On true love

Yesterday I spent a few hours having a very interesting discussion about love with an equally interesting person. The definition of love as "a chemical imbalance in the brain" came up. Which of course led to the mention of oxytocin, and then we ended up reading some interesting articles that we found online. Here are some highlights from one of them:

In 2000, Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki of University College, London, located the areas of the brain activated by romantic love. They took students who said they were madly in love, put them into a brain scanner, and looked at their patterns of brain activity.

The results were surprising. For a start, a relatively small area of the human brain is active in love, compared with that involved in, say, ordinary friendship. “It is fascinating to reflect”, the pair conclude, “that the face that launched a thousand ships should have done so through such a limited expanse of cortex.” The second surprise was that the brain areas active in love are different from the areas activated in other emotional states, such as fear and anger. Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke.

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Love = a person snorting coke...

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Then there is attraction, or the state of being in love (what is sometimes known as romantic or obsessive love). This is a refinement of mere lust that allows people to home in on a particular mate. This state is characterised by feelings of exhilaration, and intrusive, obsessive thoughts about the object of one's affection. Some researchers suggest this mental state might share neurochemical characteristics with the manic phase of manic depression. Dr Fisher's work, however, suggests that the actual behavioural patterns of those in love — such as attempting to evoke reciprocal responses in one's loved one — resemble obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

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Love = a person with OCD, snorting coke...

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That raises the question of whether it is possible to “treat” this romantic state clinically, as can be done with OCD. The parents of any love-besotted teenager might want to know the answer to that. Dr Fisher suggests it might, indeed, be possible to inhibit feelings of romantic love, but only at its early stages. OCD is characterised by low levels of a chemical called serotonin. Drugs such as Prozac work by keeping serotonin hanging around in the brain for longer than normal, so they might stave off romantic feelings. (This also means that people taking anti-depressants may be jeopardising their ability to fall in love.) But once romantic love begins in earnest, it is one of the strongest drives on Earth. Dr Fisher says it seems to be more powerful than hunger. A little serotonin would be unlikely to stifle it.

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Love = a terminal disease, which can be treated in its early stages but as soon as it gets out of hand it becomes incurable... and a person with OCD, snorting coke

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Of course the usual questions arose: is love nothing more than a chemical reaction? or is there more to it than that? why do we love certain people and not others? I love how this article compares love to a person with OCD, and snorting coke. Sometimes that is how it makes you feel. After all, people (myself included) have done some pretty stupid things in the name of "love."

But, I think this article is only discussing one part of love. The more physical, infatuation-type love. They also mentioned more long-term love which they called, so coldly and clinically, "pair bonding," but something was definitely missing. I believe in love. I believe that when you really love someone, they change you. You feel like a better person just being with them. You care less about yourself and your own happiness than you do about them and theirs. You are willing to sacrifice what you want for what they want, or for what is best for the two of you as a couple.

I also believe in soul-mates. Not, perhaps, in the way the article mentions them, in that you have a certain "type" of person that you are born to love. Nor really in the way that some people think of them--that there is one person on this Earth meant to be with you, and you have to find that person. Rather, to me a soul mate is a person whose soul seems to resonate with yours. Someone that you can look at and know what they are thinking, or with whom you can communicate without either of you ever saying a word. Someone that "gets" you on a fundamental level. A soul mate is a person that, when you are walking down the street, or in a science museum, or surfing the web, and you see something that you find interesting or fascinating, they are the first person you think of because you know that they will find it just as interesting or fascinating or entertaining as you do. It is a person that completes you as a person, without whom you feel like a part of yourself is missing.

I have long since believed that falling in love is not about finding a perfect person, but about finding a person that you love perfectly--so completely that you love the good and the bad and the strengths and the weakness equally. No one is perfect--everyone has faults. True love should not lead you to believe the object of your affections is perfect and free of weakness. Rather, when you find true love with someone, you love them in spite of, or even because of these weaknesses, imperfections, and faults. You love the whole person, the package deal. (That's not to say, of course, that you don't want to encourage the person to work to overcome their weaknesses, and grow, and become a better person... but you don't love them any less for their shortcomings.) I believe this because, at least to a degree, I have experienced it.

Following perusal of the above mentioned article, we were discussing soul mates. I opened the Firefox search bar to locate the part of the article that mentioned soul mates. So I could recall how they were defining it. It wasn't until much later that I noticed the search bar was still open, displaying my earlier search:

Find: soulmate

If only it were that easy for everyone.