Romantic relationships make lots of totally normal people very unhappy, to the point where perfectly healthy young people kill themselves over romantic rejection or kill partners for whatever reason. Learning how to do romantic relations is painful, and when it's not painful for a person, they usually experience the pain later when they get old or fall in with a terrible partner.

So, your example of the happiness / awareness tradeoff really applies to everyone. It probably applies to ancient myths like Adam+Eve, Prometheus etc. too. From history it is clear that seeking awareness at the risk of existential discomfort is something that people do.