We could dream up some strange scenario in which I want to be loved by someone - Robin, say - but only because if Robin loves me, this will (somehow!) produce some good result that doesn't benefit me personally. I leave it as an imaginative exercise to construct such a story. But that's presumably not what you have in mind. So let's think about more ordinary cases. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I read the tone of your question as dismissive - as suggesting there's something neurotic or self-absorbed about wanting to be loved. And no doubt there's a real worry here. Being obsessed with what other people think of us isn't healthy and worrying about whether we're loved can be not just neurotic but also a way of making it less likely that we will be. But wanting to be liked or loved can also be an inevitable part of something that it's not at all neurotic. Friendship, most of us find, is a real human good. So is a healthy romantic relationship. So is a warm bond between parent and child. If I like you and...

You say that love is an emotion, and in some sense we can grant that. But saying it suggests that love is a feeling , and that, in turn, suggests that it's like a warm sensation in one's tummy -- something that we can simply detect by introspection and that we can't (or can't easily) be wrong about. But it's more complicated than that. If I love someone, I can still have moments when I feel angry at them, for example. But my momentary anger -- a non-loving feeling -- isn't the same as not loving them. Love is, among other things, a complicated set of dispositions. Some of them are dispositions to feel a certain way in certain situations, and others are dispositions to behave in certain ways. I might be momentarily angry with my daughter, for example, but it might be true that if anything were to happen to her, I would be beside myself with grief. I might also be willing to make considerable sacrifices for her well-being. I might worry about her, take time to check up on her, and do all of this not...

I think the reason people can't give you a clear answer is that there isn't one. It just seems to be a fact that some people really can love more than one person deeply at the same time, and I'll confess to finding it puzzling that this would puzzle anyone. As for opposition to polygamy, it would be hard to make the case that it's simply wrong. It would be particularly hard to do it a priori, without looking in some detail at polygamous societies. There are some worries one might well have (for example: worries about polygamous arrangements that favor men over women) but that's different from saying that all polygamous arrangements are wrong. None of this is a recommendation for what anyone should do in a society like contemporary America. Marriage and romantic relationships fit into formal and informal social institutions in a complicated way, and not every change we might contemplate is liable to work out well. Once again, there's no saying a priori. I'd add that "falling in love" isn't always...

"Fulfill" is a bit of a weasel word, isn't it? Suppose one partner would like to make love every night. The other, less libidinous spouse is more a two-or-three time a week type. We might say that the first spouse is "unfulfilled," but that sounds like a really poor excuse for adultery. If the lack of "fulfillment" amount to some deep incompatibility, a good question to ask first might be: have the partners in the marriage talked about what's not working? Can it be fixed? If the answer really seems to be no, then the next obvious question is whether the marriage is worth saving. Life is complicated, of course and blanket generalizations don't do justice to the complexity of people's relationships. But the old question: "How would I feel if the tables were turned?" is always a good one to ask when we're trying to decide if we're acting rightly. It's not just an old bromide; it gets at something pretty deep in our notions of right and wrong.

And... as someone with a close relative who is on the high-functioning end of the autistic continuum, I'd like to add Tony Attwood's website and books to the list of recommendations. But I would agree emphatically with Louise: it's a mistake to think that autistic people are unaware of others' feelings, or incapable of empathy. And I really can't see that you'd be doing anything morally wrong at all by continuing the relationship. Having Asperger's or high-functioning autism doesn't make someone morally defective, and it doesn't mean they can't care deeply about other people. What Louise and Eddy and Peter have said is much more like it. This isn't to say that autism spectrum conditions can't complicate relationships. But we could say the same things about many traits of personality and character that have nothing to do with autism. Few of us are perfect; people with autism just have a diagnosis.