Relationship, love, and chemistry do not need to be all present when you have a lover. Today, I am opining on what makes and breaks the lover’s bond.
Forming a relationship requires very little. Two people with mutual agreement to be together will have a relationship. The basis for the agreement can be anything such as lust, money, education, gender, political preferences, religion or as simple as we work on the same team/project or play together.
Love is a bit tricky. The best writing addressing the question of if this is love is as follows: first there are different kinds of love, so excluding all those blood related types of love or those for pet…
“in order to find out if you love someone, the basic place to start would be to ask yourself, do you want to be with them? If the answer to that question is no, then it really can’t be love. When you love someone, you want to be with them. Not just be with them, but share everything with them. You have a great day at work and want to rush home and tell them every wonderful thing that has happened. You feel excited at the prospect of just being in their company, just being close to them isn’t enough, you want to be a part of them, a part of their life forever. You can’t stand the thought of being away from them yet, when you are, you still feel that ever-present bond that ties you together wherever you go. You can almost feel what they are feeling. You feel like, with a little bit of effort, you can see what they are seeing and think what they are thinking. It is almost as if you both can occupy each other’s bodies with complete trust and harmony. That to me is love.”
The description above does not require two parties to be present to have love. Unrequited love is often possible when one person feels closer emotionally and mentally connected to the other person. This bids the question of whether it’s possible that those who fall in love often are of higher mental/emotional capacity than those who don’t often fall in love. How about those who recognize love’s presence and proceed to block it off? Certainly, the common theme in that line of reasoning is love requires some intelligence and controlling love is a separate level of consciousness.
Chemistry is often confused with lust. Feeling chemistry is not a bad thing, it just means you’re excited by another person. I wonder if it could also be cause by the other person sending you ‘telepathic’ signals and their electrons reach you and thus igniting a chemical reaction. It would be interesting to somehow experiment with this by placing one person (A) who is extremely attracted to person B, while B has no initial attraction to A at all to see if A can cause B to somehow chemically respond to A. In relation to that thought, B is somewhat of an innocent victim of A’s attraction. B never really liked A but now there is a confusion ignited in B as to whether s/he does like A. The question i have here is, given this type of situation, it would be natural to think that we should have evolve to be equipped with defense mechanisms against unwanted attractions! At least we should naturally reject those who are biologically incompatible with us, like a bad DNA match would immediately cause B to react with horror to A’s advances. But would we have control of our defenses? Can we choose to let our guards down and accept A anyway, or accept those who are not a good biological match for us? Now im curious… it’s too bad i don’t have those answers.
Moving on to What breaks lovers. I wonder if break-ups are purely a social creation or is it something of a consequence to human being’s higher capacity for morality (that we break up because we have fallen in love with someone else or at least desire someone else). The easy answer is when there is no love, there is a break. The common cases are when there is some level of love or attraction that hinders clear decision to go either one way or another. But staying on course, do people need a reason for a break-up? Should people also provide that reason to their lovers? I think generally there are no logical reasons for break-ups. That when one person feels ill in the presence of the other, it’s time for a break-up. No amount of ‘trial separation’, flowers, or extravagant vacations will take away that ill feeling, though it may delay it. So, next time when you feel like vomiting at the sight of your lover, it’s time perhaps to let the other person know they make you sick. Breaking up on any other grounds could indicate that you have practical concerns that are more important than being with your partner.
Having explore the basics of love, the next write up will delve into the more complicated issues and on friendly advice (that most involved in a relationship should not take).
March 24th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I will say that I don’t think there’s any telepathy going on or rogue electrons inciting feelings of adoration.
However there is a biological basis for what you’ve described. Mice, for example, can tell by the scent of another mouse whether or not they are related. They preferentially seek mates that smell different from themselves, enforcing an outbreeding system of mating. I wouldn’t say they consciously choose their mate this way. To draw a comparison, I like strawberries and chocolate but don’t like cinnamon. Not because I care particularly about their nutritional value, that’s just how they taste to me. It’s not that much of a stretch to think that humans have a similar mechanism for attraction to that in mice.
What’s the reason for this? The simple answer is disease. Ignoring the inherent genetic difficulties of inbreeding, communicable disease is one of the major reasons outbreeding is desirable.
To draw an analogy from Matt Ridley, animals and their diseases are like locks and keys. Each bacteria or virus is constantly changing, trying to make new keys to break into your locks. If you inbreed, there’s not much variability in your locks. If you outbreed you combine some of your locks with a completely different set of someone else’s locks, so the viruses are left looking for more keys.
This idea may be offensive to some. “Humans are far above mice” you may say. Not so much actually. You share about half your genes with a banana. Something to consider when you start comparing humans to animal studies.
March 24th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
being related to a banana is quite cute in my opinion but being compare to Mice leaves out the metaphysics of the question. If only Mice possess a consciousness that is recognizable to us.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
The very point I was trying to make is that consciousness is overrated. It’s half the story, and maybe not even that large of a fraction.
Think of all the times you’ve said or heard someone say something like “he’d be perfect for me, but I’m just not attracted to him” or “she’s wrong for me in every possible way, but I just can’t help loving her.” That’s the consciousness deciding and the biology opposing it.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I like that. Accordingly, people shouldn’t beat themselves over a fail relationship. This is certainly worth exploring in the next write up, science vs. rational choice. I suppose the nurture issue should be examined too.
A friend brought up a study two nights ago that females and males are best paired if they have an age difference of 11 years. The male is definitely able to provide the means for optimal resources to satisfy the female’s reproduction possibilities. (i don’t buy this by the way, but then again 11 years a HUGE difference)