Love as an Initiation Interface: Decision Freezing and the Ethics of Preserving Choice in Mediated Intimacy

Romantic intimacy is often treated as a private emotional experience or a cultural narrative. In this paper, we propose an alternative framing: love as an initiation interface—a transitional entry point that reorganizes perception, time, and decision-making. While such initiation can enable deep connection, it can also precipitate a phenomenon we term decision freezing: a reduction of perceived options, accelerated commitment, and role fixation that occur prior to explicit consent or evaluation. We present a multi-layered conceptual framework that describes decision freezing across four levels: (1) biological responses (e.g., reward and arousal systems), (2) cognitive processes (e.g., predictive compression and time perception), (3) interactional patterns (e.g., conversational scripts and mutual expectations), and (4) social narratives that normalize irreversible choice. Importantly, we distinguish between causal mechanisms and subjective experience, treating metaphors such as “attraction” or “field” as experiential language rather than physical claims. We further extend this framework to AI-mediated intimacy, including conversational agents and relationship-oriented prompts, which can replicate the same initiation dynamics and decision-freezing risks through design rather than intention. Rather than framing these phenomena as manipulation or moral failure, we argue that the core ethical issue lies in observability: whether individuals retain the ability to perceive alternatives and suspend commitment without social or cognitive penalty. We conclude by proposing design principles centered on preserving observability and choice, emphasizing temporal openness, reversible commitments, and transparency of role formation. This work contributes a non-pathologizing, non- deterministic model for understanding intimacy and its ethical implications in human–AI systems, aligning with FAccT’s focus on fairness, accountability, and human-centered design. This paper does not seek to regulate intimacy or suppress affective engagement. Instead, it frames ethical intervention as the preservation of observability, temporal openness, and role reversibility during initiation. Any references to “attraction” or “pull” are treated as experiential metaphors, not causal claims.