An evaluation of love on Valentine’s Day

I have never been much of a romantic, at least in the classic sense of the word.  But love in the scientific and sociological sense has always fascinated me.  So let’s just say I am an analytical romantic.

And this analysis always kicks into full gear on this day of romantic love – Valentine’s Day.  Of course the cynic in me believes that it is a holiday steeped in commercialization. On the day after Christmas, you begin to see red, pink, fuchsia, and every color in between in every grocery, drug, convenient, and hardware store around.  And then as it builds to its climax on that lovely day, February 14, the stores look like the blood and guts of every human being –  red-hot Technicolor madness.  

A few months ago I watched a wonderful video by anthropologist Helen Fisher on romantic love.  It was a speech that she made at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference in February 2006 on a study that she conducted involving a group of people madly in love.  Fisher observed subjects’ brains on display in an MRI as she asked them questions about their focus of romantic attention.  Interestingly enough, she found that love affects the same parts of the brain as cocaine – dopamine and serotonin levels go through the roof.  

The emotion of romantic love, or the “brain drive,” as Fisher called it, applies to those in the throes of newly found passion.  And, in her speech, she segmented this drive as separate from that of attachment.  Attachment, according to Fisher, is the third “brain system” associated with mating (the first is the sex drive). It is also connected to long-term relationships and the ability to raise a family.

Attachment, of course, does not come on like the rush of a sniff of cocaine; it is more a feeling of being comfortable and secure – kinda like a cup of hot tea on a cold day.  And here is where I see the crux of marriage and the adverse effect of the commercialization mentioned above.

I believe that the way America idealizes love has destroyed many marriages – it almost destroyed mine.  After the initial rush is gone, that beautiful passion wanes, and then … people give up – they think love is over.  And if you believe what you see on TV and the movies, it is over.  I mean, passion is supposed to last forever if your love is in fact true, right?  

But as I have found in 13 years of marriage, love is not so simple and it is different for everyone.  Around year seven (hmmm, the itch – how stereotypical), love started to change and it scared me into leaving my husband.  But somehow we made it through and although it was very difficult, I believe we have moved into the “brain system” of attachment – and it is a love far stronger than the one before.

So on this Valentine’s Day – more than any other in the past – as I embark on a new love adventure (that of parental love), I will take a moment to cherish all the different loves that I have felt and appreciate them all.  And later I will sip a warm cup of tea and smile.

Natasha Bright is the MOLI View's senior editor.