mystery science - love

loismustdie

it's proven that love is just a non-lasting chemical reaction within the brain. although there are couples who have been (happily) together for decades, chances are this is out of routine, loyalty or security other than love.
on the other hand the human belief is that love is forever. is this faith in love anything more than a dream or illusion to help ourselves feel protected, postitive, happy in a survival of the fittest world
there's a difference between truly loving someone - having a soulmate and a lifetime partner, and either caring for or lusting or being fond of. do you think if people are honest with themselves are they actually in love or have they just convinced themselves that they are
it's human nature to express love but since most people don't go through life being exclusive to one person, and vice versa, are we being through to ourselves

hope this is relevent to PI, hopefully posters here will have a more helpful input than i would expect on any other forum

smiles

This isn't really a PI topic, so I'm going to move it to Humanities, but leave a redirecting link here, so maybe you'll still grab the people you want to get replies from!

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Laguna

sure love exists, but only for some. i feel that the saying "someone for everyone" is bollocks, only a few couples who find each other truly fall in love. the rest of us have to take whatever's left over/done the rounds with everyone else

Syth

Well I'd tend towards the scientific side of things. The brain is a machine, with many different parts, each specilized to do certain things. When you fall in love your brain acts differently, as to when you weren't in love. Your brain changed in such a way so that you experience the feeling of love. It's possible for someone to stay with someone out of security and so on, but it's also possible for two people to be truly in love. (It's also unfortunatly possible for one person to in love with someone else.)

So I think true love does exist.

Ivan

The chemical reaction called love has been equaled to eating large amounts of chocolate?

It doesnt last, love simple turns into familiarity, security and loyalty.

People get used to being together so they dont want to break up. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that, its comforting to know that someone will be there for you.

Just dont deceive yourself about what its all about and how fickel it truly is.

Exit

Yeah, but would you tell the girlfriend "y'know, I don't really love you, I'm only in it out of loyalty and for security"?

dr_manhattan

"it's proven that love is just a non-lasting chemical reaction within the brain."

Nah, not so sure: after all, this would require a scientific 100% certainty that the people with the chemical reactions are 100% love. And given that love itself is subjective, and not just composed of chocolate induced hormonal activity (as in, you can feel love for more than one person in more than one way, so which is the 100% one: people tested for love could be closet homosexuals and not know it, yet still feel in 'love' for example.

The tried and tested documentary VO saying "when this happens, a chemical called <insert chemical here> is released in the brain" doesn't necessarily mean we understand love as a behaviour. If we did, then surely we could replicate human personalities in chemical jellies....?

"although there are couples who have been (happily) together for decades, chances are this is out of routine, loyalty or security other than love."

How do you separate the four? Fred and Rosie west seemed in love to me, yet their idea of a "routine" that kept them together was anything *but* routine ;-). Sometimes it can be routine to lavish affection on each other. Sometimes it can be routine to hate each other and be serially unfaithful.

The western idea of monogamous love, surely, is itself the routine and security and loyalty of a loving relationship? Just trying to say, you cannot separate areas of life from love, unless you can show exactly what "love" is, when it begins and ends, etc. Traditional conceptions mean we accept mad sexy love, crazy destructive love and also settled, caring love as well as familial, asexual love.

"on the other hand the human belief is that love is forever."

Careful - the *western* belief is that love is forever. And it's more of a convention than a belief. Romantic love is not as old as many would think: arranged marriages and reproductive functionality ruled for years. As i recall, it's only about 4 or 500 years old as an accepted social idea...

"is this faith in love anything more than a dream or illusion to help ourselves feel protected, postitive, happy in a survival of the fittest world?"

Depends, doesn't it? ( I know, easy answer) Of course, as a biological mechanism to keep us monkeys together and stable long enough to raise our slow-growing infants, you're right, it is "an illusions" - but the thing is, it's an "illusion" that is hardwired into our brains and bodies. So it's not really an illusion unless you're not human: every human has the potential to be affected by love - but non-humans may not, because their reproductive bilogy may not require it.

But being cynical about love is a tricky path, cos inevitably it'll bite you in the ass a couple of years afterwards, wyhen you are in the grip of a crazy fever and everypone to whom you "proved" that love was a trick is pointing at you and laughing ;-)

Not the first wordy rant about love ever comitted to paper, and surely not the last ;-) - a mate of mine reckons that the key to the rise of love as a pinnacle of social acceptability is the way the neglish language works. I like this idea, that we are bound by a culture which forces us to see things in a certain light, and thus inlufences us to go mad ;-)

Doodee

whats wrong with a bit of faith in something?

tbh, its Cliché to not be/know what love is these days.

then again

Originality is Clichéd

seamus

I would be of the opinion that love (eventually) is more of an intimacy issue. When people first meet, it's a rush of hormones, your head is all over the shop. That won't last. Ever. Proper, life-long love sets in then when people are pretty much really really really good friends, for all intents and purposes. How many of you have same-sex, i.e. plutonic friends, that you've known for years, and couldn't imagine not being in your life?
That's what love is, except it also has the added dimension of physical intimacy and unconditional companionship.
Love is *not* all butterflies, sunshine and romance, for ever and ever and ever. A lot of young women these days seem to becoming disillusioned with marraige. I know personally of at least 5 women who've left marriages or broken up relationships because they're bored. Wtf like? I believe TV has a massive part to play in this. Shows like Sex and The City, Friends, Will and Grace, seem to portray this image that if you're not so horny you could scream, or absolutely bawling crying when you're apart from your partner, then it's time to trade in.
It will leave a lot of unhappy, unsatisfied single women in their thirties.

Zombrex

Originally posted by loismustdie
it's proven that love is just a non-lasting chemical reaction within the brain.

I would say that the chemical reaction in the brain is not "love" but a phsycial responce to being in love. Love is a complex mental state, and cannot be narrowed down to an electron firing here or a chemical reaction here. It is a combination of thosands of different simpler feeling and emotions.

At the same time, everything in life, all our emotions, are chemical reactions in our brain. I don't think it diminishes the emotion to say this, or in any way makes the emotion not real or fake.

Originally posted by loismustdie

it's human nature to express love but since most people don't go through life being exclusive to one person, and vice versa, are we being through to ourselves

It is only us as humans that define "love" as forever. It doesn't mean it actually is. To define love as forever and then to say that anyone who did not love forever is only fooling themselves, is rather narrow view point.

dr_manhattan

Agreed seamus: what I was saying in a more longwinded way ;-) was that you can't separate where "mad love" (the hormonal stuff that features in spice girls sonmgs) from "real" love (the type that pensioners who sit in silent bliss together for hours have) - and many people woiuld have their own opinions of what "real" love is.

it's a funny subject: I've seen people take the most hilariously objectionable moral high ground in saying other peoples' relationships are "not real love" or whatever. My way of looking at it is, if it's good for them, and nobody's getting (non-consensually) hurt - then it's love. It may be a love that i do not understand (like a sub-dom love) or differs hugely from my idea of it (like car-house-and-kids suburban love) - but it's love okay.

Slightly off topic:

"It will leave a lot of unhappy, unsatisfied single women in their thirties."

I have to say, this is a particularly irish phenomenon right here and I agree: in no other country have I ever met so many women with such high expectations from such low input ;-) - seriously though, I know so many women here who go out, get hammered, and I mean *hammered*, and jump whoever comes along. Which is fine by me.

But then, when said sexual encounter proves, as almost all one night stands do, not to have any deeper meaning, they get viciously hurt. Recently a mate of mine shagged the manager of a nightclub in the toilet of said nightclub after hours. She then got all shocked cos he never called her...? Not saying that he should or shouldn't, it's just when you have casual sex, surely you should realise that it's just that: casual sex?

Many's a time also, that I've made / bought breakfast for women I've had one night stands with, and they give me this kind of "ooh you're going to ask me for my number... you're not? You bastard!" kind of thing. Not saying I'm the greatest man alive, but I do think that the men who buy you breakfast and treat you well are *not* the bastards. maybe I got that wrong.

In the US and europe, and in the UK I have never gotten this. You treat someone nice and they thank you and leave: and what's more, they don't treat casual sex as if they are doing you a huge big favour: rather a mutually satisfying experience.

Either way, I fully agree with seamus here when he says that there's gonna be a whole lot of bitter women in a few years: not sure I blame sex in the city or will and grace either, cos these shows are concieved by marketing people who are, after all, pandering to an already existant market.

But a superficial image of an 'empowered' woman who still needs a man to make her life complete is a deeply cynical one, so top marks to the abovementioned shows for glamourising oversexed yuppiedom without ever mentioning the emotional scarring, therapists bills and suicide rates. Ahem.