The sweet smell of flowers, the fields of green grass, the long daylight hours give us a new lease on life. Every little breeze whisper romance that sparks with endless possibilities. The brain is primed to fall in love in the spring.
Spring and love bring life together like any other season. If you were not inspired by Valentine’s in February, a few more weeks will make the difference.
The little winged boy though blind, feeling this at his highest pitch, aims his arrows feverishly in all directions. He strikes, we fall. His gold-tipped arrows render lovestruck those whose hearts they pierce.
How, why, and when we fall in love is a mystery.
What we do know is that spring sends love letters to the world and happily we fall in love.
The nature of love has baffled man since early times. Philosophers and scientists have long tried to fathom love’s causes — its rise, its fall, its raison d’être.
In ancient mythology it has been described as “bittersweet” and “dolorous”, leaving the lover “trapped” and “possessed”. Separation from the loved one brings about “pain” and “sickness”.
The mythological concept of love was an ambiguous and confusing involuntary emotion, with both negative and positive qualities. Each human was originally a powerful creature composed of two parts, two males and two females, or a male and a female. Their power threatened the gods, so the gods cut them in two. Since then, they have longed to reunite with their other half and regain their full power. Only this unity will return them to their primeval nature, bringing about perfection and true happiness.
This theme — that love allows one person to complete another — has added immensely to the joys and sorrows of our voyage across the oceans of time.
The first known work written specifically to expose the nature of Love is Plato’s Symposium. Plato describes love as a basic human need to be completed one by another.
Freud viewed love as the co-existence of “two currents” — affection and sensuality. A child’s first love-object is the mother; girls later transfer it to the father. The fusion of these two currents results in happy love.
This intense passionate relationship that establishes a holy oneness between a man and a woman, continued to influence all concepts of love through the ages.
To the Platonists, love is the search for absolute beauty. Christianity’s ascetic concept considered God the supreme object of love. The Romantics attempted to solve this through “the idealisation of sex”, explicitly focusing on the erotic experience. Nineteenth century idealism attempted to downplay the role of sexuality, while 20th century scientists needed an explanation for sexual love. They embarked on a mission to reveal the truth about love — the neurochemical formula that defines human relationships.
In our 21st century we are surprised that a relatively small area of the brain is active in love, while a far larger part is involved in ordinary friendship. How could “the face that launched a thousand ships”, have done so through such a limited cortex?
Moreover, the brain areas active in love were not the same as those active in other emotional states. They resembled more those who snorted cocaine and not those experiencing intense emotions.
The conclusion is that “we’re addicted to love” — literally.
Lustful sex is similar to the state induced by opiates — a heady mix of chemical changes increasing the levels of oxytocin, vasopressin, and endogenous opioids, the latter being the body’s natural equivalent to heroine. This serves many functions relaxing the body, inducing pleasure, satiety and bonding. No wonder.
Romantic or obsessive love is a refinement of mere lust. We hone in a particular mate with intensity and exhilaration, sharing neurochemical characteristics of manic-depression. In fact, behavioural patterns of love are similar to cases of obsessive-compulsive behaviour.
Infatuation and chemistry are essentially the same, according to Harville Hendrix, PhD. Why is it that one man and one woman become the object of our adoration?
Hendrix believes we are programmed since childhood, for a man chooses a woman like his mother, a woman like her father — together they contemplate everlasting happiness. Is it love or is it chemistry?
To us, love is a function of the heart; to scientists it is a chemical reaction of our brain. While adrenaline is about love and endorphin is about loving, it is the explosion of neuro chemicals — dopamine/norepinephrine and phenylethylamine (PEA) — that is the love spark that we all seek.
Scanning the brain of lovers, scientists believe treating clinically a romantic condition may not be altogether beyond reach. Shocking. Could it be that the most euphoric, most complex, most baffling of all human emotions is but a chemical reaction to be cancelled one day by a pill. Never.
Anthropologist Helen Fisher suggests that romantic love is one of the strongest drives on earth: “It seems to be more powerful than hunger.”
Whoever said that “We were not built to be happy, we were built to produce”? Was it British royalty? If Yale scientist Laurie Santos believes “the brain isn’t hard-wired for happiness”, ignore her.
Love has kept the human race giddily sighing and multiplying whether induced by a look, a touch, a dance a song, or simply a high dose of PEA.
Remember, “All mankind loves a lover” — especially in spring.
“If people did not love one another, I really don’t see what use there would be in having spring.”
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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