Garth: Wayne, what do you do when, every time you see a really hot girl, you feel like you’re going to hurl?
Wayne: I say hurl. If you blow chunks and she comes back, she’s yours. But if you spew and she bolts, it was never meant to be.
Pearls of wisdom from Wayne’s World
The above dialogue is from the website tvtropes.org, which devotes an entire section to movies and TV shows that use the notion of being “allergic to love” as a storytelling device.
Like Stan, in the early seasons of South Park, who vomited uncontrollably when his love interest, Wendy Testaburger, so much as talked to him.
And, while you may not have vomited — or, as Wayne so eloquently put it “blow chunks” — when you got near someone you did fancy, you’ve no doubt experienced the sweaty palms, felt an elevated heat rate, or got that feeling that you just may, well, blow chunks.
Obviously, this kind of reaction doesn’t mean you’re technically allergic to your love interests; not in the way my husband is to wasps or my mother to shellfish, anyway.
Sure, it may feel like you’re going to die if, say, the object of your affection doesn’t return the feeling, but a few shots of tequila — not epinephrine — is more likely to cure your ills.
But what if you were not necessarily allergic to love but to the person you love?
According to Darcy Keenan, an Ottawa-based natural therapist who specializes in allergies, one can certainly have an allergic reaction to someone else if they’ve eaten foods you’re allergic to or used certain cosmetics or products that cause you to have an allergic reaction
I’ve also heard of cases of women being allergic to her partner’s semen. Something to do with her antibodies not getting along with his antigens and causing a reaction.
Keenan adds that semen is affected by what a man eats and drinks, and thus, well, “You can extrapolate from there,” he laughs.
Ted Edwards, an allergy expert I spoke to in the U.S., said that using a far-too-complicated-to-explain-here allergy clearing process called Cerebrospinal Kinesiology (even the name sounds complicated) he was able to help a young woman get over her allergy to her mother!
So maybe you can actually be allergic to another person, possibly even someone you really like. Which would really put a damper on cuddling.
As for being allergic to love, well, I definitely know a few people who seem to freak out every time it comes near them. You know the type. Every time a relationship starts to get serious, they find a way to sabotage it.
Though I suspect this is less a love allergy to love than an allergy to getting hurt. If only they could develop an EpiPen for that.
Josey Vogels is a sex and relationship columnist and author of five books on the subjects. For more info, visit joseyvogels.com.
