Western Morning News (Saturday)
Romantic legacy of the patron saint of lovers
ITHINK it’s almost impossible to listen to any popular music however old, without the lyrics bringing in the word “Love”. Just turn on the radio and listen and I guarantee the song will allude to it in some way.
Monday is St Valentine’s Day. Shops are jumping on the bandwagon selling every sort of card. Florists rub their hands in glee and the price of roses – anticipated to be about 200,000 sold this year – go skyward. Restaurants are fully booked and await star struck lovers and others who feel that February 14th is the day when we should profess our Love to one another.
Author H.W. says: “Love is a funny word. We use it so much that we seem to forget its meaning. We say we Love objects, seasons, times of day, movies, TV shows and everything. And we use this same word to describe people. We say we Love our parents, our friends, our family. It’s one of the most used words in the English language but it remains special. Love is different like that. You can use it to talk about anything, but when you find that one person you know you want to spend the rest of your life with, Love is completely new. And saying “I Love you” becomes the best sound you could every say or hear. Love grows and changes with us, it is just as alive as those who use it. So Love as much as you want! Because Love will always find a way to be new”.
How do we know we’re in Love? What is the elixir that makes us feel on cloud nine, makes our skin glow, our appetites shrink, our smiles grow? Finding yourself daydreaming when you should be working, reliving conversations with them in your head. Is it all just imagination? Apparently not. And that, of course, is enough for scientists to get stuck in and see what makes us go all gooey when that special someone walks in the room.
One of the leading experts on the ‘Biological basis of Love’, anthropologist Helen Fisher at Rutgers University, New Jersey, has found that the brain of a person in Love looks very different from one who just is in lust. Oddly that brain is also different from someone in a long-term relationship.
Apparently being in Love can be shown up on a biological basis and takes up a unique and well-defined period of time. I guess that’s why we have the “first flush” of Love, the “honeymoon period” or even the “Seven year itch” when Love disappears out of the window.
The sensation of Love doesn’t diminish. Cupid’s bow can hit just as hard in old age as it can in the young. I remember my Mum, then in her late 70’s, coming back from a walk with her new boyfriend, a sprightly octogenarian. She was flushed, pretty and coyly said: “He’s kissed all my lipstick off”. Their relationship went on until Mum was in her mid-90’s, when dementia stole her away from her lover. They had a deeply loving and passionate, physical relationship as I discovered from her diaries when she died. At first wide-eyed with shock – I mean, no one’s parents make Love for God’s sake – I then felt so pleased that they had had such a fulfilling friendship in the twilight of their years.
So my Mum and her partner would have felt their love for each other was unique, would not have been able to feel romantic passion for anyone else. This monogamy results from elevated levels of central dopamine – a chemical involved in attention and focus in your brain, according to research reported in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour. And relationships are usually more successful when partners are idealized, when they focus on the positive qualities of their beloved, while overlooking the negative traits.
All of us who have been lucky enough to be pierced by Cupid’s bow can probably remember small things in a relationship when it was in its early stages. Precious moments that can take us back to those heady times of Loving and being Loved. More research says that in the first throes of Love we concentrate often on trivia, letting other information slide past us. Again elevated levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, a chemical which increases memory through new stimulation.
Who doesn’t remember heightened emotions of the early days of
Love doesn’t diminish. Cupid’s bow can hit just as hard in old age as in the young
Love. The lack of appetite, euphoria, racing pulse, irrational thoughts, despair if that phone call doesn’t happen when it should. Well, that’s exactly the highs and lows experienced by drug addicts when they take a hit. The same part of the brain is activated and if the object of Love is taken away there’s the same sort of withdrawal symptoms.
Yes, Love is addictive. Always has been and always will be – even as far back as 4,300 the Egyptians were singing Love songs from stone tablets. Now we can listen to thousands of Love songs and many will be sung in the name of St Valentine. What a romantic legacy he left.