Day 7 of my 30 day challenge to write…Love is dope;)
Sunday, June 27th, 2010
What’s love got to do with it?
I’m not talking about Tina Turner. I am talking about just what exactly “qualifies” as “real love” in romantic relationships.
This morning I came across a documentary talking about love and how it affects our brains and how that then affects our judgment.
Studies have proven that when we feel sexual attraction for another and when that attraction turns to “love”, our brains create Dopamine. Dopamine is created in the ‘craving and reward’ part of the brain; the addictive part of the brain.
What fascinated me was when they conducted their research, they did an experiment that ended up proving that love, in general, has the same effects as a pain killer!
Women and men were hooked up to machines that caused a burning sensation; painful but, tolerable. The experiment showed that the level of pain felt changed dramatically when those same people were shown pictures of their loved ones on a laptop. Significantly!
Good ole’ Dopamine.
I took the remote control and turned off the TV as I stared out the window thinking…
If love is like dope…then, just how real is it?
And, when time spent with a person turns into less and less dopamine created…is that what we consider “falling out of love”?
We have all been there…the crack head to someone else’s essence…
Jonesing for a person who kidnaps and holds hostage your thoughts, while demanding the ransom of your heart and all rational thinking. We have all tasted the deliciousness of that first “hit” after being away for a while.
It has always fascinated me, watching couples that seem madly in love fall completely out of a love over night… all that “love” evaporating like a ghost.
I call it Casper love. When you wake up one morning and it has dissolved like Casper the friendly ghost and nothing you can do to conjure it back up and make it reappear.
Have we, as a society become addicted to the hot wasabi kind of experience that leaves us jonesing vs. the slow burn of a lesser passionate experience?
Less and less people are in it for the long haul. Less and less people are believing in ‘till death do us part”.
The definition of love has changed dramatically from my Parent’s generation to my own.
The lines are being redrawn every day and the neat, little box we used to trap love in has fallen apart.
If biologically we are made to feel high as a kite when we come in contact with a person we are drawn to then, are we all just love sick crack heads that have made up some desperate story called “ever after” in hopes of always being able to score?
At this point in my life, I look at love like I look at tequila…
You have your 7.50 a shot tequila and you have your $200 a shot tequila. Both make you feel the end result of what you are drinking it for in the first place…one tastes tingy and the other smooth as silk. One gives you a wicked hangover, the other lets you be. I guess it all comes down to what you believe you can afford. Same with love. Until you know your net worth is enough to cover the costs…you choose a cheaper watered down version of it.
As I get more and more healthy and balanced in life, I stay more and more away from the hot wasabi kind of love experience. The one that sets you on fire…the one you can see from a mile away is going to end up wreaking havoc in your world…the Cuervo kind of love.
I have learned over time the temporary insanity that comes with delirious attraction to a person. I have learned to not act on it where as to not have to plead temporary insanity down the road of less than intelligent decisions.
But, I am also at a place in life where the slow burn of a lesser passionate experience doesn’t rock my world as much…
And so, at this point in my life, I choose to be single until I find common ground between the two.
I believe there has to be fire and there has to be friendship if it is going to work. A perfect alchemy of the two that feels like exploding firecrackers falling out of the sky… yet shows up night after night as reliable as the stars.
No one will ever be able to grasp the final and true definition of love…it is too expansive and ever changing. But, at least now we know…
Love is dope.
I guess that means that we are all living under the influence;).
