Five Thousand Three Hundred and Thirty Three characters. (Blog Of Love.)

In the spring of my eighteenth year I had this fascination with trying to analyze and explain love. Though in all honesty it was more for the purpose of convincing myself that love is not all bad and is something that I want and deserve. Now the love I am talking about is people love, the love either between two people, or the love one person has for another not the kind of love someone has for say their favourite food. From there I catagorised love in three different ways: Social, Familial, and Romantic.

Social love is the kind of love you have in association to social relationships “friendships”. The love shared between close friends, the friends that you can tell anything to, rely and depend on, the friends that you are not afraid to be yourself around because that’s what they expect of you. Familiar love is that which pertains to family. It is almost semi-obligatory sort of love, because no matter how mad they make you, or even if you claim to hate them, you still even if it is only subconsciously you always love your family. Now I should clarify or add that this is within reason I am not saying that every family has love in it, also I should mention that family transcends blood because there’s more to being family than sharing blood. Finally, romantic love, now I don’t mean the overly media saturated physical “love”. This is one of the problems in today’s society, love is an overused word also often misused meant to either receive physical gain or as some sort of manipulation tool. The media also has transformed romantic love into something that is needed to be happy, where as you don’t, you can easily be happy without being in a romantic relationship. But romantic love is just more than the love of friends, more than the obligatory love of family, because romantic love is not obligatory or compulsory it is a very natural and involuntary action. To paraphrase John Green “falling in love is like falling asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

Now let’s talk about falling in romantic love, to be precise the physical effects and sometimes dependency in relation to falling in love. The results could end up being an addictive substance, not by any means comparable to caffeine, tobacco, controlled and illegal substances or alcohol (Yes, I do consider alcohol to be an addictive substance). Basically it is in the same category as any substance that has an effect on one’s neurochemistry. When it comes to falling in love it is the addiction to a combination of three specific chemicals that effect neurochemistry.

-Phenyl ethylamine: speeds up the flow of information between nerve cells.

-Dopamine: feel good chemical.

-Norepinephrine: stimulates adrenaline production, makes heart race faster.

This blend of these chemicals is what is known commonly as the “falling in love” stage of romantic relationships. The stimulation of that chemical combination can actually override the part of the brain that controls logical thinking. I have an issue with the addiction to this chemical concoction, and how this makes people almost dependent on being involved in romantic relationships to make themselves happy, and as a result when they aren’t in a romantic relationship they lose their sense of “self”, all they want is to be in a relationship and there can be no substitute for them having that feeling. These people hop easily from one relationship to another only ever getting through this first stage of a relationship. This helps promote the societal view that to be happy you need to be in a romantic relationship, which is completely false. The possible results of this are that they much like any other addict want more and then once it reaches the point in which the feelings change and the “high” wears off they believe that they have “fallen out of love” or they go the other way and they continue on with it, allowing the relationship to progress past the initial stage. But this could result in the relationship being either co-dependent or one member being heavily emotionally dependent on the other, whereas in a healthy relationship should be neither, but they should be independent partners.

Now, that could have seemed very negative and I have yet to discuss the power that love holds. If there is no power in love then it would not have anywhere near the same effect on us that it does. But perhaps the power love has is all due to us giving it that power. When you think about it, love can give you strength to do many things; inversely love can break a person beyond repair, and then turn around and fix it all. “Because when you love someone there’s no limit to what you can accomplish.” This quote from the TV show Kyle XY implies that there is some hidden power in love. This further explains how much power love holds, this shows that love has the power to make mountains crumble. Now, let us look at the saying “Time heals all wounds,” now in many ways this could very well be true but as I see it this does not apply to “firsts” (To be clear, firsts, first person you’re in love with, first person to break your heart, and first person you sleep with).  This is or course within reason but, you don’t generally forget your “firsts” because they are the ones who set down the initial framework for the future. Forgetting and/or getting over your “firsts” is one of the hardest things a person can go through in the scope of romantic relationships, and yet what is implied is that what it takes for this to happen is time. Now how I see it is not time that helps get you over your “firsts” but what really helps if finding that one person. But I want to be clear that finding that person should not be your driving force or ultimate priority. Because even though I said that finding that one person will help you finally get over your “firsts”, friends will help greatly and being with your friends a whole lot easier than finding a new person to be in a romantic relationship with.

The questions of love.

Is love for me? Can I even be in love? Or will I just hurt them as they try to love me? Is this what I want? Do I really want to open myself up for pain, depression, anger or sadness all in hopes that it turns out differently.

The decision to choose to love or allow yourself to be loved belongs to each person.

Post Script: Love is a natural force much like gravity, we as people cannot limit it. We should strive to let love flow, not try to control it, but adequately navigate it. As if we were a leaf in the wind getting.