In the Valentine Spirit....

1. (Article)

I found this article on CNN about love, and how our minds and bodies are affected by it and I figured it would be a good article to comment or write a letter to the editor on. Why not?

Here's the link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/12/love.heart.brain/index.html?hpt=C2

2. (Summary/rough draft/random thoughts)

So, just brainstorming here and trying to sum up the article, it basically classifies love and the feeling of being in love as some sort of drug - a mixture of plenty of hormones that go crazy in our bodies almost all at once, sending the hopeless romantic into euphoria. The article also tries to explain why there are more feelings attached or involved than we all thought during experiences like a one night stand, because we get the same feelings and hormone rushes as we would if we were in love.

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I don't readily just buy into the whole 'love' thing that easily. This article basically just uses it as a cop-out to say it's pretty much the equivalent of exercising because a lot of similar hormones are released, therefore it's healthy. However, I know many people who have been 'in love' and have gone absolutely batshit crazy. And their behavior is anything but healthy. The article basically says 'this is what love is, it's science, and it's good.' But I think people's feelings & experiences don't all fall into the category of love that the article describes, and in some ways the article took a safe route, just stating what most people already know and in a positive/up-beat way because it's Valentine's Day. I think the article should've addressed the other side of the 'love' effects, the not-so-positive/healthy, instead of just generalize it as one big happy pill-like feeling.

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Ms. Landau,

The article "What your heart and brain are doing when you're in love" touches on a lot of basic neurological and scientific points of brain and hormone activity when a person is supposedly 'in love'. You also draw comparisons between a person being in love and having a one-night stand as more or less containing similar feelings, with the attaching-inducing hormones oxytocin and vasopressin being released during both experiences. How then, are we supposed to tell the difference between being 'in love' and being 'infatuated'? With the "three brain systems of romantic love" all overlapping and leading from one to another without a definite beginning or end, this system almost seems to me as a way to simplify and justify people's feelings of being attracted to someone, in any way, as a form of love.

Everyone has their own experiences with love and with what they perceive it to be. Simply classifying love only as the phenomena of what happens chemically to our minds, leaves no room for exploration of different meanings for love beyond what you detailed in this article. What about love in a spiritual sense? Or even romance? Adventure? Love can also be contained within all of those examples without necessarily fitting into the biological and hormone-driven mold of love that we have been told it should be.

Sincerely,

SK

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fffffffff I'm having a brain fart. Will pick up on this later..Ideas anyone?

I'll probably edit this later with a better rough-draft and more well thought out ideas. But I just wanted to get some of my ideas down while they were swimming around in my mind.