«Juliet — it's the sun! — exclaimed Romeo, seized with passion. Modern experts add: the hero of Shakespeare's play was subject to a strong neurosis, which has nothing to do with a high feeling, but side by side with such serious illnesses as drug addiction or substance abuse. Founders and teachers of the author's Academy, authors of the bestseller "Nectar for the Soul" Vladimir and Valeria DUBKOVSKY suggest how to recognize the symptoms of an anxiety syndrome in time, and lay out the chemistry of love into all components
Strong neurosis of love: from insomnia to melancholy
Masterpieces of classical literature are replete with stories in which a passionately (and most often hopelessly) hero in love sacrificed his life for the lady of his heart. Or vice versa. This is not about the strength of feelings at all, but about the manifestation of a clinical symptom of a mental disorder, which, according to the World Health Organization, is on a par with gambling, alcoholism and substance abuse in the registry of diseases. True, the director of the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences of Russia, Svyatoslav Medvedev, is softer in his definition and calls such love nothing more than a delightful syndrome.
Like every illness, in addition to psychosomatics, which is expressed in the desire to subjugate the whole world for the sake of one and only, the neurosis of love has manifestations on the physical level.
Signs of a strong neurosis of love:
- obsessive thoughts about a loved one;
- palpitations upon meeting;
- focusing attention only on the object of passion to the detriment of everyone else;
- loss of appetite, insomnia;
- hyperexcitability;
- mood swings from feeling happy to wanting to kill yourself;
- great anxiety.
The list goes on and on. However, any such manifestations, being akin to drug addiction, have nothing to do with love.
The question arises: why is it — with more or less force — occurs in the life of every person? This is due to — hormones that launch the programmed program of the biological organism.
The chemistry of love: a strict formula for tender feelings
This procreation program causes a man to involuntarily scan the ladies in his field of vision for the possibility of becoming the mother of his children. Hence — such close attention to the appearance of a woman: breasts, hips, waist. A woman, although not so much concerned about the external data of a partner, is at the same time able to make an instant analysis of a man's saliva regarding compatibility with him. One kiss is enough. This explains the reluctance of ladies after the very first night spent to continue relations with a partner: he seems to be good in all respects, but the soul does not lie — and point!
If everything coincided, then the program works with mathematical precision here too: the bouquet-and-candy period, obligatory in a relationship, passionate nights, tender affection and care, — all of this from an opera of hormones, each of which "turns on" at a certain stage.
Testosterone, estrogen and pheromones cause attraction to a partner.
Adrenaline, norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin and phenethylamine provide sexual desire.
Norepinephrine helps to remember every minute spent in the arms of a loved one.
Serotonin makes me think about it.
Oxytocin and vasopressin make you think about a happy marriage and life together, in sorrow and joy, and the desire to die on the same day.
As you can see, the unearthly feeling that love is commonly believed to be is explained by the action of hormones, which, acting on the pleasure center, suppress negative emotions and criticism. That is why, in a period of stormy passion, we look at our chosen one through rose-colored glasses and do not want to hear the opinions of others at all.
The expression "the chemistry of love" is absolutely fair, since all our feelings are the result of a chain reaction of a chemical process occurring in the body.
Love is like a drug: it affects the same areas of the brain
The famous anthropologist Helen Fisher, after conducting research, found confirmation of the popular belief that love is akin to a drug. In lovers, the same areas of the brain are activated as in people sitting on a needle. In addition, they exhibit three classic symptoms of addiction — liberality, withdrawal and occasional relapses.
3 symptoms of love addiction similar to drug addiction
- At first, a lover needs only a rare meeting with the object of his passion. But gradually he requires an increasing increase in the "dose".
- If he doesn't get what he wants, he exhibits all the withdrawal symptoms — hysteria, irritability, depression — and, as a rule, gets his way.
- Such states can be repeated with a certain frequency, emotionally destroying each of the partners.
And yet there is a difference between drug addiction and love addiction, and a very significant one. The addict cannot get out of this state. In humans, it goes away by itself.
The term of love is short-lived and, according to experts, lasts from 18 months to three years. After that, the hormonal storms subside.
However, it would be wrong to reduce the tenderness of feelings to only one emotional bondage or the performance of a childbearing function. Love exists, and it lives much longer than the prescribed three years. Simply, according to various researchers, only 10 percent of couples who go through their life path calmly, without emotional upheavals, manage to know it. But it is they who manage to know all that depth of feelings, with which no strong neurosis can be compared.
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