If life is chemistry, then LOVE and EMOTION is also chemistry. We know that different emotions are triggered by specific chemical reactions that occur in the brain, although we certainly don’t experience love as a bundle of brain circuits firing away in our head. Instead, we experience or ‘feel’ the attractiveness, the warmth, the kindness, the beauty, and also the pain, of love with intense joy, passion, tenderness, hurtfulness, and jealousy. When you meet someone for the first time that you find interesting or attractive, your brain produces a feel-good chemical (serotonin). If the feeling is returned, and you develop a romantic interest with this person, the brain creates a different chemical response (dopamine). A third chemical reaction (oxytocin) is associated with long-term attachment, such as a parent-child or husband-wife bond. All three of these emotions – attraction, romance, and attachment – produce, in us, different feelings of joy, happiness, passion, and contentment. (see Helen Fisher’s insightful book: Why We Love.) But there is also a flip side. When things go wrong, when we suddenly break off an intense romance, or dissolve a long-standing relationship, we suffer the difficult pain of jealousy, hurtfulness, confusion and loss. These aching emotions are equal in intensity to the positive joys and passions of love, and can cause profound sadness and distress. Painful emotions are also associated with chemical reactions in the brain. All of these emotions, taken together, form an elaborate dance of courtship and intimacy that can often feel overwhelming. But the payoff is spectacular. If we are successful, it means we are headed for long-term joy and contentment, and perhaps the creation of future offspring. When it comes to love, people across the world share the same kinds of intense, emotional, experiences. Learning to cope with these extreme emotions is part of what it means to be human. They are part of our evolutionary history, part of the basic instincts that have been passed on genetically from one generation to the next. What makes us care deeply about some people and not others? Why are we instinctively attracted to certain people and less interested in others? Our unique differences and tastes as individuals determine our likes and dislikes; this is as true of the people we choose to be with as it is of our taste in music, food, or a dozen other interests. Forming a loving relationship sometimes requires years of shared experience. On the other hand, parents who see their newborn for the first time love their baby instantaneously, and without condition or qualification. This is a kind of love that lasts a lifetime, a sublime contentment without equal. This immediate and intense attachment is necessary because human infants are completely helpless until they can walk, and because our parents would consider killing us, if not at the age of two, then certainly during adolescence!
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 16:55:34 +0000
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