Oh, the emotional rush when you're near that special person!
You feel elated, happy, goofy. You ache to be alone with the person, to reveal your deepest secrets, to understand and be understood, to possess and be possessed, to hug, caress, and maybe more.Life is not worth living without him or her. You worry about the person's welfare. And you idealize, seeing this person as smarter, funnier, more attractive than reality.
Breathes there anyone with soul so dead who does not recognize the signs of romantic or passionate love?
Scientific research is gradually illuminating this powerful human emotion. It reveals love not as Cupid's arrow through the heart, but as genetic programming, wiring patterns and biochemistry in the brain, and even body odors.
"There has been significant progress in understanding the biological and chemical basis of love," says psychologist Roy Baumeister. "We must understand it, because love is one of the most powerful of emotions, one that defines human nature."
Baumeister is an expert on the topic. He is a professor of psychology at Case Western University in Cleveland whose research on love formed the basis of a 1992 book, "Breaking Hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love."
Research progress includes discovery of a chemical compound that may lay claim to being a "molecule of love." It may cause the giddy condition that occurs during the "attraction" phase of romance, when people first fall head-over-heels in love.
"We're talking about an altered state of consciousness in the category of drugs and meditation," Baumeister says. "People in love have parallels with people addicted, and when love affairs break up, the partners may experience something like withdrawal."
The "molecule of love," phenylethyamine (PEA), does have the capability of altering consciousness. It is a natural amphetamine-like compound that stimulates pleasure centers in the brain.
Dr. Michael Liebowitz, of the New York State Psychiatric Center in New York City, believes that PEA and other brain chemicals may be critical in producing the sensations that people recognize as love. Liebowitz pioneered research on the molecular basis of love, and even wrote a book on the topic, "The Chemistry of Love."
Curiously, the traditional Valentine's Day gift - chocolate candy - is "loaded" with PEA, according to Liebowitz. It has led to the "chocolate theory of love," the notion that eating chocolates can spark that loving feeling.
Is it valid? Read on.
Feelings of infatuation predominate during the early years of a marriage or other relationship, which psychologists term the attraction phase of romantic love. Typically the most intense part of romantic entanglement, it lasts anywhere from a year to a few years after a couple marry or begin living together.
"Romantic love eventually is replaced by more of an appreciation of the other person," Baumeister notes. "They just become excellent friends who sleep together. There isn't that tingly feeling in most cases. It doesn't take your breath away to think about the person every day."
Other brain chemicals predominate during this second period, the "attachment" phase of love when couples take comfort in each other's presence. These chemicals are endorphins, natural morphine-like compounds produced in the brain. They may be involved in the sense of comfort and well-being felt between people in a long-term relationship.
This new and more analytical approach represents a sharp turnabout from previous efforts to fathom love.
For centuries, people viewed romantic love as something inexplicable that simply "happened" and was best left to the musings of poets and philosophers. People in many cultures actually distrusted love.
"They regarded love as a sort of disease," Baumeister says. "They considered it a mental disturbance which made its victims behave irrationally and overlook faults in their beloveds."
But scientists are accumulating evidence that people don't just fall in love. Rather, the attraction may result from chemical and biological events that can be understood.
Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, notes that cultural and other environmental factors also interact to determine the object of a person's love. She is the author of a book, "Anatomy of Love," which traces the evolution of human courtship, marriage, adultery and divorce.
Humans, for instance, apparently form a mental image of an ideal mate, based on a prewired pattern in the brain. Sometimes called a "search image," it begins to develop early in childhood. A variety of environmental and cultural clues contribute to the image. These include characteristics of the child's father and mother, odors associated with pleasant experiences, and cultural values learned in the family.
Baumeister notes that part of the image may have been genetically programmed over millions of years of human evolution to assure survival of the species.
Standards of defining a handsome man or a beautiful woman vary widely around the world. But people of all cultures share a core of common values. People seem attracted to mates who are clean, young, healthy and have other traits that suggest an ability to reproduce.
As Fisher elaborated in her book:
"It is to a male's genetic advantage to fall in love with a woman who will produce viable offspring. Youth, clear skin, bright eyes, vibrant hair, white teeth, a supple body and a vivacious personality indicate good health, vitally important to his genetic future.
"To women, belongings indicate power, prestige, success and the ability to provide. For good reason: It is to a woman's biological advantage to become captivated by a man who can help support her young."
Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist who lived from 1875 to 1961, described what happens when people with corresponding mental images of the ideal mate meet:
"The meeting of two personalities," Jung said, "is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction, both are transformed."
Jung unknowingly may have anticipated discoveries about PEA made in the 1980s by Liebowitz and other scientists. These researchers suspect that PEA, and perhaps other brain chemicals, trigger many of the physical and emotional sensations that people recognize as romantic love.
Researchers believe that these neurochemicals come into play after the cultural, environmental, genetic and other factors - the factors that determine who you love.
Chemists classify PEA as an "excitant amine," an amphetamine-like compound that causes feelings of euphoria, elation, and heightened awareness. PEA is among a group of brain chemicals termed neurotransmitters because they carry signals from one nerve cell to another.
Poets and songwriters celebrate the heart as the seat of human emotions. But mankind's real emotional core is deep within the brain in a primitive group of structures called the limbic system. The limbic system is primitive in the sense that it evolved early in mankind's history, when scientists say humans were more animal-like. It is the seat of emotions including fear, anger, joy, surprise, disgust and love.
PEA works in areas of the limbic system responsible for producing the sensation of pleasure. Studies support the idea that an outpouring of PEA in the limbic system makes people feel romantic.
PEA levels are high, for instance, in people with romantic attachments and low in those whose relationships have soured. PEA also excites other animals. Monkeys injected with the compound start making pleasure calls and engaging in lip smacking and other courting behavior. Mice run excitedly around their cages.
Scientists originally named the limbic region the "rhinencephalon," the "nose-brain," because it is involved in the sense of smell.
Thus, odors may be another factor in the chemistry of love, Fisher notes.
Odors - "Essence of Him" and "Essence of Her" - may help trigger romantic love, lust and other emotions. Scientists have accumulated much circumstantial evidence that men and women secrete chemical compounds with an odor that may be involved in sexual arousal.
Such compounds, called sex attractants or pheromones, have been detected in other animals, ranging from moths and cockroaches to hogs.
Until recent times, people were not bashful about acknowledging body scents as a turn-on.
Fisher, for instance, notes the origin of the term "love apple." In Shakespeare's time, women held a peeled apple in their armpit until it became saturated with underarm scent. They then presented it to their lover - to inhale.
Liebowitz noted that PEA's presence in chocolate has stirred much interest and misinformation.
Heart-shaped boxes of chocolates are a symbol of Valentine's Day. Candy has a reputation as a tool of romance summarized by the humorist Ogden Nash, "Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker."
Many people do get an emotional boost from eating chocolate. But PEA in chocolate is quickly destroyed by digestive juices in the stomach, never even getting into the blood, let alone the brain.
Scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health verified that sad fact by gorging on pounds of chocolate. They then took tests to see if PEA levels rose in the body. Post-chocolate PEA levels were the same as pre-chocolate levels.
Chocolate also contains caffeine, sugar and a caffeine-like compound called theobromine that can rev up the mind and body. These chemicals actually may account for chocolate's emotional kick.
But don't give up on chocolates as a PEA-boosting mediator of romance. Liebowitz noted that the sight, taste or emotional impact of chocolate may boost levels of PEA just in the brain.
Researchers study PEA not just for its role in romantic love, but because it may be involved in some forms of psychological illness.
Baumeister predicts that it may be years before research on the chemistry of love has practical applications in helping people enter into healthier and more lasting relationships.
What about drugs or dietary supplements that can boost PEA and act as aphrodisiacs?
What about a pill that can return troubled couples to the giddy, passionate, attraction stage of love? How about a pheromone-based perfume that can turn-on your sweetheart?
"Not in your lifetime or mine," Baumeister predicted.