V Day is soon to be upon us, in our faces and all the places. Hard to ignore this Hallmark holiday. So let’s look into *Love* — but buckle up, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Mice
What can rodents teach us about the pursuit of the opposite sex?
Is that proverb true that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? Well, in mice at least, mother’s love comes from her gut. Mouse mamas colonized with E. coli O16:H48 spent less time doing maternal acts like nest-building, grooming and nursing. And their maternal instinct to feed her pups seemed erased, leaving pups neglected and stunted. Rescued pups raised by normal gut microbiota foster mothers developed normally.
Maybe the diet forms part of the picture. The spice nutmeg is actually a very potent aphrodisiac. Consuming nutmeg also increases libido and topical nutmeg oil applied directly to the genitals, produces sexual excitation. A scientific study of oral dosing of nutmeg extract to rats, found that it increased erection frequency, mounting frequency, decreased the rest time between sexual events, and delayed ejaculation in the test animals.
Maybe the love groove is due to the ability of nutmeg to improve vividness of daydreams and improving the lucidity of dreams while asleep. [Hmmm … beer goggles at closing time?]
Men
Even without beer goggles, falling in love at first sight is a real thing. A new meta-analysis study found falling in love happens in only a fifth of a second. Twelve areas of the brain cooperate together to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopression. That love feeling also hits on cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image. Nerve growth factor (NGF) increases, being higher in couples who had just fallen in love.
Power is intoxicating, too, and no less so in love. Objective power measured by income, for example, is not so important though. Instead, what matters most for satisfaction with the relationship is not the balance of power, but rather, how the level of personal power is perceived. Investigations of how power and the perception of power impact couples looked at 181 heterosexual couples who had been living together for at least one month. They were between 18 and 71 years old and in a relationship for an average of 8 years. The team investigated how actual and perceived power influence different aspects of a relationship—such as satisfaction and commitment—and how they affect the quality of that relationship. The survey included questions about the admiration for one's partner, trust, sexual satisfaction, feelings of oppression and constraint, as well as a commitment and willingness to invest in the relationship. From these data they calculated the balance of power to determine the extent to which the traits of each partner were similar to each other (balanced). The results showed that men still had more positional power—based on higher income and higher education. Their need to make decisions was also stronger among the men on average. However, the two factors did not appear to influence the quality of the relationship that the couple experienced. The same applies to the balance of power: even if men and women within the same couple were very similar with regard to the measured traits, no connection to relationship quality could be found. The happiest couples were those in which both partners reported a high sense of personal power. Both parties needed to be able to make decisions about aspects that are important to them individually, in order to be satisfied with the relationship as a couple.
Love’s Dangerous Liaisons
But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
- Robert Burns
Watching that great TV show, Chicago Fire, you can plainly see the benefit of firefighter comraderie and friendship, in their handling the grave stresses of this life and death defying job. But what about the impact of romantic partners? A study of 400+ Texan firemen at 12 stations, 77% married and 14% single, showed that it actually made the job MORE stressful. Apparently the desire to protect loved ones from fully knowing their dangers, was an additional burden, anxiety producing instead of source of relief.
There is another deadly aspect of love [especially now with vaccine associated myocarditis]. Orgasm, is aptly named the ‘La Petite Mort’ [a little death]; people sometimes die during or shortly after sex. A German forensic postmortem study of 32,000 sudden deaths over a 33-year period found that 0.2% of cases did occur during an episode of sexual activity. Most deaths were in men (average age 59 years) and due to myocardial infarction. However, researchers from London, found that this phenomenon is not just limited to middle-aged men. They investigated sudden cardiac death in 6,847 cases referred to their center for cardiac pathology. Of these, 17 (0.2%) occurred either during or within one hour of sexual activity. The average age of death was 38 years, and 35% of the cases were women. These sudden cardiac death in younger folks were mainly attributed to sudden arrhythmic death syndrome or cardiomyopathies.
If dangerous, why then are we still so drawn to finding *Love* ?
"Love is actually a habit that is formed from sexual desire as desire is rewarded. It works the same way in the brain as when people become addicted to drugs." - Jim Pfaus, professor of psychology at Concordia University
Pfaus et al examined brain activity data from subjects engaged in tasks such as viewing erotic pictures or looking at photographs of their significant others. They formed a complete map of love and desire in the human brain; love and desire activated specific but related areas. The insula and the striatum tracked the progression from sexual desire into love. The sexual desire area is usually activated by things that are pleasurable, like sex or food. But the love area is involved in the process of conditioning by which things paired with reward or pleasure are given inherent value. This is the area of the striatum that is associated with drug addiction.
What about *Puppy Love*? How do teeners survive rampant hormones and overwhelming crushes in the face of the social mob?
There are three faces to that sought for teen popularity: being feared, being loved, and being feared and loved. Two groups of popular adolescents rank highly, but seemly are on opposite poles; those who are aggressive and those who are prosocial. The prosocial / popular teens acquire and maintain it via acts of cooperation. But the aggressive / popular teens acquire and maintain it through coercing others aggressively. Then there are the bistrategic Machiavellian-like teens; they maintain their popularity by off-setting their coercive behavior required to maintain power ranking with carefully calibrated acts of kindness. They balance getting their way with getting along. [reminds me of Eddie Haskell, from Leave It to Beaver…]
Despite it all Dear Reader, I will leave you with this:
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
REFERENCES
Yujung Michelle Lee et al. Microbiota control of maternal behavior regulates early postnatal growth of offspring, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe6563
Raqib Zaman. Nutmeg – A Psychoactive Antidepressant https://www.therevisionist.org/bio-hacking/herbs/nutmeg/
A fifth of a second: Falling in love is more scientific than you think (2010, October 20) https://medicalxpress.com/news/2010-10-falling-scientific.html
R Körner et al. Power in romantic relationships: How positional and experienced power are associated with relationship quality, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (2021). DOI: 10.1177/02654075211017670
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43816/to-a-mouse-56d222ab36e33
Mark T. Morman et al. 2019 Firefighters' job stress and the (un)intended consequences of relational quality with spouses and firefighter friends, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265407519886355
Death during sex isn't just something that happens to middle-aged men, new study finds 2022 https://theconversation.com/death-during-sex-isnt-just-something-that-happens-to-middle-aged-men-new-study-finds-175293
G Finocchiaro et al. Association of Sexual Intercourse With Sudden Cardiac Death in Young Individuals in the United Kingdom. JAMA Cardiol 2022 Jan 12;e215532 DOI: 10.1001/jamacardio.2021.5532
I want to know where love is: Research develops first brain map of love and desire (2012, June 20) https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-brain-desire.html
Amy C. Hartl et al, A Test of the Bistrategic Control Hypothesis of Adolescent Popularity, Child Development (2019). DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13269
https://poets.org/poem/memoriam-h-h