Love Has Driven Me Sane
Or they enjoy an initial hit of ecstasy that quickly dissipates. Some people enter love slowly, with a friendship that gradually leads to an intimate partnership — one that may or may not be spiced with romance. Others choose a partner because they feel that "it's just time," which may coincide with the accelerating ticking of the biological clock. Still others focus on similarities based on ethnicity, race, religion, education, class and life goals.
Indeed, in many cultures, selecting a mate has little or nothing to do with falling in love. Nonetheless, so much of our culture — songs, movies, fairy tales, novels — leads us to believe that idealized love is the norm. We await the hero or heroine who will kiss us awake. This first stage of love has been chronicled for as long as human beings have been on the planet.
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We hear most often of "lovesickness," a series of anxiety-related symptoms brought on by the intense changes associated with falling in love. Ibn Sina, tenth-century physician and father of modern medicine, viewed obsession as the principal cause of lovesickness.
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We now know that he was right. The biochemical changes that take place in new lovers produce symptoms similar to in those with obsessive-compulsive disorder , including loss of appetite and sleeplessness. Ah, and how well we know the signs of obsession Fantasies of the beloved fill our days and crowd our nights; when we're apart, we feel incomplete.
If absence makes the heart grow fonder, it also leads to constant chatter about the missing object of affection. This fixation and preoccupation are what others find tiresome about the love-struck. People roll their eyes and think us temporarily insane. Which, of course, we are. In psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term limerence to describe this temporary state of madness and described the conditions associated with it:. The list reminds me of an old client of mine named Stu, a recovering alcoholic.
Once, he told me an anecdote about the first time he got drunk at age fourteen. I passed out that night and got really sick, and yet still couldn't wait to have another drink. The sun would rise and the longing set in. I craved the next drink the way my friends longed for a girlfriend.
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It startled me to hear how his words could have just as easily described what it feels like to fall in love with another person. The reason for this is simple, if a bit surprising: Magnetic resonance imaging reveals that the nucleus accumbens , the part of the brain that is activated in lovers, is the same part that lights up in cocaine users and gamblers when they act out their addiction.
This recent discovery brings to mind the old adage: What we do know, however, is that the craving associated with romantic love is very real. Greek mythology provides us with imaginative and amusing ways to describe the felt intensity of romantic love. Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, had a son named Cupid.
His job, as an archer, was to dip arrows into his mother's secret love potion before he took aim. Once Cupid's arrow hit its target, the victim fell madly in love with the next person he or she saw. This myth has given rise to some of the most extraordinary love legends of all time, including those of Apollo and Daphne, Helen of Troy, Antony and Cleopatra, and Romeo and Juliet. We now know that the "hit" of romance can be partially explained by biochemistry. Science tells us that the pounding heart that leaves us breathless, trembling, and longing to be with our beloved signifies an overabundance of particular chemicals and hormones in the brain and blood, including PEA phenylethylamine , a natural amphetamine also found in chocolate and marijuana.
As they float on a sea of PEA, lovers report more sensational and adventurous sexual experiences than they've ever enjoyed before, such as "mile-high sex" and a heightened pleasure in sensory qualities that might normally be a turnoff. Napoleon Bonaparte, for example, once wrote to Josephine, "I'm coming home. You probably had no idea you were getting into this no-win relationship when it began.
Why Falling In Love Makes People Crazy - mindbodygreen
If the emotional and sexual connections were rewarding, you may have been intrigued by the Houdini-like escape pattern. Though unsettling, your partner was not boring. You couldn't easily figure out what was going on, and you probably liked the challenge, so you became an eager relationship sleuth, avidly putting together clues that seem to make the next move more predictable. When you did actually accurately zero in once in a while, you may have thrived enough on the intermittent reinforcement to hang in for subsequent disappointing rounds. When the symbolic slot machine pays off, you were likely to have been off and running through the interpersonal "Alice-in-Wonderland" maze again.
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Over time, you may have begun to feel a little desperate, wondering if there wasn't some sort of underlying torture game going on. You sometimes got what you needed but not what you expected in unpredictable moments that made no sense. Other times, you may have felt you were doing everything right to get a predictable outcome, but your efforts were unproductive or even erased.
Your confidence in yourself as a reasonable and intelligent human being was rapidly diminishing. As time went by, your belief that you had any influence at all was fading. Your well-intended desires to connect in rational and predictable ways gave way to superstitious behaviors: If you started out as a control freak, you would have been pulling your hair out after a while. But if you're just a normal person, innocently trying to maintain a sane environment, you might realize that you've morphed into one.
Is Your Relationship Making You Crazy? Here's How to Stop the Madness
As your confusion increased, you probably felt an ever stronger need to make things happen the way they should have, as your crazy-making partner was accusing you of obsessively tracking his or her every move. You began mumbling to yourself, "Is this person taunting me on purpose? They wouldn't do that, would they? Not while professing such love for me and genuinely remorseful when I'm upset.
I'm doing everything I can to make things work between us. I must just not be seeing things clearly. I have to just try harder. You are surely not alone. Here are just a couple of typical statements from partners who are in a relationship with crazy-making partners:. Last Friday night, he worked late and came home exhausted. I had his favorite dinner prepared and all possible distractions blocked.
He's let me know so many times that when he's had a hard day, he loves a home-cooked meal, watching his favorite show, going to sleep, and then making love in the morning. I planned everything exactly the way he liked and it went down just like I thought it would.
He even told me the next day that he was the luckiest guy in the world. So last night, I did everything exactly the same way, but it was a disaster.
He came home and threw his briefcase on the ground. He said he wasn't hungry and why would I think he'd want to eat after a rotten day? Then he said he was going out to watch the game at a bar because he needed 'time alone,' and that he'd be home in a couple of hours. He came home four hours later. I was in bed, asleep.
He'd had a lot to drink and wanted sex right then. I reminded him that he likes sex better in the morning and he called me a frigid bitch and slept on the couch. I cried myself to sleep. And then, the next morning, he was an angel and brought me coffee in bed. I feel like I'm in a relationship with two people, one who really loves me and his evil twin who emerges without warning or reason.
Then she tells me she doesn't wear that anymore and how come I didn't notice? She asks me to tell her how much I love her regularly, so I do.
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Now I'm just boring because I'm too repetitive. I'm supposed to make sure she's taking care of herself and she's so grateful that someone cares that much and the next day I'm trying to control her. Last weekend she wanted to spend time just the two of us so I found a great B and B and set up a romantic weekend. When I surprised her with it, she told me that we don't have any friends and why would I think that she'd want to waste a whole weekend in some hotel when we could be painting the bedroom and actually accomplishing something.