Flaming Hot, Flaming Out or Flaming Over the Long Term
Posted: Monday, January 23, 2012
by Christofer French
Rain Dancer Associates, LLC
We have all been bemused by those initial feelings, those in between states, and the longer term inner bewildering biochemical stages. And “Lust” has beguiled us all in various ways at various times in our lives. Using ourselves as neuroscientific experiments, we can all look back at so many various states we have been in. The way sexual maturity comes upon us and turns our young personalities into new people. The way lust explodes on us and bowls us over and possesses us. Then the way things become modified, changed, different – good but not as crazed, warm but not as hot, loving but more serious. We all can characterize these things from our personal experiences.
· the brand new sex and the obsessions
· the funny cute things that you say to each other, and
· the big question floating around: “Will this go beyond this?”
I mean the totality of what is going on in a new relationship. It is important to actually see yourself in a NEW RELATIONSHIP because often they FAIL, not because they were not a good match, but because each of you got burnt in the cauldron of the new relationship.
As neuroscience starts giving names to our feelings, and describing our actions as impulses and hormonal states, we start to see how Brain Chemistry may be a better way to understand the processes of love, and why we can often be confused at the elemental level, but also be enlightened by those changing states of brain chemistry.
Neuroscience Helps What Used to be Just Mystifying
Studies in neuroscience involved chemicals that are present in the brain and might be involved when people experience love. These chemicals include: nerve growth factor, testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin.
ü Adequate brain levels of testosterone seem important for both human male and female sexual behavior. This covers the initial sexual adventure.
ü Dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin are more commonly found during the attraction phase of a relationship.
ü Oxytocin and vasopressin seemed to be more closely linked to long term bonding and relationships characterized by strong attachments.
The conventional view in biology that there are two major drives in love —sexual attraction and attachment. Attachment between adults is presumed to work on the same principles that lead an infant to become attached to his or her mother or father– or both.
The chemicals triggered that are responsible for passionate love and long-term attachment love seem to be more particular to the activities in which both persons participate rather than to the nature of the specific people involved.
“Lust” is a biochemical state more than a religious/moral term
Anthropologist Helen Fisher adds lust to the experience of love. Lust exposes people to others, and is the initial passionate sexual desire that promotes mating, and involves the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and estrogen. These effects rarely last more than a few weeks or months.
“Three Flavours” – Really Separate Phenomena
Scanning the brains of people in love is also helping to refine science's grasp of love's various forms. Helen Fisher, a researcher at Rutgers University, and the author of a new book on love, suggests it comes in three flavours: lust, romantic love and long-term attachment. There is some overlap but, in essence, these are separate phenomena, with their own emotional and motivational systems, and accompanying chemicals. These systems have evolved to enable, respectively, mating, pair-bonding and parenting.
Trust Lust for only awhile. Don’t Trust Lust Long Term
Lust, of course, involves a craving for sex. Jim Pfaus, a psychologist at Concordia University, in Montreal, says the aftermath of lustful sex is similar to the state induced by taking opiates. A heady mix of chemical changes occurs, including increases in the levels of serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin and endogenous opioids (the body's natural equivalent of heroin). “This may serve many functions, to relax the body, induce pleasure and satiety, and perhaps induce bonding to the very features that one has just experienced all this with”, says Dr Pfaus.
Romantic Love is another State
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. Characterized by feelings of exhilaration, and oh those strange 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 behavioral patterns of those in love — such as attempting to evoke reciprocal responses in one's loved one — resemble obsessive compulsive disorder (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. For discussion purposes, OCD is characterized by low levels of a chemical called serotonin. In considering possible treatments, Drugs such as Prozac work by keeping serotonin hanging around in the brain for longer than normal, so they might stave off romantic feelings.
Romantic Love in Earnest
(This also means that people taking anti-depressants may be jeopardizing 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.
Wonderful though it is, romantic love is unstable — not a good basis for child-rearing. But the final stage of love, long-term attachment, allows parents to co-operate in raising children. This state, says Dr Fisher, is characterized by feelings of calm, security, social comfort and emotional union.
Looking for the One? You are looking for “Attachment”
Things can get complicated. “You can feel deep attachment for a long-term spouse, while you feel romantic love for someone else, while you feel the sex drive in situations unrelated to either partner.” This independence means it is possible to love more than one person at a time, a situation that leads to jealousy, adultery and divorce — though also to the possibilities of promiscuity and polygamy, with the likelihood of extra children. As we all know from possible personal experience, a powerful TV drama or an Epic Tale from the movies, things can get complicated. Of course, this makes us come to a conclusion that we were not built to be “happy”, but we were sure built to “reproduce”. “We were not built to be happy but to reproduce.” This could be thought of in a different way too. If we are not “happy”, we can still function in the world, and even if we are unfaithful, we are still functioning in keeping the human populace thriving.
Genders Look at things Differently
The stages of love vary somewhat between the sexes. Lust, for example, is aroused more easily in men by visual stimuli than is the case for women. This is probably why visual pornography is more popular with men. And although both men and women express romantic love with the same intensity, and are attracted to partners who are dependable, kind, healthy, smart and educated, there are some notable differences in their choices. Men are more attracted to youth and beauty, while women are more attracted to money, education and position. When an older, ugly man is seen walking down the road arm-in-arm with a young and beautiful woman, most people assume the man is rich or powerful.
Importance of Physical Contact and Affection
In “A General Theory of Love”, three professors of psychiatry provide an overview of the scientific theories and findings relating to the role of the Limbic System in love, attachment and social bonding. They propose that our nervous systems are not self-contained, but rather demonstrably attuned to those around us and those with whom we are most close.
Limbic Resonance
This empathy, which they call “limbic resonance” is a capacity which we share, along with the anatomical characteristics of the limbic areas of the brain, with all other mammals. Their work builds on previous studies of the importance of physical contact and affection in social and cognitive development. The studies by Harlow which demonstrated the biological consequences of isolation in rhesus monkeys went a long way in showing how other studies on feeling, touching, cooing, stroking and cuddling all have important parts in establishing “limbic resonance.
As we learn more about the complexities of the occurrences in our brains, and how our brains connect with our bodies, we will hopefully be less inclined to make important decisions about our romantic partners, and our own feelings that are also based upon the underlying biochemical actors and how they influence our sentiments, affections, commitments and alliances that we build. The more conscious we become with all of these issues, the more knowledgeable and mature we can be as we struggle our way through the powerful forces we call sex and romance.
http://www.oxytocin.org/oxytoc/love-science.html
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Yes, you are right...men and women "see" things differently when it comes to sex, romance, and attachments. Great job explaining why things do not always work out the way people think they will.
Your knowledge of the subject matter is extensive. Too bad I didn't understand this biological fact while I was young..I am.laughing now. It sure would have made for better relationships.
The only thing I've never understood is 'why' men peak young, and women in their thirties, it makes no sense in the realm of marriage. Oh well, God must have a great sense of humor where romance is concerned.Women in their thirties is a way of extending the relationship. Or the tendency for certain women to peak in their thirties made relationships last longer, which caused more children to be born to those kinds of matches, which built in that tendency more than any other.Thanks for explaining that, now it makes sense.
By the way: I want to thank you for the 'geneology' comment a while back, because you and the rh neg thing sent me on a search...I cannot say what I found yet, but it was SHOCK AND AWE...I will have to prove my research, but thanks to you, I now know where I came from...unbelievable stuff. From one ancestor you are right about N Germany thing; the other things I found "knocked my socks off"...I thought I was just a hick from the mtns....lol
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