Love – Mere Chemical Response
Dear [Melinda],
Well, we may never fully agree on this. I would urge you however, to check out the book list I sent you a few letters back [here]. That chemical reaction stuff is not meaningless as I see it. In fact, it is supremely meaningful. It is the spark that ignites the fires of romance, and it helps keep us tolerant of the beloved’s eccentricities. It simplifies the getting along with the beloved through the bad-mood times, and is the primary reason why I’d want to get with someone as opposed to remaining alone.
I’d submit that your disappointment with your love at first sight [LAFS] experience happened not due to any inherently superficial traits of LAFS, but rather because your man didn’t feel it for you at the same time. LAFS always hurts when it’s not reciprocated. But I don’t think that we can infer from this that since LAFS can hurt badly, that it is totally worthless as a spice in relationships. If this guy had returned your affections, I promise that you’d be singing a different tune today.
Yes, LAFS often results in what you call the one night stand. This happens because LAFS implies a set of assumptions that we make about those we desire. We’re predisposed for example, to assume that life with them will be wonderful due to these feelings, even though we’ve not adequately checked them out. But as we do check them out subsequently, we often find that our initial assumptions were unwarranted and just plain wrong. A personal example: In my teen years, I’d blindly assume that a particularly attractive woman would be wonderful in bed just because she looked good on the surface. But usually (not always but USUALLY), this turned out to be false. Yes, LAFS can send the less seasoned on wild goose chases, as it did me, and as it did you. But LAFS is like an opportunity. Some opportunities are good, and very many are bad. However to achieve happiness, we should ignore all opportunities just because many of them I the past turned out fruitless.
Yes, I’ve read books like [The Torah], [which take a stand against LAFS and unrequited love desires. They, as you suggest, often advise to follow one's mind because emotions and desires can lead the seeker to only short-lived highs, as opposed to long-term happiness. But senses like the eyes only provide the data. It's the mind that interprets it, and decides what it means and whether and how to act on it. So any misleading that happens as a result of visual cues is generally not due to inadequacies in the eyes themselves, but rather in the extrapolations that the mind makes from the visual information. Any fallacies in the senses can be shown therefore, to emanate from fallacies of the mind.] And yes, I do feel that [said books] tell an important part of the true love story. I just contend that they don’t tell the whole story. Check out this book:
- Why Can’t I Fall In Love by Shmuley Boteach
As I’ve said before and I’ll say more below, the feelings can indeed lead one astray. But not always, and when they do not, the resulting relationship makes all the prior pain in waiting for it worthwhile. In my humble opinion. 
Yes, you are right. And, I wouldn’t want to [get] involved with someone unless all these underlying conditions are met [honesty, free of drugs, compassion, humility, healthy body, credit score above 700, and such]. All this stuff has to be right in order for me to move forward. [LAFS admittedly, does not create the lovable traits such as these in the beloved; it's just a way for the seeker to identify that a particular someone just might have those traits. Yes, LAFS is often wrong. Thus it cannot be a sufficient condition for a successfully happy love relationship. But it is a necessary condition for happiness in the sort of relationship I would like to find.]
Yes, the initial chemistry can’t keep a seriously faltering relationship going. But it can spur us onward to take the time necessary to determine the presence of these [other qualities in the beloved].
[Now] I can’t deny the workability of this delayed falling in love phenomenon [that you speak of]. Like you, over half the population says that they prefer this sort of slowly-grown love feeling. But then, over eighty-five percent of the population believes in a god, whereas I do not. Thus majority rule does not always make for right rule. All I can say about the slow discovery of love is that I’ve never experienced it, though I’ve tried many times. Over the years, I’ve dated thin people and fat people, whites, blacks, Hispanics, short, tall, educated, and not, who did not initially attract me; some I spent close to a year with. Invariably however, the result was that I’d end up having to leave because I’d dream about walking down the aisle with them only to wake up terrified. My subconscious mind won’t allow me to advance relationships beyond the casual dating phase unless I feel deeply attracted to the person. Such women indeed exist who make me feel like this. I know that because I’ve been fortunate enough to experience a few [...]. These experiences, though few, have readjusted my expectations of women such that I can’t in good conscience, date those who are not beautiful from the start. And I miss those pleasures in relationships where they do not occur straight away. It’s like the disappointing experience of eating a bottom-round cut of beef once you’ve grown accustomed to eating porterhouse steak. Relationships without that initial allure are big let downs for me. So I can’t do them.
[So you say that you disagree with LAFS because of how it led you to pine over someone who eventually turned out to be not who you really wanted after all.] But just imagine though, how good it would have felt if that someone that you pined over actually had the same feelings for you. No, as noted, LAFS does not guarantee success. [But it[ does however, make whatever success happens very much sweeter.
Well, I can’t immediately speak to this point [about brain scans of schizophrenics and people experiencing LAFS looking very similar] because I’m unfamiliar with the details of schizophrenia. I’ll read this article if I can locate it.
As far as this yearning passion being short-lived: Yes, in many instances it is. But in many others, which I’ve experienced myself, it lasts, and lasts, and lasts. It really depends on the two people involved in the interaction. I believe the real problem with LAFS is that people over-react to it. They assume that it guarantees success. But it does not. All those practical concerns about a lover must still be allayed like:
- Is he trustworthy, honest, and thoughtful?
- Will he hurt me tomorrow if I love him today?
- Is he a good provider?
- Do we have similar religious and moral values?
And so on. No, LAFS dos not excuse us from getting these answers before escalating the level of intimacy in the relationship, though it does make such reckless abandon quite tempting.
Well, it looks like we’ll just have to disagree on this. My personal experience and research indicates that “yearning passion” is so much more than trivial instinct.
- First, it’s a very mental process. That is: There are numerous assessments that one’s subconscious mind must make before it allows the [LAFS] feeling to occur. If it finds any deal-breakers, it prevents such feelings. I remember once in Philly, when I was weekend bar-hopping. There was this pretty girl sitting at the counter, sipping a martini. I wanted to get to know her because her physical form, at least from a distance, appeared to be everything I was seeking in that aspect of a woman. So I walked over to converse. But it turned out that she was mildly mentally retarded, and not finished college much less high school. Though friendly, she spoke too loudly and her life concerns centered more along the lines of who would be helping her get dressed tomorrow. Needless to say, these differed extensively from mine. As soon as I knew this, her physical appearance lost its enticing aura, though her body had not changed in proportion during this exchange. She retained the same face, height, weight, poise, dress, and scent. But once it was clear that we had nothing substantial in common and differed so much in terms of intellect, her allure, in my eyes, ceased. Given this, and other experiences like it, I can’t accept that these feelings are driven solely by a lovers physical form. Their mental aspects also impact this as well. The Evolutionary Psychology books I listed for you a couple letters ago delve very deeply into this mating instinct, and show that it’s quite complicated.
- Yes, LAFS is very often temporary; but sometimes not. Sometimes it lasts a year or two, sometimes a month, and quite often, it puckers out after but a few seconds close encounter with the beloved. Clearly, LAFS can be temporary. But is it always so? the following questions come to mind: Does this make it a totally useless measure of a person’s long-term potential to attract us? I think not. Why not? Let’s discuss the process of peeling an apple, which should help us understand this transitory nature of LAFS better. Often, on the surface, apples look quite enticing. But peel them and slice them up and you then see what’s really inside. Some apples have rotten cores or contain worms and bugs, and upon discovering these we don’t wish to eat them anymore, our desire replaced with revulsion. So in this case, our interest in the apple was indeed temporary. But other apples with healthy worm-free cores continue enticing us even when we cut them open and see their insides. Thus, the condition of the apple appears to affect how we regard it throughout the process of learning about it. Some appear wonderful the whole time we know them — from when we first see them in the store until that last delicious bite at home. But others, while at first appearing to be delicious, lose their appeal should we discover major flaws. So with apples, our interest does not always evaporate. Nor does it with LAFS. People, like apples have various layers that we must learn about before we can know that our LAFS is justified, and of course we set the bar much higher for a person that we’d consider loveable, than we do for an apple in order that we consider it delicious. But the ideas are the same. There are some people (rare though they may be), like the truly healthy and delicious apples, that meet our essential expectations from the first minute after meeting them, until death parts them from us. It’s easy to find people who’ve been married for fifty years or more and who say that they’re just as much in-love today as when they first met. So the point to all this is that LAFS does not always lead one to a bad mate. Yes, often it does. But on those occasions when it does not, the resulting love affair is most fulfilling, and can indeed last a lifetime.
- LAFS is instinctive yes. But I’m curious why you disparage instinct. After all, without it, we and all other locomotive species would have never survived. This is no clearer than in the case of human babies who are born with the breathing and suckling instincts. Could you imagine the difficulties in teaching a baby how to draw breast milk into its stomach? Without this pre-packaged knowledge, the baby would die of starvation very soon after birth. LAFS I’d argue is a similar instinct (or at the very least, and instinct remnant). It is the culmination of thousands of years of evolution, and historically, it’s been a quick way of identifying who we might mate with that would most likely perpetuate our genes in the most healthful manner. Sometimes, instinct is good.
- Procreation may, as you say, be the exclusive objective of the mating instinct. But this is a big thing, particularly since so much of our biology is geared toward reproduction. Thus, reproductive advantage [or natural selection in general] permeates human values. So in trying to figure out just what our values are, it’s a safe bet that most people want to live and pursue relationship in ways that promote procreation. It’s intuitive that a strong mating instinct is more likely to produce offspring than a weak one. So if our interest is in perpetuating the race, then we should not trivialize the mating instinct, for it is those who ignore it that are lead astray I suspect.
Yep. I can’t argue there. Certainly the actions that the members of couples take to demonstrate their love for one another are key to the overall quality of the love experience. Having a wealth of shared experiences strengthens the love bond to be sure. And finally, my experience with [Emmy] has enhanced my abilities to recognize and fulfill someone else’s needs. Being useful to someone like [Emmy] and having them express their appreciation in return is quite the aphrodisiac, like LAFS. While I would say that LAFS is by no means the ultimate form a love relationship might take. But when built upon using those shared experiences to which you refer, the resulting relationship is tops.
Yes, that initial passion that screams so loudly in the first months of a budding romance does become more subdued over time. But I wouldn’t want to continue a relationship where it has disappeared altogether. Whenever looking at my woman ceases to offer any excitement whatsoever, then it’s time to move on. However, if we pick wisely in the first place, the chances of this happening are drastically reduced.
[...] I’d much rather experience [love] than to [...] just talk about it. [But when the experience of love is unavailable, then talking about it is the next best thing, and so, can still be quite stimulating intellectually].
