| 'THE SUDDEN IMPACT OF LOVE' - Heather Maidat |
| Written by Heather Maidat | ||
| Wednesday, 24 November 2010 07:35 | ||
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'LOVE & OTHER DRUGS' is released in NZ cinemas on January 1st 2011!
The Sudden Impact of Love
Written by Heather Maidat
In the new movie Love and Other Drugs starring Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal, Maggie and Jamie find themselves behaving in ways they never have before, despite their best intentions to not need, crave, or enjoy each other beyond sex. So when we fall in love why are we suddenly longing, adoring, willing to risk it all, happy goofs that inevitably make all kinds of strange decisions? There’s a heightened excitement that seems to grant us permission to take chances that we wouldn’t usually take. Just the thought of that person can inspire some unusual grand gestures and out of character behavior. Impulse and/or Control. Some people try to stay in control playing hard to get, even to the extreme of ignoring the very person they like. They might calculate their every move according to friends and self-help book advice. Others might go the other direction, totally losing control, losing their boundaries, losing themselves in it. When it’s a fluctuation of the two, along with the other person’s unpredictable behavior, love can feel alternately like an exciting sense of relief and a humiliating punch in the gut.
Robert, a 30 year old graphic designer, checks his phone constantly when he’s falling in love. “It’s like an addiction”, he says, “I hate to admit it but my mood that day is high or low depending on whether I hear from her or see her.” Sara, a 28 year old account exec, says the more she likes someone, the more she’s afraid of getting hurt so she protects herself. “I’d been dating a guy, counting the days when he’d return from vacation overseas. He called the moment he got back to get together later. I was so excited but played it cool and said I’d call him after my dinner plans. When I did, he didn’t answer his phone. I was terrified that he changed his mind and was playing games, so I went out with friends for the night. I came home to his message wondering where I went. When we finally spoke he said he’d been in the shower but didn’t want to keep dating because it was clear I was playing games.” Got Chemistry? Okay, so there’s our own hang ups and desires and our past experiences to account for some of the intensity of the love experience, but then there’s the chemistry. When there’s an attraction, thanks to testosterone and estrogen, significant areas of the brain are stimulated and release chemicals, a.k.a. hormones, that your body responds to. You already know the familiar rush of adrenalin when the one you’re madly in love with (whether they know it or not) calls or texts or walks by. Then there’s the Dopamine, responsible for that powerful feeling of happiness, focus, and the lack of desire to eat or sleep. Oxytocin and Vasopressin, released after sex, get you all attached. And believe it or not, when we can’t get what we want, the brain area where the dopamine comes from gets even more active. That explains why we (unfortunately) might increase our longing for those who reject us, obsessively keeping tabs on their facebook updates, and why it can be so hard to get over a break up.
Train of Thought.
Now consider the part neural connections play. In your brain you’ve got neural pathways that connect to each other where new thought “A” instantaneously reminds you of old thought “B” which reminds you of older thought “C” which produced a certain feeling at that time. Therefore, thought A equals thought C’s feeling. (Get it? And you thought you’d never use math.) So, for example, if your new guy looks like your high school crush, or your new girl looks like the prom queen, you may automatically have a feeling with them that you’re young again and even popular. Delusional? Nah, just neural.
Leave The Bags Behind. Along these neural lines, past experiences can dictate your responses in terms of how you behave when you’re in love. No doubt you know this as “baggage”, the inability to create new associations from your old relationship in the current one.
Now, if you use it right, these neural associations can be an amazing tool. Because of your past relationship experience, you can finally recognize destructive similarities and change it up. At the same time, you want to be careful not to make assumptions only based on your past, so you can see the behavior of the actual new person as their own. The key here is to find the sweet spot. Mixing up your current interest with a couple of lousy ex’s could cause you to sabotage something great. But not recognizing destructive patterns and getting in the same kind of thing over and over that’s no good for you is a waste of your time. (Not to mention your friend’s time who listens to your self-denial over and over.) Are We At Love’s Mercy?
Is it within our control to dial up or down the love-insanity? Sure it is. Experience can provide a more secure platform to getting into something first knowing what you want and what you’re looking for. It can also give you a healthy dose of self-esteem to keep you from investing your entire heart (or brain) into someone before knowing whether they’ll stick around.
At the same time, there’s a real benefit to love prodding us to be so unlike our usual selves. That benefit is pushing us to, well, be unlike our usual selves. Love can inspire us and make us vulnerable so that it’s farther reaching than just the person we’re hot for. Love can push us to go deeper within ourselves and find out not only who, but what it is we really want in life.
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