Is love a mystery or can it be reduced to chemical processes
in the brain? And, what are those chemical processes? And, perhaps most
importantly, can you prepare the brain for love?
Falling in Love
When you are falling in love a kind of chemical bomb goes
off in the brain. There’s a chemical storm of dopamine and noradrenaline that
makes you feel excited and warm all over.
Dopamine is a brain chemical associated with reward. It gets
released when I receive something wonderful from you – as I do in the association
we call love – or, when I have the pleasure of giving you something. Love is a
mutual giving and receiving of something very wonderful.
The noradrenaline is released due to the newness and excitement
of it all. It makes you feel brighter and more alive. There is almost no time
in your life when you feel more alive than when you are falling in love.
Craving the Beloved
As the relationship deepens, the pleasure that you associate
with love makes you crave more.
One of the wonderful things about dopamine is that it is
initially only released at the time of the excitement, but then the brain is
smart enough to release it in advance of the excitement – in anticipation of
the hug, the kiss or the presence of the beloved.
You actually begin to feel warm before the moment of
connection. That contributes to you craving it. It becomes an addiction. You
want to see that person again – to connect again.
Mature Love
As the relationship matures, it becomes more than the
addiction. It becomes an attachment, which really arises from two sources.
The first one is that when you really connect with someone —
when you are really rewarded by being in that person’s presence — the brain
releases oxytocin. Oxytocin contributes to the feeling that the person with you
is a trusted person, a person who should be part of you. A chemical bonding
occurs. It’s the same kind of bonding as between a mother and child. It occurs
between two people who are so positively and continuously connected that they
form a chemical bond, when they are together and when they think of one
another.
There’s a second critical thing that is happening. When you
grow your own sense of self, you grow it by self-reference. When I feel
something, when I act, when I think, I am continuously associating that
feeling, act, or thought to its source, and that source is me, and from that I
create my self. But, the same processes work to create a strong attachment to
anything that is positively and strongly close to you. And, what is closer to
you, what is stronger to you, than someone you love? The consequence of that is
that your brain — through it plasticity — grows that person that you love into
yourself. That person becomes a part of you. Ultimately, you are bonded, you
are wedded in your brain — just as you may be wedded in life.
Preparing the Brain
for Love
First of all, you want to exercise the machinery. You want
to make sure the machinery is in a powerful form that controls the release of
noradrenaline and dopamine. You do that by living a life full of excitement,
surprises, challenges, and interesting moments. You want to live a life that is
full of reward.
The way you can control the delivery of reward is by you
being the rewarder. By you being the generous agent. Every time you are kind to
someone, every time you are sympathetic to someone, you release dopamine.
Given my research in building plasticity-based brain
exercises, I have to add, that you can use our computerized exercises in
BrainHQ, because those exercises work this machinery heavily.
However, you can also exercise this machinery heavily in
everyday life — by being a positive, loving, generous person. I strongly
recommend that. Live a life full of vitality, full of interesting and
surprising things, and be a positive, loving, generous person. And, when love
comes your way, you’ll be fully ready to respond to it.
Of course, you can also just wait to be struck
through the heart by that arrow from Cupid — somewhere out there — waiting to
surprise you. Because that can happen too. Be ready for the surprise. And, for
love.
