Love Under a Microscope

smooth wombat writes "As today is one of the top five marketing-induced spending days, the obvious question is, what is love? Anthropologist Helen Fisher studied the brain's circuitry and found that the brain sees romantic love as a reward similar to chocolate, money or drugs. Does this mean that the mystery of love is less magical now that science has studied it under the microscope? According to Dr Fisher: 'You can know every ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and you still sit down and eat that chocolate cake and it's wonderful,' she said. 'In the same way, you can know all the ingredients of romantic love and still feel that passion.'"

Comments

there are two types of love

[circletimessquare]

1. the traditional romantic-type love, a crush. a person can't stop thinking about another person, many times a minute even, to the point of mental distress. this is very definitely like addiction

2. long-term love. this is when you operate on a day-to-day basis with the other person as if you were a unit, and you can finish each other's sentences and such. you don't think of the other person constantly, you just coexist with them fluidly (albeit with a certain level of conflict). if the person were to leave or die, you would experience great stress, as if you had lost a limb

i think evolution set this up pretty well. romantic love is the almost gravitational chemically-driven attachment you have with someone else that allows for the binding of two organisms together socially. then, as the chemicals subside, you are left with permanent neurogical patterns and structures in both organisms such that you function as a social unit

good design, i think, albeit with unavoidable failures such as:
1. chemically bonding with someone who does not like you (stalking, obsession), your classic unrequited love
2. ongoing long-term conflict that does not resolve, where you are bound to someone you have serious differences of opinion with. classic marriage counseling fodder and irreconiable differences divorce papers issues