I belong to the earth

love 愛 ἔρως любовь March 31, 2010

If you’re like me and feel guilty every time you experience these possessive and obsessive feelings towards your lover here are some interesting tidbits about the biochemical process of love.

Love is an addiction.

Scientists have discovered that the same chemical process takes place when we fall in love as when we become addicted. People in love have lower levels of serotonin and marked suppression of neural circuits associated with the way we assess others. Lower serotonin levels are also found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, possibly explaining why those in love “obsess” about their partner.

In 2000, Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki of University College, London, analyzed the brain activity of students who said they were madly in love. The results demonstrated that the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing other strong emotions (such as anger), but instead like those of people snorting cocaine. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction.

What about those “can’t think of anything but you” feelings?

Researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to watch people’s brains when they look at a photograph of their object of affection found increased blood flow in areas of the brain with high concentrations of receptors for dopamine (which is associated with states of euphoria, craving and addiction). High levels of dopamine are also associated with norepinephrine, which heightens attention, short-term memory, hyperactivity, sleeplessness and goal-oriented behavior. In other words, couples who focus intently on the relationship and often on little else are acting biologically.

The dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine we’re releasing. Dopamine produces a feeling of bliss, while norepinephrine is similar to adrenaline and produces the racing heart and excitement. Together they produce elation, intense energy, sleeplessness, craving, loss of appetite and focused attention.

Sex and emotions.

Oxytocin is released when people orgasm during sex, helping create an emotional bond between the partners. Oxytocin is also associated with mother/infant bonding, uterine contractions during labor in childbirth and the “let down” reflex necessary for breastfeeding.

Endorphins are released during sex, producing a general sense of well-being, including feeling soothed, peaceful and secure. Their release helps form a chemical bond between lovers. On the other side, when people feel isolated from their loved one, the brain shuts off endorphin production resulting in anxiety.

Sex also stimulates the release of vasopressin whose production has been linked to monogamy in mammals.

The effects of vasopressin on one of nature’s truly monogamous animals: the prairie voles. Before mating, the male vole is friendly to male and female voles alike. Within 24 hours after mating, the male vole is hooked for life and defends his partner jealously.  However, when given a compound to suppress the effect of vasopressin, the voles lose their devotion to each other and the males fail to protect their ladies from the threat of other males.

“Lovesong” – Ted Hughes

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment’s brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin’s attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon’s gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other’s face