What Love (Really) IsIn
her groundbreaking research into the experience of being in
love, "Love enters your life pleasantly. Someone takes on a special meaning. You suddenly feel a sparkle of interest in somebody else, an interest fed by the image of returned feeling. Maybe the eyes lock. The beginning is a transformation that is sometimes so distinct that the French use the term coup de foudre, or thunderbolt - a stat of consciousness that, if experienced for the first time, is utterly unlike anything else that has ever happened." When romantic love errupts, the signs are unmistakeable. Suddenly, you feel completely alive and whole. Life takes on a rosy magical glow. When you pause for a moment. you notice that the grass is greener, the sky is bluer. You understand when people say "I feel like I can walk on air", or "I feel as if don't need to eat."
When that special person enters the room, your eyes and heart light up, you feel a growing feeling of joy inside. … you feel irationally exhuberant . You feel as if that person is almost a part of you and "together, we can conquer the world." At the same time, if this newfound feeling is not immediately reciprocated, you feel the pain of anxiety. If it is rejected - desolation. Observers have consistently noticed this bipolar alteration (or potential alteration) of the stat of love. One moment can be elated, the next thoroughly depressed. among college students, for example, one survey found that fully 42% had, at one time or another, been depressed about a love affair. What is it that errupts so suddenly, as if from nowhere, bringing both joy and pain, Elation and depression? What psycho-physical (mind-body) system inside us could act so powerfully as to uterly transform the quality of our conscious experience? The facts about the true source of love are only now emerging. Until virtually the final years of the last century, both academic and practicing psychologists had concentrated almost exclusively on everythng that could possibly go wrong with the human psyche. This is not surprising given that clinicians earn their living by treating problems, and academic research grants depend equally on finding solutions to "illnesses". As Martin Seligman wrote, "Psyschology concentrates largely on repairing damage withn a disease model of human functioning" (American Psychologist, January 2000). It has only been in the last few years that any credence has been given to the fact that the human psychophysical machine has a natural propensity not for disease and breakdown, but a natural capacity, in fact an overwhelming ongoing inclination to manufacture and maintain an acceptable level of happiness, wellbeing, life-satisfaction, in our daily lives. |
| "61% of American singles or 90% of singles that own a computer will look for a date on the internet this year. Most will go to sites like Match.com" |
| Yet
this is precisely what the evidence points to. The senior operating
program of the human mind-body system is dedicated to just this,
to generating and maintaining an above-average level of life-satisfaction
(happiness) throughout the stresses and strains of our daily lives.
In fact, in opinion polls, when people are asked what they value
most in life, a surprisingly high percentage answer that for them,
the most cherished commodity is happiness. What precisely does this "senior operating program" consist of? It has been know for over a century that every biological oraganism operates as a control mechanism or thermostat, constantly adjusting various elements in the system in order to maintain a constant homeostatic balance of body heat, nutrition and so on. As evolution progresses and brains get bigger, the ingredients of this homeostatic balance begin to expand beyond purely biological factors to include more and more emotional-cognitive factors. Feelings of pleasure, for example, are attached to behaviors that promote biological wellbeing (the "reward" system). At the emotional level then, homeostatic balance begins to involve the minimization of felt discomfort and the maintenance of an overall feeling of satisfaction tending toward pleasure. At the cognitive level, at least among human subjects, tests demonstrate that there is an ongoing operation maintaining a positive sense of self as well as the feeling of wellbeing. The increased cognitive input also involves a shift in the nature of the field of experience that the homeostatic balancing system is operating in. Psychological tests reveal that at the human level, this system is not operating solely in the here-and-now of incoming sensations and emotional reactions. Increasingly the experienced field involves expectations of what is likely to be happening in the near future, including what one hopes will be happening soon.
When our expectancy-based homeostatic life-satisfaction system is functioning properly, we feel a general tone of happiness. In moments of especialy positive experience (physically, emotionally, cognitively) or especially positive hopes we feel abnormally happy, joyous, even blissfull. But equally, when the stresses and strains of external circumstance go against us consistently and intensly, we feel sad, unhappy, distressed. Or when our life-maintenance system itself functions suboptimally because of illness or chemical imbalances, we feel less than happy, we can feel profoundly depressed (remember, this is a psychophysical or mind-body system - problems in the body affect the mind, and problems in the mind affect the body). Depending on how optimally our life-satisfaction system is fuctioning and/or how successfully it is coping with the stresses and strains of extenal circumstance, we can feel anywhere along the scale of extreme joyousness and bliss to profound hopelessness and depression. Recognize those symptoms? Those are the very same bipolar highs and lows of extasy and depression that occur so consistently in the state of love. Love, then, is a condition where the expectancy-based Life-satisfaction system is abnormally energized, because it has spotted someone who who could, potentially, produce a great deal of happiness in our lives. But because this energization is fixated on a single object, and the results, while eagerly expected are by no means certain, this highly energized state of the life satisfaction system is also highly unstable, and liable to violent ups and downs as the fortunes of our expectations vis-a vis this love object fluctuate. Depending on how the relationship is progressing, we can feel violently blissful ("I feel like I can walk on air"), or profoundly, even desperately depressed - to the point where suicide no longer seems out of the question.
What are the ramifications of this new understanding of the real source of love? Firstly, since love is a manifestion of our senior life operating system, the life-satisfaction system, it should not be belittled or ignored. Love is a natural and undoubtedly a necessary ingredient for any succesful partnership. But equally, because love is based in such large part on expectancy, on what we hope will happen, it is not, by itself, a guarantee of a successful long-term relationship. |