Tags
attraction, biology, culture, falling in love, insanitybytes22, love, marriage, romance, women
Let’s talk about falling in love because it’s my favorite subject in the whole world and when everything is crashing down all around it’s one of the best things any of us can do. People fall in love in the midst of war, natural disasters, even at funerals.
Falling in love need not just be with a husband or a wife, one can fall in love with a baby or a sunset, or with Jesus Christ Himself. He is the lover of our souls, so He is perfect for falling in love with. Fall in love with life.
Falling in love is where your stomach starts doing flip flops and everything is exciting and new. Your heart soars and your pulse races and you are on the edge of your seat, full of wonder and anticipation. Falling in love is not this superficial thing, where one loves a pair of shoes or a good book, although I think I may have come close to falling in love with a good book a few times.
Marriage itself does have its seasons, so love will ebb and flow. There is the romance and the honeymoon phase and then very quickly there is…life, drudgery. One need not stay there however, marriage is not where love goes to die! I wrestled with this when I was younger, I loved my husband but I just wasn’t “in love” with him, or in love with much of anything really. Actually, a few times I even wondered, what the heck was I thinking? This man? These kids? Did I make the dumbest decision ever or what? I’m wasting my life. I’m missing out. I’ve settled.
It took me a while to figure out that when I wasn’t feeling “in love,” I really wasn’t in love with much of anything. It had nothing to do with my husband at all, it was entirely me. I controlled the horizontal and the vertical, so if I wasn’t “feeling in love,” who really controls the feelings? We do, the one thinking the thoughts that lead to the feelings. We chose to fall in love, it is not a passive experience. We program our own selves.
There are some biological love triggers, attraction cues, that create this physical facsimile of being in love, but those influences are surprisingly slight. Teen agers tend to get hit with a powerful concoction of hormones, crushes, desire, an imitation of falling in love, but once that season passes, we really do have tremendous control over falling in love, mind over matter, and where our minds go, the rest of us follows.
It was a ground breaking revelation and a rather empowering one, because suddenly I could fall in love whenever I wanted, and enjoy the stomach flop flops, the excitement. The more I practiced, the better I got at it. I practiced falling in love with the Lord, with the beauty and wonder of sunsets, with the stars. I set about stalking all the romance I could find in my world. I wrote my own love story and I eventually learned how to fall in love with my husband all over again.
I don’t walk around feeling madly in love every single moment because that would be exhausting and there are other things in life to be experienced too, but I do take the time every day to spend a few moments falling in love with something. It’s a skill that must be practiced and cultivated until it becomes second nature.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Yeah let’s.
Perhaps love IS a many splendored thing. Enjoy to you ms bytes and all, on this a very special day. (Full screen)
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Okay, wiping the tears from my eyes…I’m such a sop. (I also grew up on John Denver when others were listening to Pink Floyd.)
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Yay!!
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Well dlz, I’m happy to be partly responsible for a tear or two, but truth be told, without ib’s excellent post here, there would have not been this vid.
So thank or blame her! lol
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Yes!!!! This is the best perspective on love I have ever read!!! Well done!!
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Thank you for stopping by my blog and following!you have a follower in me as well!
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Such beautiful and poignant words on Love Thank you for sharing.
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I’ve been working for months on a post about falling in love–the symptoms are the same as those for anger, fear, or panic. (Consult Elvis Presley, “All Shook Up.”) Somehow, my thoughts have never condensed into a readable essay. Maybe soon… J.
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LOL! The same as anger, fear, or panic? Actually I thought you were going to say the stomach flu. I’m either in love or I’m coming down with something. 🙂
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Lovely post!
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Nice
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The butterflies never need to go away. It amazes me how many cynics believe that the excitement of novelty is the only thing that can bring butterflies to your stomach.
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Amen to that. Novelty, hmmm. I never really thought about it, but that is what some are seeking, what they perceive as exciting.
Well heck, in our house you never know what you’re going to get, so I guess that’s “novel.” I jest, but I suppose somewhere in the midst of mood swings and life’s ups and down, it can be a bit like falling in love with a different person all the time 🙂
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Jon is pretty unpredictable too. The patterns show up, but the changes catch me off guard. :p
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That’s interesting, ssw, because my opinion falls somewhere in between.
There really isn’t much way to preserve “novelty” after over two decades of marriage and all the associated, to put it euphemistically, “capers” along the way.
I can literally start, finish, and just about utter entirely my husband’s sentences based on the micro expressions on his face. Since “butterflies” require a rush of chemicals that are inspired by conditions we no longer experience due to the fact that we know each other far far too well (and if we did experience those chemicals, it wouldn’t be a good thing, it would be a very bad thing), I haven’t experienced “butterflies” in a long while.
Do I still desire my husband? Yes, very very much.
I feel a great deal of pride and admiration for him.
My “butterflies” have been replaced (long long ago) by deep affection. I can’t imagine life without him and wouldn’t want to live, frankly, if something happened to him (which is unfortunate because odds are I will outlast him).
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LOL! Well, I think a caveat is needed here, some of us require more butterflies than others, and some of us have rather gentle and dignified butterflies. Someone once asked me if I wanted to be 16 again and it actually horrified me. No! Way too much drama, too much excitement. The kind of butterflies that really can just make you sick to your stomach. 🙂
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“Gentle and dignified butterflies”. I like it!
😀
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I find the novelty isn’t necessary for butterflies so much as plain excitement is. Jon is not a predictable person, granted, but he has his patterns and I’m familiar with most of them. And I still get the crazy butterflies and excitement when we do something together, or when he catches me off guard, or when he does something to trigger a nice memory. The rest of the time is like a restful comfort, like being wrapped in a warm blanket. But we’re nearing six years in and the butterflies are as strong as ever.
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“Butterflies” are dependent on the flight or flight response chemicals.
Those aren’t longterm “feel good” chemicals. They are chemicals for the short term.
1) The process (for “falling in love butterflies”) is this:
Your serotonin drops as your cortisol increases, which makes your brain pump out dopamine, which produces norepinephrine.
2) The biochemical process for longterm comfort/happiness is this:
Your serotonin and oxytocin increase, so you feel close and connected to your mate.
(the same thing that happens with close family and community/friendship relationships)
All of this happens over the long haul. In the best relationships, there is a little of each but over the long haul serotonin has to win over dopamine or it will be a stressful environment.
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I have heard that before, serotonin over dopamine, but I think that over simplifies our chemical concoction and denies the value of stress for our health and well being. That sounds dreadful, but much like we go jogging, stress our bodies, and enjoy health benefits, we need to stretch our brain chemistry too.
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Couples falling in love and staying in love is hard to come by these days.
My husband and I have been married for 11 years and are still very much in love!😀
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