Saturday, December 13, 2008

IS ROMANTIC LOVE TRUE LOVE?

WHAT REALLY IS LOVE?

The spark of romantic love is far different than the love of long-term attachment.  What then is true love?  Are you looking for true love or just want sex?

Must passion lessen over time?  Is your passion is replaced with friendship or economic partnership?  It’s hard to sustain the high romance of courtship.  Money, mortgages, and children all can weaken your romance. 

Science has found where love lies in the brain and the chemical components that make you in love.  With the aid of MRI machine, it seems the ventral segmental area of the brain and the caudate nucleus are lit up by dopamine that triggers what we call LOVE. 

Being in love has an awful power.  Seratonin is the key transmitter.  Its imbalance results in a need for psychiatric medication like Prozac and Paxil. 

Some of us fall in love over and over again, each time you are caught in a runaway passion.  Why do you fall in love with whom you do?  Our roots of romantic love are tied up with intimacy and unconflictng comfort as a child.  Your brain gets engraved and you try to capture that feeling now as an adult.  Love takes us back to the just right feeling, the familiar comfortable sense that activates your buried memory 

Loving should aim for the happiness of your beloved to your own happiness.   Love cannot exist with jealousy, possessiveness, and perfectionism and over control.  The more you can overcome these traits the better lover you will become.

You choose a mate who looks attractive and healthy.  You follow your instincts.  You often will choose a mate who complements your genotype. 

Why doesn’t the passion of courting last?  Relationships break up often after four years,  the time it takes to raise the child you have.  The feeling of attachment takes over as you and your mate bond to raise a helpless infant.  If you can leave the child with sisters or friends, you may be free to meet another mate at the office and have more children The neurons kicking off the surge of dopamine becomes desensitized and need more to produce the high you had when dating.

Non-westerners have more cultural sanctions and social obligations.  The cultural expression of romantic love is not universal.  It is, for example, seen in India aw a dange4rous threat to a powerful caste system where marriages ar4e arrange to preserve bold lines and lineage. They still believe arranged marriages have a better chance to make it than love marriage.  Marriage is too important to leave it to chance.

As your marriage ages, you move from a dopamine activated state to an oxytocin-induced attachment.  Oxytocin is a hormone that makes you feel connected.  This hormone is high in long-term relationships.  You can raise your oxytocin level by making love, massaging and having enough orgasms, which makes your mate feel more attached to you.

Its possible in marriage to have an intimate and affectionate relationship without always having sexual desires.  When you care a lot for each other, are honest and open, you can have tremendous love for each other with minimum passion.

Passion can evaporate from you marriage when husband and wife become entirely preoccupied in their role as parents in a family.  If you spend even a ½ hour together without the children present, relaxing and discuss your feelings that you want to share, you might revitalize the sexual relationship.

Doing some activity together without the children can awaken the romantic aspect of your relationship.  It could be a walk, bike ride or shopping trip.  As long as you are alone together.  you can relate more as lovers than just mom and dad.   An overnight or long weekend at a nearby motel can energize into a sexual relationship.  If you struggle in your marriage, change the routine situation and have more passion in your marriage

Kissing moves energy through various charkas.  It embraces all your sense.  Novelty can also trigger your brain’s dopamine. Go for walks together and stimulate serotonin.  Share a hot fudge sundae at dinner to get your carbs up and stimulated dopamine.  Put some baby powder behind your ear and your mate will think of breeding.  Massage your mate’s shoulders.   Above all, don’t be quick to the draw.

Source: National Geographic, Feb. 2006

What do you think?  Your comments always appreciated.

Visit www.drneedles.com for more pertinent medical information on controversial medical subjects.

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