What exactly is love?

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Proud Man - 26 Mar 2007 08:00 GMT

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2265876.ece

What exactly is love?

Falling in love may feel like a meeting of hearts and minds. But
really it's a kind of temporary insanity driven by hormones,
scientists say. Julia Stuart reports

Published: 13 February 2007

Love can be divided into three entities: lust, romance and attachment,
according to anthropologist Dr Helen Fisher, who has been studying the
subject for 32 years. These three brain systems can operate in any
order and in any combination. You can fall in love with someone before
you sleep with them; you can become deeply attached to somebody and
then fall in love with them; and you can have a sexual relationship,
fall in love and then become deeply attached.

Lust is a craving for sexual gratification, which you can feel for a
whole range of people. Those caught up in romantic love focus all
their attention on the object of their affection. Not only do they
crave them, but they are highly motivated to win them, they
obsessively think about them and become extremely sexually possessive.
Perhaps illogically, if things go wrong. they are attracted to them
even more. During this state the brain is driven by dopamine, a
neurotransmitter central to the reward system.

Romantic love is much more powerful than sex drive, says Dr Fisher, of
Rutgers University, New Jersey. And she believes it to be a drive,
rather than an emotion. "It doesn't have any facial expression, it's
very difficult to control and it's one of the most powerful neural
systems that has evolved," she says.

The third brain system is attachment - that sense of calm and security
you can feel for a long-term partner. It is associated with the
hormones vasopressin and oxytocin, which are probably responsible for
the sense of peacefulness and unity felt after having sex. Holding
hands also drives up oxytocin levels, as does looking deeply into your
loved one's eyes, massage, and simply sitting next to them.

LOVE CAN IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH

Love can be good for your health. If you are married, or happily
cohabiting, in the long term you will suffer from less depression and
live significantly longer than those who are single, divorced or
widowed. But to get the full health benefits, you have to pick the
correct partner, argues Dr Raj Persaud in Simply Irresistible, the
Psychology of Seduction.

The lowest mortality rates were found in those who were named by their
partner as a key source of emotional support and closeness, but who
themselves actually named someone else as the one special person in
their life.

For both husbands and wives, the worst mortality rate was found in
partners neither of whom named the other as the special person on whom
they relied for emotional support and closeness.

BAD LOVE

Choose the wrong partner and you could be in trouble. Research
suggests that an unhappy marriage raises your chances of developing
clinical depression by around 30 per cent. Women who divorce are 60
per cent more likely to get heart disease in later life than those who
stay married, according to research from Texas University.

A 10-year study of around 10,000 men and women in the Journal of
Marriage and the Family found that the danger is gender-specific:
among men, marital loss has a negligible effect on the risk of heart
disease. The reason for this is not clear, though it may be that women
tend to value themselves more in terms of family relationships, while
men value themselves primarily in terms of their occupation.

A study of 101 divorced women by the US-based Veterans Affairs group
found that marital dissolution can significantly increase their risk
of suffering mental and physical health problems. The risk is highest
among younger women who described their marriages as "harmonious".

LOVE IS BLIND

Scientists have discovered that certain parts of the brain become
deactivated when we're in love, including areas linked with negative
emotions, planning, critical social assessment, the evaluation of
trustworthiness and fear.

Biological studies have found that this phase of reduced cognitive
function, during which faults are ignored, can last from one to two
and a half years. This temporary state of delusion has a vital human
function. If we immediately saw all our partner's faults, we would be
less likely to form a stable relationship in which to produce
children.

And it is just as well that it is short-lived: romantic love is has an
enormous metabolic cost. "I think romantic love evolved to enable
people to focus their mating energy onto just one person at a time,
thereby conserving mating time and energy," says Dr Fisher. "It's not
conducive to real life to live in this state for 20 years because
you're distracted by it, you can't think of other things, you forget
what you are doing, you probably don't eat properly, you certainly
don't sleep well and you go through highs and lows."

Problems can arise when the pink mist eventually lifts and we see our
loved one for what they really are - as flawed as we are. It may to
wise to wait until brain function is fully restored before making a
decision to marry. By then you may well feel sufficiently attached to
your partner to put up with their irritating habits. "I think
attachment evolved to tolerate someone at least long enough to rear a
child together," says Dr Fisher. But don't dismay that the best bit is
over once lucidity returns. Couples can feel peaks of romantic love
throughout their relationship.

WHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKEN-HEARTED?

Death rates rise significantly after the death of a spouse. In one of
the largest scientific studies of its kind, the Population Research
Unit at the University of Helsinki found that mortality rates were
more than three times higher for men compared to women.

For both genders they are at their highest during the first week after
the death of the spouse, and then they drop slowly but steadily during
the following six months. The unit also found that the number of
people dying as a result of blocked arteries around the heart rose
dramatically after the death of a spouse.

"So it appears that the hearts of men, predominantly, often cannot
cope with the grief of losing a life partner," says Dr Raj Persaud.
"These men are literally dying from a broken heart. One theory is that
the grief of losing someone as close to you as a marriage partner is
one of the greatest strains it is possible to face, and this enormous
stress has a direct and deleterious effect on your physical health, in
particular the cardiovascular system. Women perhaps cope with the
stress of grief better than men because expressing emotional turmoil,
venting distress, confiding in others and using formal resources such
as psychotherapy are all more feminine strategies. Men tend to remain
silent and keep feelings of distress and anxiety to themselves."

LOVE HURTS, LITERALLY

Dr Helen Fisher and her team gave MRI scans to 17 people who were
happy in love and 15 who had been rejected in love. The latter had
been brokenhearted for an average of 63 days. In this group, they
found activity in a region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens,
which has a high number of dopamine receptors. "It suggests that when
you have been dumped you love that person more," says Dr Fisher.
Activity was also found in parts of the brain associated with
risk-taking, physical pain, obsessive-compulsive behaviour,
controlling anger and theory of mind - imagining what the other person
is thinking.

"It made me understand a little bit more about why people become so
depressed," says Dr Fisher. "You're intensely in love, you have just
been rejected, but you are still in love, if not even more so, and you
are willing to take enormous risks. You are in physical as well as
psychological pain, you are obsessing about this person, you are
trying to control your anger and you're trying to evaluate what to do
next. You are in a very uncomfortable state. No wonder so many crimes
of passion take place."

DEATH BY MARRIAGE

If the stress of arranging a wedding doesn't kill you, there is a
higher-than-average chance of keeling over immediately after you've
got hitched. For both men and women mortality rates rise in the period
just after the wedding day, according to a recent survey of over
12,000 German adults.

The stress of a new situation may be a factor, as well as a profound
change in living circumstances. "Marriage is often associated with a
geographic move for at least one partner," says Dr Persaud. "The
spouse who moved may have had to cut emotional networks and change
social interaction patterns and daily routines. However, after two
years, the research suggests, married partners adapt to their new life
and the mortality rate starts to improve compared to unmarried
people."

'Til death do us part

* A study published in the Journal of Sex Research found that
attractive people flirt more, even those with partners.

* Researchers found that one in four marriages continues because
partners couldn't find a better alternative. 'Staying together for the
sake of the children' was the most common reason.

* Women generally seek status, occupational prestige and intelligence
in a male partner, while men, in general, seek physical attractiveness
in women.

* Research suggests that to help maintain a successful relationship
you should say five positive things to your partner for each negative
statement about them.

* When scientists gave MRI scans to 32 people who were madly in love
and showed them a picture of their partner, it activated the part of
the brain that responds when you feel the rush of cocaine.

* Obstacles heighten romantic love. If you fall in love with the
person who lives next door, and they're happily married, you could be
suffering for decades.

* Researchers found that the first three minutes of a married couple's
argument indicate whether they will get divorced within six years.
Those who engage in critical statements such as "you always" or "you
never" are more likely to split up.

* A study of 37 middle-aged men found that lower testosterone levels
were associated with better marital satisfaction and higher quality
parent-adolescent relationships. Careers which encourage
competitiveness in men drive up testosterone levels.

* Unmarried women have a significantly worse death rate from cancer
than married women.

* Although research has shown that marriage is the greatest source of
conflict as well as being the greatest source of satisfaction, the
married are generally much happier than the unmarried.

'Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love' by Dr Helen
Fisher is published in America by Henry Holt. 'Simply Irresistible,
the Psychology of Seduction and How to Catch and Keep your Perfect
Partner' by Dr Raj Persaud is published by Bantam Press, priced £12.99

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Hannele - 26 Mar 2007 08:12 GMT

My own experience suggests the following:

SEX IS RATIONAL: A WAY OF LEARNING FROM THE OTHER ONE

The following applies at least to flirting without actually going to
bed.
It is a question of sexuality connected to liking or admiring someone,
to a positive kind of social relationship.

DIFFERENT NEEDS CAUSE DIFFERENT LIKINGS

The roles of things in life and in our picture of the world vary
according to what we ourselves are like, what our strengths,
weaknesses, role and situation of life are, and according to what are
our power relationships in each thing compared to each one of all the
other persons, what is our effect to the whole, in which respects are
we (our life) based on each thing, and so on.
Different individuals have different identities and different things
are beneficial to the different individuals:
* different abilities
* different environment
-> different things are needed for development and because of this,
different things make sense to the individual

In addition there are the different likings:
* personal characteristics
* one's ability to notice things
* needs, things that are lacking and meeting those needs
* sense of health!
* habits
* which things bring the meaningfulness to life,...

So: different men like different women.

SEX AND THE WISH TO COPY GOOD WAYS OF DOING THINGS

Men think that women look charming because of sex. But they are
mistaken: Women look attractive because they are more intelligent than
men, use better ways of doing things. Sexual attraction is at least
partly a question of a natural way of learning.

There is a resemblance between the bravures of men and the ordinary
ways of doing of women. So men have a lot to learn from women.

Sex brings lots of influence from the other person's way to live and
do things and so gives one the possibility to learn new ways of doing
things by copying from the model. Socialisation serves as a natural
helping aid in learning.

Sexual attraction is the greater the better the other one is at
something that one wants/needs to learn about the art of living.
Health, naturality, balance, good healthy ways of doing things, an
unified whole,...
The wish to develop to a healthy direction that is positive for happy
life.

As long as one is moral, sexuality is positive for happy life. And
these thoughts mean that it is also benefical.

THE WAY TO LEARN FROM SEX

So as one is sexual, one should pay attention to the influence that
one gets about the other person's ways of moving and ways to do things
and try to via them understand, like is natural for humans and
animals, the mode (eyes, hearing, thinking, memory, body coordination,
emotions, atmospheres, social things,...) and way (rythm,
structure,...) of doing. Via learning these balances of divisions of
attention and effort one can learn the ways of doing of the other
person and so her/his talents and skills. By making a combination of
these two ways to live, one's own and that of the other person, by
using the unified understanding of both, one can combine the good
sides of both and leave those bad sides away for which the other one
has strenghts to replace them with.

If there is something which is of no use but still interests you,
check whether it can enrichen other areas of life, for example by
giving sensed models to thinking, so that there is a point to an
interest in it anyway. Feelings and atmospheres are valuable in our
functioning. Also, a human being is basically a physical being, all
the actions being intertwined around the physical body, so keeping the
body fit and well functioning keeps the whole human fit, balanced,
healthy, happy and well functioning. We are also social beings, pack
animals. What our social environment is like and how the pack works
affects enermously our lives. Our whole environment consists of
humans, of the human pack, so it really makes sense to pay lots of
attention to social things too. But on the other hand, we need also
planning, hard rationality in order to get things work well, so there
is a point to most seemingly irrational interests in the good sides of
others. Those which do not make sense, are a consequense of a thought
error. But remember that the needs of people differ. What one has a
lot, one doesn't necessarily need from the other. So someone can bear
a person who would be totally unsuitable to another one. And a person
with other skills than yourself can benefit from other good sides of
others then what you yourself are capable of. Like for example whether
one has learned this way from learning from sex or not - that can make
an enermous difference to one's learning ability. One should just
rememeber that the more skills one has, the more one can influence
things and the more important it is to be responsible, moral: to think
of the consequences of one's actions, to carry responsibility about
them.

LEARNING MAKES THE ENJOYMENT PERMANENT

Learning doesn't remove the enjoyment from sex: by learning you get
permanent the good feeling: it comes partly from the feeling of
strenght and ease of the other one and partly from a well functioning
social relationship - that is one thing to learn too, so that good
feeling too will become a permanent enjoyment to your life!

WHAT IF THE STRUCTURES ARE TOO DIFFICULT TO BEGIN WITH

If the structures that the other person uses are too difficult for
you, that is partly a consequence of her/his ways of doing: if you
would adobt the same ways of doing, especially the same mode and
division of forces and attention, you would get an as big capacity as
the other one has. Remember the thinking part and the use of forces
that the other one uses in thinking: especially what is the role of
the sense of sight in conceiving things, all its roles in thinking.
Also, remember to value atmospheres, beauty and sensitivity. But what
if your memory isn't enough to remember these complex structures, then
use your memory for nature landscapes, placing the picture to be
remembered above the complexity of a nature landscape and using a
similiar way of remembering than for the nature view. That should
increase your memory and capacity to handle such structures to
manyfold. Also, in order to remember the mode, use your memory for
atmospheres, sensations and experiences and not the memory for already
learned school like things.

The ability to use the senses as a helping aid in thinking and an
understanding of the connection between physical and psychological(?)
helps one to learn from sex. Also an understanding about the role of
modes in developing abilities helps one to learn from sex. Read the
texts Learning from those much above one's skill level and Developing
abilities.

COMPARING ONESELF TO OTHER HUMANS

DEVELOPING SKILLS

If we pay attention to different sides of things, we get a different
perspective to the world, where different things get emphazized in
perception, as a base of practical action (knowledge) and as goals.
Our understanding of the world, of causes and consequences and of the
importance of things in life, creates this emphazis together with our
mode of action (spreading of attention, how our different functions
get emphazized in living and doing), our habits, skills (which
determine which ones are easiest and most succesful routes to our
goals) and getting socialized towards the perspectives, modes, values
and ways of doing of other persons.

Being talented in something means that one is on the right kind of
mode for that kind of things to succeed and pays natural attention to
the right things (the essentials, the point in things) in a right way.

One can learn by copying from another by emphatizing, taking the other
person as a model for oneself, noticing the essential and putting
things into practise in a way that takes into account the differences
in personal strenghts (so the base for action is a little different
for each person) and doing things based on one's own rythm,
understanding and true motivational ground (emotions that are not
based on social position, technical things or theory-based knowledge).

Balance the whole. Do things in healthy ways that take the whole into
account.

All healthy human beings have the same natural functional parts which
join together to form the whole.
Different persons have different strenghts. One can emphazize the
functions differently and get wholes that are balanced differently.
One cal learn from others new balances.
The most healthy balance is the goal.

The fascinating tale like books of Carlos Castaneda - an
anthropologist from Peru - tell about indian shamanism: about the
skill of changing radically one's way of perceiving the world.
Shamanism at large may be connected to using ways of perception and
communication that are natural to human beings - like emphaty,
instincts in a nature environment etc.

If one loves or really admires someone, sexual contact with her or him
is a question of likings. So it is a question of what one needs.
Fullfilling that need (those needs) makes one's all abilities
including the working ability better.

Reply to this Message

MCP - 26 Mar 2007 08:33 GMT

> http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2265876.ece
>
> What exactly is love?

A Hardon??? :-)

> Falling in love may feel like a meeting of hearts and minds. But
> really it's a kind of temporary insanity driven by hormones,
[quoted text clipped - 213 lines]
> the Psychology of Seduction and How to Catch and Keep your Perfect
> Partner' by Dr Raj Persaud is published by Bantam Press, priced £12.99

Reply to this Message

connor_a@hotmail.com - 26 Mar 2007 08:52 GMT

> >http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2265876.ece
>
> > What exactly is love?
>
> A Hardon??? :-)

Very true MCP, I'm gonna send a hustler mag with my "love" all over
its sticky pages to hyerdahl as a present of my appreciation to her
soc.men services.

OLOL.

Reply to this Message

connor_a@hotmail.com - 26 Mar 2007 08:50 GMT

> http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2265876.ece
>
> What exactly is love?

I wouldnt believe anything a woman says.

"Love" is an exchange: MANipulation to have men perform hard yakka in
exchange "for a womans love".

That is the price some men are willing to pay (their own lives) in
exchange for "love".

"Love" by modern standards is therefore sexist to the core since
female ownership of "love" f.cks men over. So who would ever "Love" a
c.nt that plans to live longer and prosper from the deaths of men???

You gotta be kiddin'.. let me play with lego's instead. ;-)

Reply to this Message

Dustbin - 26 Mar 2007 21:43 GMT

> http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2265876.ece
>
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> really it's a kind of temporary insanity driven by hormones,
> scientists say. Julia Stuart reports

Neurotrpins rule okay!

D.

> Published: 13 February 2007
>
[quoted text clipped - 209 lines]
> the Psychology of Seduction and How to Catch and Keep your Perfect
> Partner' by Dr Raj Persaud is published by Bantam Press, priced £12.99

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Family Forum / Marriage / Divorce / March 2007

What exactly is love?