So, You’re In Love?

 
Ok, some will give me Hell about this article on this day but this day is precisely why I posted it. 
 
Hold your calls of, “Curmudgeon, Scrooge and Grinch,” until the end as it has kind of a surprise finish!

February 13, 2007
Wall Street Journal
HEALTH JOURNAL
By TARA PARKERPOPE
 
Is It Love or Mental Illness?
They’re Closer Than You Think
February 13, 2007; Page D1
 
At some point in life, most of us will face a major mental-health crisis. It is called love.
 
Science is beginning to pay more attention to the chemical storm that romantic love can trigger in our brains. Recent studies of brain scans show that being in love causes changes in the brain that are strikingly similar to serious health problems like drug addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
 
This doesn’t mean love is bad for you. There is a growing body of research that shows how love and lasting relationships are an important determinant in long-term health. And the breakdown of a marriage or relationship can exact an enormous toll on a person’s well-being. But knowing that love can make you crazy — at least in the short term — gives us clues about how to improve relationships and rekindle the romantic love that first brought a couple together.
 
"The brain system involved in romantic love is powerful," says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at New Jersey’s Rutgers University who has led much of the research into love’s impact on the brain. "Everything that is going on in the brain, everything that happens with romantic love has a chemical basis."
 

HEALTH FORUM
Do you feel like the quality and health of your
relationship affects your overall health? Would you
like to recapture some of the feelings you
experienced in the early part of your relationship?
Join a discussion1 about love and mental health
with Tara Parker-Pope and other readers.

 
Dr. Fisher has studied love by looking at people’s brains using magnetic resonance imaging machines. A recent study also looked at 15 subjects who were deeply in love but were nursing broken hearts. While in the scanner, they viewed "neutral" pictures of someone they knew but for whom they didn’t have intense romantic feelings. Then they were shown a picture of their beloved.
 
Compared with the neutral photos, a lover’s picture triggers the dopamine system in the brain — the same system associated with pleasure and addiction. But the brain images of those scorned in love also give us clues as to why the breakdown of a relationship can trigger serious heal

th problems. The subjects dealing with failed relationships showed activity in the dopamine system — suggesting they maintained intense feelings for their loved one. But they also showed activity in brain regions associated with risk taking, controlling anger and obsessive compulsive problems. Notably, the scans showed activity in one part of the brain linked with physical pain.
 
Studies in Italy looking at blood levels of the brain chemical serotonin have suggested that love and mental illness have much in common. They compared serotonin levels of people recently in love; patients with obsessive compulsive disorder; and a "control" group that was neither. The researchers found that the lovestruck participants showed a drop in serotonin levels similar to those with obsessive-compulsive problems.
 
Using brain scans to study emotional changes is still a new science. But the images signal the potential toll of relationship problems. "It’s not a good combination," notes Dr. Fisher. "You’re feeling intense romantic love, you’re willing to take big risks, you’re in physical pain, obsessively thinking about a person and you’re struggling to control your rage. You’re not operating with your full range of cognitive abilities. It’s possible that part of the rational mind shuts down."
 
The dramatic changes evident on the brain scans may help explain bizarre behavior that is often associated with love. It can also help explain why marital problems are such a serious health worry. Studies show that people in troubled relationships are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and high blood pressure.
 
For most people, the intensity of romantic love fades with time and is replaced by powerful feelings of attachment. But understanding the brain patterns of the newly in love can teach us how to rekindle romance and boost the health of long-term relationships.
 
Studies show that trying something new with a spouse can go a long way toward reigniting love. In one study, couples were assigned a weekly activity they both found new and exciting — such as sailing or taking an art class. Another group did pleasant but familiar activities, such as dinner with friends. Based on answers to relationship tests, the couples doing new things showed far more improvement in the quality of their marriage after 10 weeks than couples who did the same things every week. The lesson is that sharing new experiences with your spouse appears to trigger changes in the brain that mimic the early days of being in love.
 
"We know that novelty and new experiences engage the dopamine system, and when it’s associated with your partner it creates a link with the partner," says Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at New York’s Stony Brook University who conducted the study. "It creates a dramatic increase in the sense of passion and romance.”
 

Write to: Tara Parker-Pope at healthjournal@wsj.com2
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117131067930406235.html
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=282
(2) mailto:healthjournal@wsj.com
Copyright 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

 

 
See, how bout those last three paragraphs, ye of little faith!
 
I liked the article because (I think) it gives a very good understanding of what "Love" is and if nothing else, demystifies it. I believe by demystifying it I gain understanding and that gives me the opportunity to build a closer, long-lasting relationship.
 
I confess, I consider myself an "unusual" (you’ll see) romantic (being a Taurus and ½ Italian, ½ Irish) and I always desire to be a “good lover.” However, being a good lover means to me, not only physically but emotionally.
 
It is incumbent on me to educate myself about just what is going on when I’m in a “love” state. The education gives me power over that state. Not power, in the sense I want to control or avoid love, but power in the sense I want to avoid making my lover responsible for what’s going on in me, for what I’m feeling.
 
In my past, I can recall thinking it was something the woman did to “make me” desire her, be drawn to her, fall for her. But that’s not what happened. What really happened was, I had a dream, an expectation, a picture of “my” woman, and the first one that came along that remotely resembled that, I hung my dream around her neck saying to myself, "she’s it!”
 
I used words like, “I’ve never felt this with anyone else.” “She is so different.” “She makes me feel x, y, z.” “I feel whole or complete with her.”
 
All words and concepts I have learned have nothing to do with love.
 
I was simply looking for someone to “make me feel" better about myself or my life. I “needed” that woman to accomplish that, to help heal me.
 
And when she “failed” me, (and how could she not?) by doing or feeling something human like, what I interpreted as, “hurting” me; I would blame her and make her responsible for my feelings, striking back with "justified" hurtful words.
 
How could I be in love if I have a sickly narcotic “need” of someone? That’s when I came to understand that I must heal myself and my past before I could really love a woman. Unfortunately, it took the end of a seventeen year marriage and a couple of “Love” relationships before I could see that. It was then that I was willing to waive the white flag of surrender and say, “Please God, my way isn’t working. Please show me another.”
 
It’s not our lover who “makes us feel.” No one “Makes” us feel anything. We do it to ourselves! Yet we blame them when they “make us feel” sad and we reward them when they “make us feel” happy! It is a trap of our own making!
 
I am the only one inside my head, thinking with my brain. All thoughts I have are not caused by someone else. I already have the thoughts in residence in my brain. Those thoughts lie dormant, like a computer virus, waiting for someone to click on that file to awaken my pre-existing thoughts of my lack of self-worth, or whatever else, so I can blame them, attack them for “making me feel” those ugly thoughts, again.

Those of us who are stuck in a cycle of anger or hurt over the actions of our present or past lovers do not yet see we are the cause of our own pain. Yes, they may have done x or y to us but it is within all of us to decide how we will remember that. We give the meaning and power to all we experience. Our hate or pain keeps us captive in the cycle.
 

Isn’t the strongest and most powerful statement of my love when I say to my lover –

“I am responsible for all I feel. You do not cause my feelings and I will not blame you for them, for they existed before you. I want you in my life but I do not need you.”

 
Yes, I suppose that flies in the face of the popular views of romance and Valentine’s Day, where we welcome the concepts of White Knights and Princesses however, if it is healthy love, true happiness, and permanent joy we are after, then one must give up the narcotic of blame and embrace personal responsibility. Responsibility for our own feelings.

 
As long as we place the blame (or credit) outside ourselves, there will be no happiness.
 
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt”>There is no one responsible for how I feel, other than me.

Not my lover …

not my mother …
 
just …
 
me!  
 
And so, it is within that spirit that I wish you a happy Valentine’s Day!

 
And that’s one man’s opinion!
 
God bless,
 
Nunzio
 

 
 
 14,069