to experience strong and passionate emotions. Why would that be the case? After all, there is no lack of philosophical or ethical models preaching moderation in all things, and especially in the passions. Although this work rejects entirely the idea that the institutionalization of relations is the only viable framework to organize them, it views the capacity to love in a way that mobilizes the entirety of the self as a crucial capacity to connect to others and to flourish, thus as an important human and cultural resource. The capacity to derive meaning from relationships and emotions, I believe, is better found in those bonds that totally engage the self, enabling it to focus on another person in a way that is self-forgetful (as in the models of ideal parenthood or friendship, for example). Moreover, passionate love dispels the uncertainty and insecurity inherent in most interactions, and in that sense provides a very important source for understanding and enacting what we care about.3 This kind of love radiates from the core of the self, mobilizes the will, and synthesizes a variety of one’s desires. As Harry Frankfurt put it, loving frees us from the constraints and difficulties inherent in the fact of not knowing what to think, and, I would add, what to feel. Passionate love ends that state of indecisiveness, releases us from “the blockage of irresolution.”4 This kind of love is character-building, and ultimately is the only one to provide a compass by which to lead one’s life. The state of indecisiveness about what we love – caused by the abundance of choice, by the difficulty to know one’s emotions by self-scrutiny, and by the ideal of autonomy – prevents passionate commitment and ends up obscuring who we are to ourselves and to the world. For these reasons, I cannot take at face value the cult of sexual experience that has swept over the cultural landscape of Western countries, mostly because I believe such a kind of intensely commodified sexual freedom interferes with the capacity of men and women to forge intense, all-involving meaningful bonds, which provide one with a knowledge of the kind of persons one cares about.