Tara Parker Pope is the Wall St Journal's Health columnist. Her article, "Is It Love or Mental Illness? They're Closer Than You Think," sure got me thinking deeply.
She opens by saying, "At some point in life, most of us will face a potential major mental-health crisis. It is called love." She notes that 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."
"Falling in love" may be a kind of addictive behavior, even though we have often not seen it that way. The "falling in love" model goes along with the image of needing another person to make you complete, where 1/2 + 1/2 = 1 whole, rather than a union of two already whole people, where 1+ 1 = 3 (partner 1, partner 2 and the relationship, being the third party in the equation.)
When we "need" another to feel complete, "falling in love," becomes a way to fill a void, just like the substances and processes we become addicted to. Find a love to "fill a void," is a sad motivation really. Perhaps this is why people feel so vulnerable and anxious when they open their hearts in the "falling in love model." In many ways, they are opening their hearts into a void, and this is dangerous.
I would rather open my heart into a space that will hold me or to a person who I know will be respectful, present, healthy and loving in return. I like to reality test the situation I am in as I open my heart. This takes time over time with a person, and opening ones heart one step at a time, rather than in the dramatic, sudden and complete way of "falling in love."
"Falling" in love has always felt dangerous to me. The "falling" image of a person's heart standing on the edge of a high cliff, and willfully jumping off into the potential dangers of the valley below, has never been appealing to me. When you fall like that, you are likely to get hurt, if not killed. "Falling" in love also implies a lack of conscious participation. Something you "fall" into is not a conscious choice, but something that takes you or happens to you. Too, what you can "fall into," you can "fall out of."
Pope cites the work of Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University, who has researched "love's impact on the brain.":
"Dr. Fisher has studied love by looking at people's brains using magnetic imaging machines....Compared with...neutral photos, a lover's picture triggers the dopamine system in the brain--the same system associated with pleasure and addiction."
"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."
Given that many relationships end abruptly and dramatically, or very quietly, the result of years of words never spoken, essential conversations that have never taken place, it is not surprising that the ending of a relationship can evoke primal and irrational responses.
We lack the skills to work with our personal triggers, which inevitably arise in intimate relationships, and we also lack the skills to manage our triggers, both during the relationship, and once it has ended. And so, the addictive, obsessive-compulsive quality to our brain chemistry, our feelings and sometimes our behavior.
Perhaps, if we gained more emotion-body awareness, and could have the essential conversations, feel our full range of feelings, learn to articulate our human needs, we would shift the dopamine pattern in our brains. Love from this place might have a different biochemical look and emotional feel.
I have grown to believe there is another way to enter the chamber of love, that is a more conscious and present progression. If two people feel a connection, find they have common values and interests, enjoy one another's company, why not together embark on a pathway of joining one another in a space of loving and being loved? No falling required. More of a gentle walking forward--some on one's own and some side by side, slowly opening one's heart to the other, and together, building a special space of mutual love.
Doesn't sound as exciting as the sudden fall into romantic love? Perhaps it won't give you the "romantic high" that parallels the brain chemistry of the drug addict. But I bet, if we studied the brain chemistry of two people consciously co-creating a space of mutual love, we'd see good things happening. If I can relax by meditating, listening to soothing music and being massaged, why would I ever want a cigarette, a pill or alcohol?
©2007 Linda Marks
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