Love-The Flip side

LOVE- THE FLIP SIDE

When I said I was going to write a blog, I was advised by people to begin with something that I am an expert of. After 4 years of Mechanical Engineering, one could have easily mistaken me to be an expert in the field. Well, I am definitely not one. But then, after a bit of thought into it, I had no other choice than to write about LOVE. At least I am an expert in here. Not a love doctor, if you are looking for one, but just another person who gives thought to why he failed so many times in love.

Having been through all the usual euphoria-depression cycle, I wanted to know what was causing me to fall in love again and again. I ventured into the chemical side of love, which more than any doubt clears the fact that love is just another bodily function.  All people do is deny this fact and imagine love to be something else, most commonly divine. The idea might sound heresy, but it is the truth. There is a chemical and logical side to love, from the way one selects his/her partner all the way to their relationship bonding after marriage.

I was shocked to know initially that even selection of partners had a vague logic. To be clearer, one needs to know what a LOVE MAP is.

The concept of LOVE MAP was introduced by a famous psychologist Mr. John Money. According to him the template for an ideal partner gets formed deeply within our brain with respect to two important traits. One is appearance and another is personality. Often researches have proved that one tends to select a partner who resembles his/her parents both in appearance and personality. Now I think it is time you guys go retro, think why you desired all those people you fell for. You will definitely find a pattern, a trait that you will find in your parents.

Now, if I say LOVE is nothing but just another bodily function, how many of you would accept it? The truth again is, yes. It is just another bodily function like hunger and sleep. The main theme of this post is to show you the flip side of love. Well, I am getting to it. The key lies deep within the brain, those little things called Hormones. To be more lucid, imagine yourself fancying a girl whom you have just seen. The initial attraction phase, though it sounds lewd, is called LUST. It is the physical attraction, which takes over instantly. If you do an MRI to your brain at that point, you would see two major hormones being released viz. Estrogen and Testosterone. Both these hormones influence the brain and takes over during the lust phase. 

Now, to a more practical application of all this knowledge, people usually tell they get really nervous or feel their heart racing like hell. Well, the science behind is the release of Adrenaline, the same hormone which is released during flight or fight scenarios.

Those hormones which keep you constantly in the thought of the partner are Dopamine and Serotonin. Another simple reason why you probably keep thinking of your partner is because the release of the above two hormones gives you the feel-good feeling. Hence, you tend to keep thinking about them. That probably explains why you had missed a meeting or forgot your lunch while you were in love. This is also the same reason why people have sleeplessness and hyper activity when in love.

Some people you might have seen often get obsessed with their partners. To be frank, I was obsessed with most of those girls I fell for. Though being obsessed is not a wonderful trait, you can attribute this also to hormones. Serotonin is the reason for this. With low levels of this hormone (people in love generally tend to have low levels), the get an OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) due to which they get obsessed with people, their partner in particular. Next time you keep texting your partner constantly, think about it. Do you have an OCD?

IS LOVE REALLY BLIND?

The sentence does hold true. In the initial phase of love, the attraction phase, people tend to lose their rational thinking as a result of the hormone release. Hence there is an overwhelming drive which fails us to recognize any flaws in our partner. Once the release of these hormones gets stopped, usually after about 2-3 years, there is the period when the relationship hangs in by a thread. From then, it all depends on the individuals on how they take it forward.    

DEPRESSION

The depression, which people usually associate with feelings of overwhelming sadness, a profound sense of loneliness is nothing but the lack of those feel-good hormones. An analogy to this could make you understand the idea easier. Say, if you are fed with a dessert after food, for a year and suddenly the dessert part alone is missing, there would a craving for it, even though the taste had been developed only a year ago. So, to come back to the old/neutral state of mind, it takes some time. This is similar to the period of depression when love is not reciprocated/lost.

I was one among that Shakespearean type lover. I was crazy in behind a girl and all I thought was love was beyond anything definable. The archetypal ‘she is my life’, ‘I will never forget her even after she moves away from me’ was all done and dusted when I read about the chemistry of love. If you are one who is in a relationship, just understand the chemistry behind it to reason out anything that happens between you. And if you are just another ‘SOUP’ boy, its okay, love, is after all a chemical reaction, a bodily function.