My Chemical Romance--might as well'a face it, we're addicted to love!

At some point, I experienced a kind of "Blank Slate Phenomenon", where-in I have ceased to believe in anything; love, god, and the assorted personal beliefs I have accumulated over the last 24 years of existence have all evaporated into an ethereal haze. Or would have, if I believed in the ethereal.

Feeling thus detached and emptied, I now turn to science and occasionally, the avant garde viewpoints of my quirkier friends.

My tentative plan is to collect bits and pieces of facts and findings, viewpoints and theories--and retain just the bits that ring truest to me. Then, I suppose I shall cobble them together into a haphazard, hackneyed personal belief system.

More on that later--for now, let us discuss the first challenger I face on this philosophical quest; 'love actually'.

Everyone experiences 'lust at first sight'--it takes under five minutes for your brain to utilize visual and aural cues to determine a person's genetic compatibility, current state of fertility etc.

From there on out, it's all about chemistry--literally!

After your brain has determined that the person you're looking at is genetically compatible, it encourages you to make a move by significantly increasing the levels of your respective sex hormone [estrogen or testosterone]. These chemicals are the basis for lust.

If the object of your desire is receptive to your advances, then you just might move into the attraction phase, which triggers a new set of chemicals.

Adrenaline makes your heart race, makes your breathing a little strained as you attempt to stop from giving yourself away, and gives you that "hard swallow" problem--your mouth is constantly producing saliva, so you reflexively swallow every now and then--but next time you find yourself alone with someone you're attracted to but haven't made an advance towards, try to pay close attention to the way your natural swallowing reflex has changed. If you are even slightly nervous or anticipatory, it will be a more noticeable gulp.

You can also look for these types of body language in the other person to determine if they might be attracted to you as well.

Dopamine triggers an intense rush of pleasure. When Robert Palmer said we were addicted to love, he hit the nail on the head. The dopamine response triggered in the brain during attraction is basically indistinguishable from the reaction triggered by use of cocaine!

And then we have good ol' serotonin, helping you fixate on the other person and make you a little more daring and impulsive.

Apparently, the heightened levels of the three aforementioned chemicals are also present in equal measure in the brains of people with Obsessive-Compulsive disorder.

Production of b-Phenylethylamine is also increased, and causes a prevailing euphoria that somewhat distorts perception [making it that much easier for you to ignore or justify your lover's flaws]. This can also attribute to compulsive behavior.

Because of the way attraction chemicals visibly alter behavior, psychologists will note that love bears a striking resemblance to substance abuse!

After 2 to 4 years, the hormone levels present during the first stages level off and lead into the final stage: attachment.

Though some might say it is more like chemical entrapment. In fact, orgasms are booby-trapped!

By now you may be feeling like the excitement has gone out of the relationship--you lust after each other less, your heart might not race when they step into the room. And yet, still, part of you wishes to remain with your partner. Why?

Oxytocin, also deemed "the cuddle hormone" is an attachment hormone that facilitates bonding. The more orgasms a couple experiences together, the closer they feel. Unfortunately, this can end up a little one-sided, if one partner does not experience orgasms for one reason or another. I imagine a good amount of relationships go south due to sexual dissatisfaction/dysfunction.

To further demonstrate the power of oxytocin, it is also released in women during pregnancy to allow the mother and child to bond.

Vasopressin is also released after sex and helps cement and upkeep the attachment.
An experiment was conducted on prairie voles, which mate for life and are one of the few mammals that have sex just for the hell of it. The males were given something to suppress vasopressin and almost immediately lost interest in their partner and did nothing to keep other male voles away from the female.

Having a lot of really great sex with the same person lately? Congratulations, you have or will soon be shanghaied into pair-bonding!

Surely then, any couple who engages in enough satisfying sex ought to last forever, yes? This would be true, if only we were prairie voles, or penguins or seahorses.

I feel that chemicals are only half the equation here, because otherwise, we'd be like penguins and seahorses and life, love, etc would be quite a bit simpler. If it were just about the chemicals, we'd mate, stick around just long enough to get the kids into middle school and move on to the next genetically suitable partner with no hard feelings.

But we're a complex and egotistical species who have cultivated a great deal of stigmas, taboos, pet peeves and preferences. In other words, while one side of the relationship coin is chemical, the other side is social. Infuriatingly, chaotically social.

Physical attraction is easy enough; size up your potential mate, and let your subconscious calculate their genetic compatibility. Done and done. If you're the love 'em and leave 'em type, this is as far as you go.

But if your brain just happens to be hardwired to 'mate for life' as it were, you've got a longer road ahead of you.

It becomes a game of 'social go-fish', where no one wins if either player doesn't have enough cards in their hand to match what the other person is asking for. Say "go fish" too many times and you'll find yourself stuck on the proverbial docks looking for those 'other fish in the sea' you've heard so much about.

Too many clashing social and personal beliefs create conflict, and conflict is a stressor. Your body's reaction to stress is a 'fight or flight' response. It shuts down your body's 'unnecessary functions' to devote more energy to getting out of the negative situation. These unnecessary functions are growth, the immune system, and most notably, reproduction.

So all those warm, fuzzy streams of lust-inducing and pair-bond enforcing chemicals get shut off. As we discussed previously, love can strongly resemble addiction--so now that the conflict has cut off your supply of hormones, you start going into withdrawals.

Now you're confused and irritable, and maybe a little ill, as your brain and body beg for another fix.

At the end of a minor conflict, or a singular instance of great conflict, the 'kiss and make up' method will reform or stabilize the pair-bond by uncorking a fresh bottle of hormones.

Repeat conflict, however, will act in the same way a nicotine patch effects a smoker. Your brain will slowly get less and less of the bonding chemicals until you are effectively weened from your partner.

So if you could just find your genetic and philosophical match, you'd be set for life, right?

Not necessarily.

With every generation comes more and more open-mindedness, acceptance and availability of information regarding foreign cultures, beliefs, scientific discoveries, etc. It allows us to consider many viewpoints, and for more flexible people, it allows us to change our minds about nearly anything.

As we grow and change with every passing day, month, year, we risk incompatibility with our partner. This is not to say that we should endeavor to stay the same--by no means do I advocate stagnation. This is merely pointing out a factor in relationship conflict. In other words, shit happens, and people change.

So people who can stay happily married for 60 years are either very solid in their matching belief sets, or have, by chance, grown in nearly identical ways.

Perhaps, though it is also possible for two people to be flexible, accepting and non-argumentative to the point that their individual growth dynamics wouldn't arouse conflict at any stage of the relationship, thus never compromising the pair-bond.

That would take two very, very emotionally mature people, I'm sure.

So what key elements really make up a perfect relationship--is there even such a thing? Or are we all destined to burn out like a spent candle somewhere around the 2 year mark?

Being that I'm neither psychologist nor biochemist, I can only speculate, conduct personal experiments and share the findings with you, my readers.

What conflicts have caused your relationships to burn out? What has kept you together? How do you feel about relationships in general?




Information referenced from the following articles;

http://www.youramazingbrain.org/lovesex/sciencelove.htm
http://samvak.tripod.com/lovepathology.html
http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/stress.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4669104.stm