- in Relationships by Tony
What’s Love Got to Do With It
One way to define love is as a strong connection between two individuals. This relationship can be either romantic or Platonic.
Romantic love means that both parties are attracted to each other and want to spend time together. Platonic love refers to a close companionship friendship where people care deeply about each other without sexual involvement.
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Both relationships require trust, respect, honesty, and mutual understanding.We feel love when we care about another person. We give them our time, attention, and affection when we care about them.
Likewise, we also show them kindness and respect. Love is not just something you feel, and it is also something you do. Falling in love can surprise you and make you feel emotions. It can distract you from the rest of the world, be passionate and euphoric, and so many things are going on in your brain at once.
Love has a considerable impact on your mind, and below are a few things that happen when you experience it. Of course, the love we feel from our differentia relationships, not just those of a romantic nature, offers immense value for the health of mind, body, spirit and overall wellbeing.
Emotional Strength
Love strengthens the grey matter volume in your brain, which develops your emotion-processing centres and allows you to be more empathetic. When you are more in touch with your feelings from a love perspective, you are better at processing these emotions when they arise in other forms throughout your life.
Since love is a rollercoaster full of emotions, it prepares you and builds up the skills needed to balance and manage them. It is not uncommon for people to want a partner who will do anything for them and be there when they need it.
They are looking for someone to hold their hand during the tough times and to help make their dreams come true.
Hormones
According to an article published by Live Science, neuroscientists categorise love into three phases: lust, attraction, and attachment. Dopamine is released during the last phase, causing intense desire and the euphoria feeling associated with being in love.
Scientists compare these pleasurable feelings to the brain’s drug reaction, which explains how intense these emotions are.
Love is an emotion.
Well, according to some scientists, love is also a brain chemical. There are three types of chemicals responsible for creating this feeling.
Oxytocin is released during sex, increasing trust and feelings of attachment.
Serotonin is produced when we feel happy and relaxed.
And dopamine causes us to feel pleasure. These hormones help us bond emotionally with others and give us an urge to seek out other people.
Neuroscientists have also found that being in love increases blood flow to the brain’s pleasure centre. This brain area lights up in MRI tests when someone is in love. Other brain areas that light up are the medial insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and dorsal striatum.
These regions stimulate the reward system, so it is no wonder they light up when you are in love.
Some chemicals produced during romantic encounters are called pheromones. Pheromones are small molecules that are secreted through the skin and travel across the air to influence the behaviour of others around them.
When you fall in love, your body releases chemicals called endorphins. These chemicals give you feelings of happiness, excitement, and joy. You also feel relaxed because endorphins block pain receptors in your brain.
Lust is when you feel an intense attraction to someone because they physically make you feel good or give you an intense adrenaline rush through their touch, making you feel alive. The adrenaline rush makes this type of love powerful because it creates that sense of euphoria that lasts for a short time.
Trust
Many psychologists recently reported that, over the past ten years, there had been an unprecedented rise in trust issues among couples who seek relationship counselling.
When we talk about honesty within a relationship, our mind often goes straight to deception. We think about it in terms of whether someone lies to their partner. Or how often they lie.
Some people engage in insensitive or outright abusive behaviour with the excuse of “being honest.”
In an intimate relationship partner, we can turn to a safe haven where we can let down our guard, relax, and be ourselves.
Trust is the glue that keeps relationships together. It allows us to feel comfortable around others and helps us get along well with them. Trust also gives us confidence in our choices and actions. Without trust and loyalty, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy life fully.
Lovesick
Being in love links lower concentration levels and reduced cognitive control. When your mind feels addicted to someone due to love, you may find it hard to pay attention to your surroundings or your daily responsibilities.
Love can consume the mind due to the intense ways it alters your emotions and attention. You may feel like your world revolves around this person because of your brain’s attachment to this person.
In addition, your serotonin levels are reduced when you are in love, a common characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder. This causes you to feel single-minded and somewhat obsessed with this other person during the attachment phase.
Love also impacts how we react to certain situations, which is something to be cautious about when getting attached to another person. In romantic love, the amygdala becomes de-activated, the region of the brain that coordinates fear responses, which keeps us protected during dangerous situations.
Love is Blind
This phrase has been used by the English playwright William Shakespeare for a good reason.
- He used it in several plays, including Two Gentlemen of Verona, Henry V and The Merchant Of Venice.
When you are in love, you may feel blind to the warning signs that others may see or the negative qualities of the other person because your fear responses have decreased significantly, and you may feel blind sided. This is because the intense feelings of obsession you experience override the warnings in your mind, and you may choose to look the other way when red flags arise.
If you have been in love before, you know the feelings and intense emotions that come with it. It can feel like an emotional rollercoaster, and you may feel detached from your surroundings and not care about what is happening around you.
You can show your partner that you care for them in several ways. For example, you can be affectionate, thoughtful, and supportive, and these actions will make her feel loved and appreciated.
People experience many emotions while they are in a relationship, characterised by feelings of affection, attraction, desire, longing, passion, intimacy, friendship, loyalty, commitment, and devotion.
These emotions vary greatly depending on the person experiencing them. Some people experience positive emotions such as joy, satisfaction, pride, hope, gratitude, and amusement.
Others experience negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, disappointment, jealousy, envy, guilt, shame, resentment, self-pity, loneliness, and depression.
Empathy
How important is empathy in a relationship?
Is it something that should always be present, or does it depend on each individual? Empathy is defined as the ability to put oneself into another person’s shoes and see things from their perspective.
In relationships, it means being able to communicate effectively and build trust. If you want to improve your relationship, you need to develop empathy.
Empathy is essential in any relationship because it helps us connect with other people. When we lack empathy, our communication skills suffer, and we become less effective communicators, and this leads to misunderstandings and hurt feelings.
Conclusion
Love is something that everyone goes through at some point in their life - some more often than others.
There are different types of love, and they all have very different definitions, most display the characteristics of trust and honesty. It is the foundation of any healthy relationship.
Relationships are important.
They bring us joy, comfort, and fulfilment. When we invest time into them, we get back even more than we put in.
I shall leave you with, Perhaps, one of the bests quotes you will ever read from Tom Robbins.
“We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love”.
