Tuesday, May 31, 2005

It's like you're a drug...

Oh, how right Kelly Clarkson is when she sings that... Well, another study has come out talking about how love makes you crazy, especially new love. You know, that giddy, we just started dating feeling. The time when you virtually fall off the face of the planet, friends and family hearing neither hide nor hair of you in weeks. When all you can think about is calling, talking to, emailing, etc., etc., etc. the person that you are newly dating. Well, apparently, new romantic love does not activate the sexual centers in the brain as one might think, but in fact activates the part of the brain that is generally associated with "hunger, thirst or drug craving." And when this love deepens beyond the initial attraction and honeymoon stage into something deeper, then areas "deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term attachment" are activated.

The research helps explain why love produces such disparate emotions, from euphoria to anger to anxiety, and why it seems to become even more intense when it is withdrawn.

Hmmm, so absence may make the heart grow fonder. There's also an interesting bit about how the brain basically goes through a state of drug-like withdrawal when one is dumped.

I find it ironic, then, that after reading that article, I came across this one talking about how love has ruined the institution of marriage.

Love is hard. Love is painful. Love makes you crazy. Love makes you sad. Love can give the soul the greatest joy that it can ever experience. And when that is experienced, it can outweigh everything else. When you find it, you want to hold onto it forever. When you lose it, the world has come to an end... until you learn that you can rediscover it if you search hard enough.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is why everyone should just have free sex and lots of drugs.