It wasn’t just the diaper, though the diaper was big. It loomed larger in the popular imagination than any diaper ever has or should. The jokes were everywhere. But the diaper was just the icing. The cake? That Lisa Marie Nowak was an astronaut. 

Nowak drove 900 miles from Houston to Orlando to confront her perceived romantic rival wearing an adult undergarment to save time on bathroom stops. She was carrying a bunch of scary shit like a steel mallet and a BB gun. She pepper sprayed Colleen Shipman and subsequently pleaded not guilty to attempted kidnapping and burglary with assault charges.

People go mad when they’re in love. We may not condone it, but it doesn’t surprise us. Had some nobody – me, for example – been arrested for stalking, diaper or no diaper, it wouldn’t have been a big story. But we assume an astronaut should know better. This is a job that’s as close to super hero as we get in real life, and it’s a job that requires a high level of intelligence, discipline and the ability to keep a cool head in crisis. It certainly seems like an astronaut should have the composure to step back and see that pepper spray almost never brings couples together. But for some reason, reason abandoned her when the crisis was love.

She’s not the only one. When it comes to high achievers who are no match for chemistry, Bill Clinton jumps to mind. Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England for American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Gary Hart was photographed with Donna Rice in his lap. An alleged affair between a supervisor and a resident in UCLA’s psychiatry department recently made for spicy testimony in a Los Angeles court. Scandals in the clergy, Mark Foley, John Profumo… Put them all on TV and you end up with Jerry Springer guests with corner offices instead of trailers. Why do people in highly respected positions of power suddenly act like they’re in Benny Hill sketch when love enters the picture? Why didn’t Paul McCartney get a prenup? Why, when it comes to love, do people who are so smart become so dumb?

According to Dr. Ian Kerner, sex therapist, Cosmopolitan columnist and best-selling author of Be Honest: You’re Just Not That Into Him Either, higher education, income or job status has no impact on how we react in love. “I want to dispel the idea that the more educated or white-collar you are, the more you would be immune to the gravitational pull of love,” says Kerner. 

He’s right: look at Woody Allen. With his trademark birth control glasses and honor student humor (remember how he was tossed out of college during his freshman year “for cheating on my metaphysics final…I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me”?) Woody was the poster boy for witty intellectualism in the 70’s. Surely someone that bright could outmaneuver Eros. Yet in movies like “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan,” Allen showed us exactly how someone so smart could be utterly flummoxed by love – and so willing to do it over and over again. Indeed, his own romantic life, specifically during the eruption of the Mia Farrow/Soon-Yi scandal, was a mess. “The heart has its reasons,” Woody famously said in his defense. But it was the philosopher Blaise Pascal who said it more articulately, and put the quandary of intelligence vs. love in a nutshell: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”

Even though we blame the heart, it’s actually the brain that’s responsible for most of our chemical love reactions. Post-Valentines Day 2007, CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen’s story “Loving with all your....brain,” explained the results of MRI brain scans of people in new love. “The scientists found that the caudate area of the brain – which is involved in cravings – became very active. Another area that lit up: the ventral tegmental, which produces dopamine, a powerful neurotransmitter that affects pleasure and motivation.”

Dr. Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, was one of the colleagues mentioned in the CNN story, alongside Dr. Lucy Brown of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, where the MRI scans were done on college students. “In the end,” Cohen writes, “Drs. Fisher and Brown say what they learned from lovers’ brains is that romantic love isn’t really an emotion – it’s a drive that’s based deep within our brains, right alongside our urges to find food and water.”

And where do people go to fulfill that urge? Many look no further than the next cubicle.

“Female rates of infidelity are on the rise,” Dr. Kerner says. “Workplace attractions and romances are often the breeding ground for these infidelities.”

Lisa Nowak, William Oefelein and Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman shared a profession. Bill and Monica met at the office. And a survey of 420 workers by careerbuilder.com.uk found that 43 percent of employees had dated a colleague. But why is falling for your cube-mate so common – and so tempting? According to Kerner, at home “you’re dealing with the same old guy who leaves his dirty socks around the house. At work you’re traveling, you’re a decision maker; you’re asked for your opinion.”

Take gratifying work, add the bubbly rush of infatuation, and you’ve got a double whammy of pleasure that’s hard to ignore. “When people are in love, they become addicted – especially in the early stages,” Kerner says. When reciprocated, love is euphoric. But “when that love is not reciprocated, that’s when people really act desperately, some plotting revenge fantasies.”  So when Lisa Nowak was told by William Oefelein that he was involved with someone else, she took action.

“I can guarantee that [Nowak] was on a dopamine rush when she was on her road trip,” Dr. Kerner says. “One of the qualities of dopamine is that it allows you to focus on the object you’re pursuing. But in focusing so much, you overlook that person’s faults.”

So the brain that’s supposed to be your ally is actually producing crazy-making chemicals that make you act stupid? Great. No wonder Homer Simpson told his grey matter, “I don’t like you and you don’t like me, so let’s just get back to killing you with beer.”

Yet another reason is the simple element of risk. To be a president you must be a risk-taker, Dr. Kerner says, and to be an astronaut you must be a thrill-seeker. The same people who push themselves to achieve big things might be more likely to push boundaries in other areas. “Nowak went farther than most of us – not many of us want to get jettisoned into outer space,” Kerner explains, “but most of us have gone farther than we thought we would go [for love]. I talk to people who didn’t get out of bed for a week, lost their job, gained 30 pounds, lost 30 pounds, uprooted their life to be with somebody on the other side of the world.” With all those factors working against us, it’s a wonder we’re not screwing or killing each other all the time.

We don’t all go over the edge, but plenty of us have teetered on the brink. Yes, Lisa Nowak should have known better, but as Dr. Kerner points out, we don’t know what was going on in her life (or mind) to push her as far as she went – and we don’t know how far any of us could go.

So if you do feel yourself edging toward a potential romantic disaster, how can you talk yourself down? “Reach out to people, because the impulse is to separate, isolate and disconnect yourself,” Dr. Kerner says. He imagines Lisa Nowak’s journey like this: “She drove without interruption, probably building up this internal monologue; she didn’t even pause to go to the bathroom.” Getting out of your own head is imperative: connect with friends, family or help-lines to gain perspective on what you’re feeling.

Should you ever be unfortunate enough to have a break-up breakdown, you don’t want the running joke among your friends to be, “What was the difference between you and that astronaut?”

“Depends.”