(1) Eva Illouz in
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Love-Hurts-Sociological-Explanati...
and many other modern authors will say that the longer of a list of lovers you have to choose from the less likely you will choose any of them. Whether you are evaluating a large number of prospects with a large list of criteria (Date me) or evaluating a large number of prospects based on photos (Tinder) the key thing is that the more people you look at the more choices you imagine you have, the more you believe you’ll find somebody better if you look a little longer and the less likely you are to pick any of them.
(2) Stendhal in his classic “On Love”
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/53720/53720-h/53720-h.htm
describes how falling in love involves a process of “crystallization” in which your love object appears to be singular and absolutely unique. The process of evaluating a long list is the opposite of this. Even if you are polyamorous and believe you can maintain multiple love relationships over time, that part of it where you are head over heels over someone (e.g. “new relationship energy”) is something you feel for one person at a time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meisner_technique
and came to realize that there is a commonality between writing and acting. An actor might not need to think about the arc of a whole story but they need to think about how it is advanced in a single scene. Sometimes even in real-life situations I think about "blocking" and other concepts from the stage. (e.g. Look at drama and improvisational acting in general)
Lately I read this book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Seduction
which has a lot of fiction and non-fiction references oriented around the technology of love ("Tale of Genji", "Les liaisons dangereuses", "Love and Lust") and works over the stories of very interesting people from various directions.
I have been reading the references, reading the references of those references, and going off in other adventures in reading including recent feminist scholarship such as
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Love-Hurts-Sociological-Explanati...
I think that love is the most popular topic for storytelling and this project has vastly improved my ability to confabulate on the subject.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Love-Hurts-Sociological-Explanati...
the problem has a nearly straight line relationship with many men feeling shut out of dating at an earlier age, and if more men withdraw into fantasy women will only suffer for it later on.