Since Valentine's Day has just passed, i thot it fitting that we learn what scientists think of LOVE :
What is love? Dopamine, phenyl ethylamine and oxytocin...
Excepts from Andrew G Marshall's article
...On the one hand, love can lift us up; on the other, it can destroy us. The problem is further compounded because we generally also feel tremendous love for our mothers, our children, our friends - even chocolate. Or maybe especially chocolate.
... The pioneering sexologist Havelock Ellis provided a famous but entirely incorrect mathematical formula: love = sex + friendship. Freud dismissed romantic love as the sex urge, blocked. Social biologists have scanned our brains and identified three chemicals - dopamine, phenyl ethylamine and oxytocin - which they claim attract us exclusively to our mates for long enough, in their opinion, to conceive and give the offspring a secure start.
...Psychologist Dorothy Tennov interviewed 500 people from different backgrounds and age groups, both gay and straight, about falling in love, and found a startling similarity in how each respondent described their feelings.
The basic components were:
- intrusive thinking (you can't stop daydreaming about them);
- an aching in the heart;
- an acute sensitivity to any act or thought which can be interpreted favourably;
- fear of rejection and unsettling shyness in their presence;
- intensification through adversity (at least up to a point)
- and a disregard for all other concerns.
- a remarkable ability to emphasise what is truly admirable and avoid dwelling on the negative -
To distinguish between these overwhelming emotions and the more stable, domestic feelings experienced by long-term couples who are only too aware of their partner's failings, Tennov coined a new term: limerence.
For full article
http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/relationships/from_love_and_limerence.htm
according to Wikipedia:
Limerence is a cognitive and emotional state of being emotionally attached or even obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one's feelings, but not primarily for a sexual relationship (although it can further intensify the situation). The term was coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov to describe a near-obsessive form of romantic love.
Limerence is sometimes also interpreted as infatuation, or is colloquially known as a crush, but in reality it is something much different. In common speech, infatuation includes aspects of immaturity and extrapolation from insufficient information, and is usually short-lived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence