Mad Love

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."
- Nietzsche

Yes, I know that I was supposed to have continued the Disturbing the Disturbed series.
Yes, I know it's late.
Yes, I know that this post is unrelated to the series.

What's possibly more disappointing is that I'm not even really making a post now. My sister came across an article that she wanted me to talk about and since it was thematic with Valentine's Day, as well as the fact that there's SCIENCE in it.

The February 2012 Edition of the Australian Reader's Digest had an article entitled "Crazy in Love". Now, I'm not going to discuss the chemical reactions that make people fall in love - firstly, because it's been done to death, butmainly because while psychologists have decided that that takes between 90 seconds and 4 minutes to decide you fancy someone on a physical level (the domain of oestrogen and testesterone) it seems to discount the scenario where someone falls for someone's personality. Think about it - asexuals aren't interested in sex but some are interested in romance.

Not to mention the experiences of myself and friends that pretty much say "Appearance? Meh. Personality? Yay!" and it takes a lot longer than 4 minutes to get ahold of a person's personality.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the scientists are wrong, attraction does play a factor. I'm just saying that you have to take into account different sexualities beyond that of heterosexual and homosexual and that there are other ways of getting to the state of being in love.

(Also, Pride and Prejudice where it took the leads ages to fall for each other. Yes, I know it's a book. Do I care? Not really. There are real-life circumstances like it.)

Instead, I'm going to talk about what "love" does to a person on a chemical level once they are in love since people don't actually cover that very often.

Now... stuff from the article - this love applies to lovers and family love.

Helen Fisher, an antropologist, found that when people look at the picture of their beloved, their brains register an increase in activity in the primordial centre - the part that powers survival instincts and controls the release of dopamine.

Dopamine is that hormonone that is stimulated by chocolate and drugs - you know, addictive things. It suppresses seratonin, the mood stabilizer. Combined these guys cause craving, elation, energy, and focused attention(dopamine effects); and incessant thinking, and "involuntary irresistable ruminations" (lack of seratonine effects). This is similar to the effect of drugs.

Furthermore, in 2000 the University College London's Neurobiology lab found that romantic love disables the primal parts of the brain that help with social judgement - thus blinding them to faults.

So far you're probably thinking that you've heard this all, but wait! There's more!

You see, our brains aren't stupid - they know that we can't live blind to faults. Thus it adapts with the introduction of two new hormones: oxytoxin (in women) and vasopressin (in men)... the "cuddle hormones". :3 In women, ocytoxin not only strengthens the attachment between her and her beloved but actually turns back on the sections of her brain that were turned off.

In a note vaguely related to my series, the inability to secrete oxytoxin and thus feel empathy is related to sociopathy, psychopathy, narcissism and general manipulativeness.

When tested on animals vasopressin made the males "turn from their wanton ways" (*giggle*) and become protective of their loved ones.

This article ties in nicely with all those marriage advice things that say that the best way for couples to stay together is by doing new things (increasing dopamine) and by being affectionate (increasing vasopressin and oxytoxin). The reason I actually bothered reposting it was because it explains the chemicals behind staying in love too - too many reports and studies just hand-wave love as a necessary chemical reaction for human survival and eventually endes, which when coupled with the 50% (or so) divorce rate is a bloody depressing thought for a romantic like myself.

And yet people still fall in love and stay married until they die - so there's something they're not telling us.

Now, you can probably see why I chose the above quote. Yeah, there's some madness in love, but it's the reason (when it kicks in) that actually helps it work.