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Love is not really that big a mystery. A lot of people would rather make you and me believe that love is an experience straight out of fairy tales, a potent brew of obscure magic shared between two persons—in other words, something strange but wonderful. Something like being contentedly stomach-rubbing-drunk, free from the guilt of liver cirrhosis later on or a crushing hangover in the morning. (Come to think of it, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” sounds exactly like the campy schmaltz of somebody who’s heavily sedated.)
Why would anybody want to foist these ideas on everyone else? I don’t know. I suspect these people earn mountains of money from doing so. Maybe they feel that they are doing the world a big favor by holding up a saccharine-coated idea of love which may provide a much-needed respite from the general doldrums and chaos of an incredibly stressful modern civilization. Maybe they’re simply pathetic dullards leading unbearably dreary, isolated, uneventful lives, who hang on with pure desperation to any glimmer of hope that existence has something more to offer—and then spread their ideas around to gain a sense of importance, fulfilling their dreams of becoming popular…finally. Or maybe such persons are just plain delusional.
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Whatever the reason, it probably doesn’t matter. The romantic or passionate attachment between two individuals—or what the majority of us would like to refer to as love—can quite easily be stripped of pretensions, disrobed of fickle misconceptions, and exposed truthfully in its simplest, unadorned, purest encapsulation. Those weren’t the nicest words, but anyone can get the message.
The purported “magic” behind love is very much like the magic of Einstein’s equation “E=mc2”. Which simply means that even if human relationships are founded on circumstances which are relative to the participants involved (which bears metaphorical resemblance to the model of the Theory of Special Relativity in Physics), there is little to deny the empirical fact that the principles in operation are the same from the point of view of every observer (again, the same as what Special Relativity Theory would infer about the Universe). It can be very confusing, but it’s really as simple as that.
Really. It’s not rocket science at all. It can be made even simpler without Einstein’s formula.
Science helps us out a great deal here. If you think you have enough problems figuring out why your husband or wife still wants to stay with you even if you look exactly the same as a flyblown garbage truck every time you wake up in the morning, just imagine how countless psychologists, social anthropologists, accredited marriage counsellors, sex therapists, even criminal forensic psychiatrists—essentially all sorts of scientific and academic personnel—would often require laboratory equipment and an unimaginable array of sophisticated monitoring and surveillance procedures just to precisely pinpoint the processes interacting with one another inside two people. And they’ve been doing this for decades.
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It’s not surprising then, that the scientific community has produced loads of believable conclusions. If you think you can effortlessly contradict their findings, then you better come prepared with your own reams of observations, your own charts, your own video documentation, and the results of your own clinical trials and experiments. Perhaps you can bring The Bible or any other Holy Tome just in case. It’s that easy.
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Whenever one’s attention is drawn to another particular individual of the human species, and then feels the sensation of fluttering under the chest; or tingling in some part or parts of the body; or is overcome by a confusion of moods which are uplifting, dizzying, and swooning at the same time; or when one is captivated and enchanted by the other’s mere presence—then it would be easy to say that a person is falling in love.
Harboring a crush, becoming infatuated, and falling in love— however different people may describe it in different ways, is not magic. It is the direct result of the interaction of naturally present bio-chemicals inside our bodies. Science has so far isolated dopamine as one of those chemicals, along with endorphins. It would be too insufferably boring to have to go very deep into what these chemicals are and their scalar ratios in our physical make-up; suffice to say that everybody is born with them and they are part of all of us, whether we like them or not.
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When our senses perceive certain characteristics in certain other persons—we see a face with our eyes, our noses pick up the other person’s scent, we hear the other person’s voice—these chemicals are activated from their dormant state. Where once they were just fluids and cells gliding gracefully throughout passages in our body, they are suddenly thrown into a boiling excitement after you perceive the stimuli, much in the same way that oxygen, gasoline, and a spark become fire when they come together. If this still seems very unclear to you, then it may be better to just think of your nose and your little finger, and then shove your little finger so far up your nostril that you feel pain and draw blood. Your finger is the stimulus. The pain—and blood—is your body’s response to it.
Whatever physical feature or non-physical characteristic you perceive in your beloved—that is the stimulus. The energizing of your dopamine and endorphins is your body’s response. Are things any clearer now?
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If ever you find yourself doubting any of this, then consider the fact that if you pump enough endorphins and dopamine into any person, the excess amounts can be enough to drive the body’s responses to all sorts of stimuli into a riot—meaning, you might find yourself falling into breathless infatuation with the first roadkill you see. Popping the illegal drug ecstasy into your system will actually accomplish this. No wonder you wake up in the morning with your worst case of bad-breath keeping company with a sleeping bear, inside a cave.
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You can quite effectively reverse the situation, too. If it was possible to siphon out dopamine and endorphins from your body in copious volumes, much like drawing out fuel from an oil-drum, then you’d probably find yourself brooding in a corner casting suspicious glances everywhere—chewing on rocks and sediment between your clenched teeth, perhaps passionately cradling a sniper rifle close to your chest, possessed by an implacable urge to lash out at the first living thing that comes your way. You simply want to see some hurt. You’d be more vicious than the worst badass out there.
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Yes, there you have it. That irrepressible surge of feeling we call “attraction” and “love”, that overwhelming wave of magnetism that draws one person to another, more often than not, is nothing more than a dollop or two of some type of organic pharmaceutical syrup. And that, my friends, is not magic at all.
Many people will still beg to disagree, of course. Biological chemicals, they will contend, are not sufficient enough reasons to explain how many people in love manage to nurture relationships that last for a very, very long time. Chemical interactions can fizzle and steam for certain periods, but the process won’t last as long as, say, the length of time husbands and wives normally stay together. And these people do have a point. All flames, even the brightest ones, eventually burn out. Your body’s reactions to repeated stimulation also have a limit. The pain in your nostril may likely be numbed after you keep jamming your little finger up there again and again and again—and again. Hopefully you won’t have to do so to prove the point.
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Long-lasting relationships founded on love, we keep hearing, ostensibly prove that an unnatural, omnipotent force is operating far beyond mere human control or bodily mechanisms. Some would even bring predetermined destiny into the discussion, as if a lot of humans were paired together through the influence of a supreme intelligence or the movements of stars, planets, and other astronomical bodies taken together. It all sounds so esoteric, so supranatural, so mystical—and admittedly so romantic.
Honestly, though, nobody really buys that crap. Deep down inside, every participant in a relationship knows that for the arrangement to go on and on and on, the simple way to do so is to endure whatever stink your partner may throw at you whether intentional or not. You endure it every day.
To clear this up, science can help us out a bit here. Again. The very self-same chemicals in our bodies that help two individuals start a relationship, those fluids that find ways to create new partnerships in the first place—they can play mischievous jokes on the concerned parties. Dopamine and endorphins quite certainly aid in strengthening the attachment between partners; however, they do so by hoodwinking you into thinking that your partner has no imperfections whatsoever. That he/she/it (the word “it” may apply to certain persons who may actually be in a relationship with, well, space aliens, furniture, or characters in an ultra-realistic video game) may just be the only individual in the whole universe who can be so…right in every way.
But common knowledge and experience will always tell us that this line of reasoning is pure horse manure, to put it more gently.
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Because each person who has ever existed—with absolutely no exceptions—would really possess certain attributes which would be abominably undesirable. It will always be true for everybody. It could be a simple dysfunction, such as the ability to snore like the horn of an ocean liner while drooling on the pillows at the same time, or it could be more complex and even sinister—such as being able to conduct a respectable life in the daytime, while finding the resourcefulness to carry out serial murders in secret after a midnight snack. Everybody, including you and me, would have traits which the people around them would normally consider to be just plain loathsome.
And in the middle of being in the throes of a biochemically-induced attraction, we tend to overlook those traits, relegate them to some back closet like dirty linen, and focus our attentions on what makes our partner easier to get along with. We actually turn a blind eye to anything that lessens the luster of the beloved. It is almost always a deplorable state of events. Sooner or later, the levels of dopamine and endorphins taper down, all the captivating feelings melt away, and then you wake up one day with the realization that, for all this time, you have been attaching yourself to a person who behaves—and may even look like—a toilet bowl.
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But wait a minute. This is actually the point when the real magic comes in. A lot of relationships break off when this realization phase arrives, but nearly a similar number carry on as usual. People learn to endure and put up with their partners’ bad characteristics. They sustain doing so for a long time. Long-lasting relationships are founded on the capacity of participants to tolerate and accommodate even the most horrid and revolting properties of their beloved, and consider them as part and parcel of the daily routine of living together. No matter that the other person has bad breath, calloused toes and fingers, has the habit of getting drunk every Saturday night watching sports programs on television, has the seemingly uncontrollable urge to gossip about the neighbors just when you’re feeling drowsy and ready to call it a night—all these irritating elements suddenly fit into a whole picture that thankfully also has some good things found in it.
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Tolerance and endurance carry relationships a long way. You invariably stick with your partner no matter what. Many people might view this as magical. Still other people might also say it’s stupidity. Perhaps it would just be more sensible to describe it as confusing. Because what has so far been discussed is only the tip of the iceberg. When you go into the particulars of tolerance and endurance, several aspects of it will make you question your sanity.
Yes, the way that people put up with the imperfections of their partners can be weird and confusing territory. For the most part, anything that you discover in your significant other that either annoys you or drives you into an almost uncontrollable fury is usually found in other people, too. If your beloved frequently farts at the door to your toilet, then it would be safe to assume that other men and women do, too. Except that you can tolerate it and accept it as a fact of living when it’s your partner doing it. If some wild circumstance would make it possible to put another person in place of your partner who likes to release flatulence in the same exact location, then you might find it severely unconscionable to let that other person live until the end of the day.
It goes the same way with plenty of other things. Your partner likes putting his or her feet up the dinner table; your partner cooks terrible pasta; your partner keeps using the wrong toothbrush; your lover consistently fails miserably at dancing; he or she always messes up with following the proper directions when driving—we could go on and on about the things which you can endure from your beloved…and yet you cannot put up with from other people, who may pretty well be as clumsy and inept to the same degree as your partner. All because you want the relationship to last for eternity. As was mentioned before, some people can find your persistence as magical or cute; some can find it purely stupid.
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Let’s take it further and consider the true-to-life relationship between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, presently the most glamorous, most talked-about celebrity couple in the world today. It has been reported in one gossip column or another that Mr. Pitt has the nasty habit of neglecting to take a decent shower or bath for days on end, so much so that he reportedly manages to smell terrible and yet appear so handsome to millions of women at the same time. Miss Jolie allegedly allows him to slip into bed with her every night notwithstanding that his aroma could compete with that of last year’s expired cheese in the refrigerator.
Even though one could easily argue that an anecdote like this is purely speculation, what is certainly true is that if it was someone else other than Brad Pitt who grabbed the opportunity to settle into Miss Jolie’s bedside—even if this other person smelled just as rankly—then you can effortlessly imagine the horrifying consequences. We can even forget about putting a live person beside Miss Jolie. Let’s plunge headlong into the unabashedly outrageous and just place a cadaver with her under the covers. Same Pitt smell, same disastrous result. Which makes it safe to assume that Miss Jolie must love Mr. Pitt very much.
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So there you have it. The secret behind long-lasting relationships. It’s so simple and commonplace that it’s really no secret at all. It’s very liberating to set aside all illusions and apprehend love and relationships for what they actually are—which does not at all detract from anyone’s ideas about love’s purity, love’s power, love’s methods and ways of weaving everybody into harmonious relationships. If you are with your lover right now, just be thankful that no matter how much he or she has to suffer under your company, he or she would rather endure them from you rather than from anyone else. And that he or she is probably willing to do so for another fifty years. I’m pretty sure you can’t help but agree that it’s real magic.
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