Narcissistic Personality Disorder Description
Love Science: Falling in Love Simply a Matter of Brain Chemistry
Finding Mr Right was easy for me. I found him many times. He came in all shapes and sizes. Each time I remember the headiness, the swooning, the long hours of cooing together and the foolishness of cavorting deep into the night, drunk on love and too much cheap wine. I recall the unbridled ecstasy, the intensity, the electricity and the unstoppable daydreaming that relentlessly engulfed my mind, once even costing me my job. Under the influence of infatuation, not even being fired mattered much; isn’t love a wonderful thing?
There’s nothing like new love to make us feel alive; it’s a turbo-boost that charges every molecule and it’s powerful enough to set our hearts on fire. It’s so emotional, so strong and while we believe it connects our souls, in reality it has little to do with either our feelings, or our hearts for that matter.
There’s a science to love and if you think that by consciously choosing a mate we have risen above our animal nature, you would be mistaken. Discoveries show that the ecstasy we feel is just a powerful instinctive potion concocted by a dance of hormones and brain chemistry orchestrated to a genetic tune. There is nothing conscious about love.
Being ‘madly in love’ is a far more apt description confirmed by the many similarities between the signs of new love and the symptoms of insanity. Cynics claim that love is a temporary madness curable by marriage and science shows that they may not be too far off the mark.
So, what really happens when we meet Mr Right?
Love is initially driven by lust sparked by testosterone. From puberty onwards testosterone acts like an overzealous hormonal town-crier heralding the burning urgency of our genes. Conventional wisdom wrongly attributes testosterone to males only but in fact both men and women have it, just in different degrees.
In the fairer sex, four or five shots of strong liquor causes testosterone to surge sufficiently to match the levels of those found in horny teenage boys. So, if we meet our beau while partying, we could well drink an inappropriate toad interesting enough to turn him into a prince.
Still, sobriety is no guarantee as our imagination rose-tints everything; the alchemy of which is far more powerful than any substance in a shot glass.
Before we were old enough to spell the word ‘love’, we all had fantasies about the magical prince or princess who would float us right onto cloud nine. Of course these notions were fanciful but they are powerful because these imaginings created the blueprint for our Mr or Ms Right.
When we’re single-but-searching, the blueprint turns our brain into a radar screen constantly scanning for the closest match. Too often it hones in on some poor unsuspecting character, who may have little else going for him other than the dubious honour of being the best ‘fit’ for the night.
If you then bed the boy romance heats up and regardless of whether he is a prince or frog, the atmosphere will start becoming impregnated with love. You don’t have to be in love with someone to have great sex because sex makes love happen.
Sex releases the cuddle-chemical oxytocin best known for creating feel-good bonding between mother and infant, and for nest-building. So it’s not surprising that starry-eyed lovers call one another ‘baby’ and start brooding over dull domestic issues like pinpointing the perfect washing machine.
Oxytocin is relationship super-glue and like the sticky adhesive it’s not particular about whom it bonds with. A few hot romantic encounters is enough to seal the deal and, once cemented, the madness begins.
You know the feeling. Under the influence of huge surges of energy, euphoria and exhilaration the dullest drip can suddenly transform into the funniest/ smartest/ most charming (delete where applicable) man you’ve ever met. You’re also tempted to engage in wild escapades like shouting from the roof tops or penning love-poems though the night and your once-intelligent brain can’t-seem –to-think-of-anything-else-but …
Although many romantic-air-castles have been built around the idea of finding a soul-mate, this heady thrill has nothing to do with a spiritual bond and everything to do with dopamine. Dopamine is a naturally occurring brain chemical that acts like cocaine-on-steroids and while we’re awash in it, he can do no wrong.
Although to some incurable romantics this may sound like scientifically party-pooping the enchantment of love, the truth is dopamine combined with lust is just the genes way of kicking butt. By focusing our energy on one person, DNA drives us to pick a mate - no matter who the person is.
Genes don’t care how crazy you are, they just motivate you to shag and in pursuit of their narcissistic goal, even the most balanced person can become totally irrational. Again it’s brain chemistry at work. High levels of dopamine suppress the calming and sensible influence of serotonin, another neuro-chemical that influences mood.
In normal doses serotonin is the anti-dote to stress; the ‘shoo-whaa’ chemical that calms and relaxes us. But when the brain is drenched in dopamine, serotonin scampers into the shadows much like a Zen master would become sagely silent if confronted with the full force of an A-type personality like Donald Trump.
The silence of serotonin serves genetic purposes too as low levels make us obsess about our newfound lover. New love can look like a mental illness and, during the early stages of romance, the chemical make-up of men’s and women’s brains is no different from those suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD. For those who are really struck, obsessing about his marvels or the minutia of the relationship can consume some four hours a day, every day.
So dopamine keeps you focused on the object of your love and sagging levels of serotonin make you obsess about him … and before you know it the madness has kept the love fires burning long enough to yield an evolutionary satisfactory outcome, offspring.
Does this explain monogamy, certainly not! If passionate romance is like a drug it’s bound to lose its kick - usually within a year or two - and if time doesn’t do the job giving birth will. Fortunately for children, parenting restrains dopamine lunacy but its absence can lead you to conclude that you have fallen out of love … until of course the next Mr Right comes along, sparking off the entire crazy romantic psychosis all over again.
Neither age nor experience changes love-chemistry, that’s why we keep doing it. And even though you, like me, may have experienced rejection, the pain is simply withdrawal from the chemical concoction that maintained this genetically provoked thing we call love.
Now that contraception frustrates frenetic genetics, it’s worth noting that sex also releases the hormone prolactin. Among other things prolactin produces brain cells. So if having sex makes us smarter perhaps we will all become wise enough eventually to concur with Robert Frost who poetically said: Love is just an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
About the Author
Stephanie Vermeulen runs seminars on Applied Emotional Intelligence and Women's Issues in business and public forums as well as being an inspiring speaker, writer and personal coach. Her books, 'Kill the Princess: Why Women Still Aren't Free from the Quest for a Fairytale Life'(USA) / 'Stitched-up: Who Fashions Women's Lives?' (South Africa) & 'EQ: Emotional Intelligence for Everyone'are available from leading bookstores and online through Amazon.com and Kalahari.net. She can be contacted via her website http://www.eqsa.co.za .
DEFINITION Narcissistic Personality Disorder
