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Thursday, June 25, 2009

When brain chemicals strike

Posted by Jill | 12:52 AM

There seems to be something so typical, almost trite, about the e-mails that have been released from Mark Sanford to his lover:

Isn't this the way it always is? "You are my soulmate." "You are my one true love." "How has this miracle of love fell upon us?" "We are powerless to control this wild, wild thing." "We were just very special friends and then we realized just how we were fated to be together." And on and on ad nauseum. What's hilarious is that every time we hear of one of these high-profile affairs, each of these "very special and unique loves" is exactly the same.

The truth is far more prosaic, as we know from science:

What we know about love is still largely out of our control. For instance, infatuation. This is supposedly the first stage of falling in love, an unbearable attraction towards someone. This attraction causes a virtual explosion of nuerochemicals very similar to adrenalin. Assisted by Phenylethylamine (that speeds up the flow of information between cells), dopamine (that makes us glow and feel good), and norepinephrine (that stimulates the production of adrenalin), make our world go round, our eyes sparkle and our heart beat faster. Our entire existence then depends on the sight of the person who triggered these reactions to begin with, and as the addiction to the chemical grows stronger, our attraction becomes greater. At this stage we commit foolish mistakes which are the stuff puppy love stories are made of. Actually it is these three chemicals that combine to give us what we call infatuation. We feel we are energized, often floating on air…and the reason why people who are just falling in love can talk for hours on end… (the same person becomes boring at a later stage).

We can blame our chemicals for everything. We had a list of attributes ready for matching, but we just end up falling in love with the person who possesses none of them…it is , as they say, chemistry. Social obligations, other relationships, sense and sensibility, all take a back seat; our mind soars with these natural drugs. No wonder, a lover and a madman are said to be alike. Scientists also opine that this `clicking’ would be with a person with whom we can identify a parent-child situation. A person who, in our subconscious, will give us back something we feel we lost during our growing up years. For some it is security, for some others, it is warmth, and then others, just a spirit of adventure. This could be the reason why demure, well brought up girls usually fall for wastrels. This subconscious selection of mate gets our phenylethylamines and other chemicals moving. This period when our brain is awash with the love hormones lasts for different durations in different people, between six months to three years. In most of us, it settles down after that. For mercurial people, this high is missed and that’s the reason why they need another temporary high….another relationship, another chemical fix. If these love junkies stay married, they will need new relationships to keep their dope, and sometimes, bigger highs. hence bigger risks.

As if these treacherous brain chemicals weren't responsible enough for people wrecking what without the phenylethylamines would be perfectly satisfying lives, the aggressively bad Harlequin-romance prose these chemicals cause people to write may be just as bad as the wreckage people who succumb to these chemicals leave in their wake.

If Sanford weren't such a sanctimonious hypocrite, looking to the law to keep him faithful where his own brain doesn't want to allow him to, one could feel sorry for him. Because his brain doesn't care about the ruination of his career. He now has a biochemical addiction, and it's going to be a very hard one for him to break.

Would that this helped him develop some empathy for drug abusers as well, except that I'm quite certain that he will regard HIS brain chemicals as being as special and unique as the immortal adoration he has for his Argentine paramour.

Labels: I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning

5 comments

5 Comments:

Matthew Unger said...

WYNC's RadioLab has an excllent podcast on dopamine, norepinephrine, and oxytocin. I highly recommend it.

6/25/09, 3:14 PM

Bob said...

Every woman I was with was my soulmate for at least two weeks, even the Republican woman, & the woman who got into bed with me because her fiance was in Europe cheating on her, (she married him anyway), & the nursing student who thought I would change overnight & marry her when she graduated, & the woman from Virginia I knew lived too far away.

6/25/09, 5:41 PM

D. said...

In the polyamory community, we call those "Disney chemicals."

6/26/09, 1:25 AM

DBK said...

Yeah,l the sanctimony and hypocrisy are pretty dreadful. I have some contempt for him because of that. But I also feel strangely sorry for him because people do fall in love with someone not their spouses and it's tragic and hurtful to so many. When it happens quietly to someone who isn't famous it is tragic and when it happens to someone who is famous it is tragic. Yes, it is trite and human and I can understand it to an extent. I guess I'm having a hard time enjoying it. Yeah, he was one of the "Impeach Clinton" crowd. He deserves scorn and contempt for that, but he deserved it for that regardless of whether he cheated on his wife.

6/26/09, 2:42 PM

Jill said...

Horsepuckey. If in fact this woman started out as a "dear, dear friend", there was a point at which Sanford knew damn well he was headed for trouble. There was that fork in the road, and he took the wrong one. The minute he started sneaking around to see this woman, it became cheating on his wife. If you wouldn't want your spouse to know you're with this other person, you shouldn't be doing it.

I am willing to have compassion for Mark Sanford the way I would any addict who's trying to kick a habit. Because he's addicted to the "feelings" that being with this woman maybe once a year gave him. And he's in for a tough road even WITHOUT his career and marriage being in the toilet.

Sanford is an adult with free will. Sorry, but spare me the romantic crap about how he was "swept away." He had free will the same as you and me, only he chose to use it to cheat on his wife instead of a) trying to talk to her about his unhappiness (assuming he even knew he was unhappy); or b) leaving and THEN finding someone else. But instead he decided to vote to impeach Bill Clinton and oppose gay marriage because he was so fucking scared of himself that he couldn't believe that other people can control themselves and have a moral code evenif he can't.

To the extent that

6/26/09, 3:49 PM