LOVE TRIGGERS CHEMICALS IN OUR BRAINS

That's what I'm talking about!

Love, like all our thoughts, emotions and behaviours rests on physical processes in the brain, a very complex interplay of them. But to say that love is just brain chemistry is like saying the Romeo and Juliet story is mere words – it misses the point. Like art, love is more than the sum of its parts.

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

That's a classic question asked of every kid who ever lived.

But here's another one for you: What came first, love or facilitating chemicals in the brain called dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins?  Well, the answer in this case might be a little more complex but nonetheless perplexing.

I really hadn't thought about it this way before but come to find out, real love between man and woman is truly a complex emotion that triggers chemicals in the brain at different stages in the romantic relationship. For instance, dopamine is associated with the beginning of love relationships where everything is about passion and fun in the early stages.

From there, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins are crucial to helping two people stay connected as they are associated with increased feelings of attachment and comfort. It is really a wonderful God-created process and to my way of thinking, there is nothing in life quite so emotionally electrifying.

Call it love at first sight, call it infatuation, but regardless of what we call it, it’s a powerful feeling. Characteristically, I have been a goner at first sight.

Sometimes we’re just going about our days, not paying much attention to the world outside our heads, when we meet a special someone who upends our reality.

It can happen in other ways too, i.e. someone we’ve known for a while. All of a sudden the mood shifts — a conversation, a special couple of days, extenuating circumstances that bring you together — now the relationship feels like something else entirely.

It feels like… love. And it is so gloriously good to love and be loved with mutual intensity!

All of a sudden, your heart starts racing, you start sweating, and your boring, hum-drum life takes on a whole new meaning.

This is the experience we call love, infatuation, “catching feelings”, or a thousand other terms. To many people, this experience is the creme de la creme of life, that superior emotion that trumps all others on this earth.

If you’re reading this, you probably feel much the same way. But why? Why is love so important to us human beings, who feel we have to find it at any cost -- and any age?

Why does “love” even exist in the first place and why has this one particular person opened the floodgates of dopamine when others couldn’t is a discussion for another time. The important thing is that it did and they did, and now two brains have become “high” off their presence.

So, Is Love Just A Chemical Reaction?

The short answer is… To a degree, Yes.

But just because love is a chemical reaction in our brains, does not make it any less meaningful. There are many levels to the experience of love, from the initial attraction to the long-term attachment of companionship.

Over the years, our brains use oxytocin to strengthen the social bonds between us and our partners, and activities like hugging and kissing that release it in our brains helping us to create strong attachments with each other.

Though some people might find it a little deflating to find that love and connection are a chemical cocktail in your brain, and that it’s all designed to help us procreate and raise children, I do not necessarily look at it that way.

Whenever inevitable misunderstandings in a love relationship get us down, it would be just as well to remind ourselves that it is only a process our brains go through to build lasting connection with each other (we sometimes need help in that regard). It also means we’re not always in control, and that the person that didn’t reciprocate our feelings at a particular moment just didn’t have the same chemical reaction going on in their heads.

Our lives then, in many ways, are mysterious dances of chemical reactions. Everything we do, the people we encounter, and the lifestyle we lead are influenced by what goes on in our heads, chemically speaking.

There are so many variables that it makes it hard to predict when love will flower. Two people meet, the chemicals start flowing, and before we know it a bond, and a life together, have been created. It is really quite remarkable!

Those chemicals produced in our brains simply help make it all happen. It is the way our Creator God designed it!

I just have one last question though.

What happens to the build-up of unused chemicals in our brains when age and circumstances stand in the way of ever again finding the kind of love we've been talking about in this post? Such a waste!

There are times when I think my mind will explode under the pressure.

Could it be that some of us use up our lifetime allotment of love and that there is such a thing as being too greedy -- too needy and too old?

Thank God I have my computer as a form of release when I accept the reality that the love of which I speak is completely out of reach.

The moral of the story dear friends: Cherish the significant love in your life while you can still reach out, touch and embrace it. Once you lose it chances of ever finding it again sadly diminish in proportion to one's advancing age.