addicted to love

I was 20 years old when I first experienced the narcotic crazy-making effects of love. I was deeply ensconced in a great, easy, supportive partnership with an amazing man--someone who loved me with all his heart. He was my first love, my high school boyfriend, and I truly believed I would be with him the rest of my life. The summer I was 20, we were counselors together at the camp I attended as a child, and someone else caught my eye and in fact, totally caught me up. Drama ensued, ending in a break of the relationship and a reshifting. It was terrible. Truly truly selfish, terrible behavior on my part. The two men were co-counselors. Can you even imagine? It was a drama that rocked all of our worlds yet I was on a trajectory I couldn't stop.

In the midst of it all, I received counseling from many, perhaps most importantly my mother. She told me: attraction to someone new is like a drug, it's addictive. You just want more and it's hard to detach yourself from the situation. Take a step back, don't do this. Reign it in.

Being 20, and being caught up, I couldn't. It was addictive being around this person--as much about the way it made me feel as any of his intrinsic qualities (which I learned later, were quite limited). In the aftermath, my mother wouldn't speak with me for weeks and refused to let me bring the new beau home. Though she has long put it behind her, I'm not sure I've ever forgiven myself for how I acted that summer.

Each of the major loves in my life hence, plus some of the minor ones, has been characterized by early intensity. Part of it is the nature of the beast--all of us want that connection--but part of it is me. I carried this cartoon (from The Economist, I believe) with me for years, hanging it in each new place I moved, as a reminder to myself of the dizzying effects of falling in love--both positive and negative. For a long time, it was mostly humorous to me.

I create and am drawn to intensity, hopefully usually of the positive variety, but as with anything, also of the dramatic or damaging variety. I'm not interested in casual (this year was the first time I ever successfully dated casually...and even then it was mostly a device) and moreover, I tend to advance situations...patience is not a virtue I possess in abundance. Let's get on with it and really get to know each other--let's get down to it. Let's try it out, even if I don't know the end-state.

Recently, though, the cartoon and recent articles describing the narcotic effects of romantic love have taken on a more sobering effect. I'm more suspicious of the quick burn, particularly of its acceleration to burnout. Let's figure it out--let's not waste our time, let's have transparency (the dance around it is of course always fun, but really, for me, for a limited time), but let's also keep the drama out. Steady now.

Plus, how do you ever recover from the heady days of early euphoria once that intensity fades? Of course, then the love is much more multi-faceted, more complex, far deeper, and those depths are equally intriguing. But I wonder sometimes if I spent five years with the ex trying to recover that unbelievable joy and intensity experienced in our first month. I made him promise to marry me on what, week 2 or 3, completely without guile? Sometimes you just know...but sometimes, you are mistaken. I don't want to make that same mistake again.

An excerpt on the addictive effects of love from The Economist article of the above cartoon:

The results were surprising. For a start, a relatively small area of the human brain is active in love, compared with that involved in, say, ordinary friendship. “It is fascinating to reflect”, the pair conclude, “that the face that launched a thousand ships should have done so through such a limited expanse of cortex.” The second surprise was that the brain areas active in love are different from the areas activated in other emotional states, such as fear and anger. Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. “We are literally addicted to love,” Dr Young observes.

Another from a great WSJ article on the physical and mental effects of  love (many of you will have read this before, I sent it out Valentine's Day in 2007; worth a reread even then, since it also has good advice on how to maintain some of those euphoric feelings of romantic love).

Compared with the neutral photos, a lover's picture triggers the dopamine system in the brain -- the same system associated with pleasure and addiction. But the brain images of those scorned in love also give us clues as to why the breakdown of a relationship can trigger serious health problems. The 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.