Staying In Love

Dr. Helen Fisher put it this way, “Not at any time on this planet have women been so educated, so interesting, so capable. I honestly think that if there was ever a time, in human evolution when we have the opportunity to make good marriages, that time is now.”

Being or falling in love is something that has become increasingly important to both men and women. That feeling of falling or being in love is intense and fulfilling.

When we fall in love that person takes on special meaning, we think about them constantly, and probably obsessively. We aggrandize them. According to George Bernard Shaw, "Love consists in overestimating the difference between one woman and another" or we could say, Love consists in overestimating the difference between one man and another.

When we are in love we have an intense craving to be with that person, to be physically present, to touch and be close to them. We want to talk and talk with them. We become very possessive of them. We feel intense elation when things are going well and devastated when things are not.

Dr. Fisher’s research demonstrated that the brain patterns of someone simply looking at a photo of the person with whom they were in love activated the same region of the brain that is activated when someone is experiencing a cocaine rush. What we may be craving is not that person, but the dopamine rush that we experience when we are with them. Romantic love arises in the craving part of the brain and it is a drive, according to Dr. Fisher, more powerful than the sex drive.

Romantic love serves the purpose of drawing us together and focusing our attention on one partner. There may be times when it feels like the whole world disappears and all that remains are the two of you. As exhilarating as this experience is, at some point it begins to fade. Reality starts to rear its head.

There comes a time when simply touching his or her hand, no longer creates a dopamine rush. When this begins to happen, some people start to worry that maybe they were not meant for each other after all. They worry that they are no longer in love with their partner.

We have the opportunity to make the transition from romantic love to affectionate love or attachment. We have the opportunity to create a bond of love, deeper than romantic love. We can build respect, acceptance, calmness and security into our relationship. A relationship based more on the release of oxytocin, which unlike dopamine, we never develop a tolerance for.

When you understand how the chemical that enhance loving feelings work you begin to see that lasting love is more a matter of choice than a drive to be together.