|
|
CHAPTER |
You’re in love . . . life is superb . . . your heart explodes with joy and everybody notices. You’re always laughing and smiling and sometimes you burst into song. The world is brighter and more beautiful than ever, even on rainy days. Things that used to bother you, like traffic, annoying colleagues, and toilet tissue rolling from underneath instead of over the top, just make you smile. Nothing matters except being with your loved one. This exhilarating and electrifying stage of love consumes you. Your Pleasure Island is deluged by dopamine, and it is sheer ecstasy. Enjoy every euphoric moment of it!
Fortunately, you now realize that love, in the song and sonnet sense, is a chemical assault on your brain, albeit a fabulous one. This knowledge can help you make the best choice of your life—or save yourself from making a grave mistake. Before taking the big step, I suggest you run a few final tests on your Potential Love Partner. Squint and search beyond the glittering stars in your eyes to ensure that your love will last and last and last. And prove to your Potential Love Partner that you have the lasting qualities too.
Clear vision is tough when dopamine is hacking the texts between your amygdala and your prefrontal cortex. It’s not that the Professor hasn’t been trying to warn you if he happens to feel this particular partner isn’t right for you. He’s been frantically tweeting all the other brain regions that trouble could be lurking behind the altar. But Mother Nature shushes him by shooting you up with more dopamine to make you even crazier for your Quarry. But all this drama is exciting, like a frightening film, and you can mistake it for true love. Here’s how to tell if it really is—and to show your PLP that you have the character and the qualities that make you “the one.” To do this, employ what I call the “Big Four.” Each is based on the latest studies of what both sexes seek in a permanent partner.
Concentrate on clearing the paths between the emotional and rational parts of your brain. I’m not just speaking figuratively. You now understand how the love druggies ambush the messages so you’re literally “crazy in love.” If you still love, respect, and feel wonderful about him—and yourself—after about a year and a half, don’t let this one get away. You’ve found a keeper! It’s only when you feel “sanely” in love with her and not “crazy” in love that can you take back the controls of the Love Boat.
Huntresses, how many times have you heard that? A hundred? Two hundred? But you may not have heard this answer. No offense insinuated, but it’s probably because when a smart guy gets serious, he gets smarter—almost as smart as you’ve been all along! I find it interesting that men fall in love more often than women.1 But then they’re more apt to balk. Why? Because if the relationship gets serious, men too become sensitive, consciously or subconsciously, to substantial qualities in their Potential Love Partner. They just take longer to come around to it.
During the electrifying initial dating stages he doesn’t analyze stuff to death. A guy-type brain doesn’t consciously conjecture, “What is her relationship with her mother and what does it signify?” He’s not going to sit down with a beer and a buddy and ask, “Hey, dude, how much do you think she’s going to help me realize my aspirations?” or “Do you think she’s still going to enjoy cave spelunking with me a year from now?” However, when a male finds himself contemplating the long term, he gets a hazy sense of these things. That’s why sometimes everything can be going great in your relationship. The two of you seem to be running full-speed ahead toward total togetherness, even the altar. Then, just before you get there, screech! He slams on the brakes.
Many women would say, “He got cold feet,” or “He’s commitment-phobic.” It’s more likely that it finally got through to his dopamine/testosterone-marinated skull that he and his girlfriend were not a fit in some of the more important matters in life. To demonstrate that you are the one for him, you must find subtle ways to hint to your Quarry that you are a match for the “Big Four.”
1)Do you and your Potential Love Partner have similar deep beliefs and values in life?
2)Do your definitions of “togetherness” match?
3)Can your Potential Love Partner be depended on if adversity strikes?
4)Will you each encourage your partner’s personal and professional growth?
While manifesting (not misrepresenting!) certain attributes, also keep a checklist on your PLP. Without certain components and similarities between you, long-lasting Chemistry is almost impossible. Your differences will chomp away at your love, bite by bite, until your plate is empty—and you’re both starving for love with someone else.
Let’s talk about the Big Four in order.
Which statement expresses what you want in a life partner?
A.I want someone different from me. Someone exciting who has a fascinating lifestyle, exposes me to new ideas, gives me fresh insights, shares adventures, and helps me view the world in a different way.
B.I want someone similar to me. Someone who is in accord with my deep beliefs and principles, makes me feel secure, enjoys similar activities, likes my lifestyle, and understands how I look at life.
Of course, your answer is “both.” Everyone wants someone similar in some of life’s most important ways and different in the fun frills.2 We crave excitement, ecstasy, thrills, and chills. We also long for serenity, commitment, contentment, and comfort.
Think back to the days when you were in school. Remember how there were various cliques? The preppies? The tough gang? The brains? The athletes? The self-proclaimed cool kids? Chances are that there weren’t too many cross-friendships because people feel comfortable with their own.
While moving into a college dormitory, college students were interviewed about their beliefs, values, ethics, mores, and morals. Researchers hypothesized that, as the students got to know each other, the ones who looked at life in the same way would gravitate toward each other.3 Sure enough, they hardly missed a beat. Cliques of similar kids formed.
Your prefrontal cortex, the wise brainy Professor, knows that if a relationship is going to work, you need a mate who looks at life in the same way as you. Let’s face it—life is confusing and scary. TV, magazines, newspapers, millions of blogs, and social media—and all other methods of communication now known or currently being developed—can make your head spin. When you find another human being who has come to the same conclusions about life, you feel protected and out of harm’s way. Your opinions, morals, beliefs, and values are vindicated by your Love Partner’s agreement. This floods your brain with oxytocin, the attachment chemical.
Obviously your agreement is not necessary or even desired on everything. That would be boring. What matters is not the number of agreements on small things but rather harmony on the more weighty matters in life that causes “coupling,” as researchers call it.4
Agreement on certain subtleties in life is often more important to females. Hunters, if you’ve pretended to share her dedication to animal rights, care for the elderly, and protecting the environment, how do you think she’ll feel when you kick her cat, ignore your grandmother, or refuse to recycle?
Men don’t need agreement as much as they need respect that their choices are good.5 I’ll never forget an episode in the then-popular TV show, House. The characters were musing about how much they valued their parents’ love. Dr. Gregory House groused, “All I wanted was for my father to say I was right.” It confused me at the time, but now, after gaining a better understanding of the neuropsychology of the male brain, it makes perfect sense.
Huntresses, if he’s a vegetarian or macrobiotic, it doesn’t mean you have to slurp seawood soup with him every night. Just show your support for his preference. Tell him he’s smart to make such a disciplined and wise choice.
Chemistry Sparker #63
Show You Share or Respect Your Quarry’s Values
To stoke the fire in your relationship, find ways to highlight your similarities whenever you can. Emphasize your admiration for your PLP’s beliefs.
Hunters, when you feel the same way about things she deeply cares about, oxytocin floods her brain. Huntresses, confirming his commitments and supporting his principles has the same effect on him.
But express the similarity only if it’s true! Otherwise you’re steering the Love Boat in a deadly direction, and your relationship goes aground. If it is going to stay afloat beyond the crazy dopamine-drenched days of early love, similar principles and convictions are must haves.
But that’s not the whole picture. Three other major pieces must fit in the successful relationship puzzle.
How close do you want to be to your partner? Together every day, every night? Inseparable? Having the same friends and interests as he does? Doing the same activities with her? Or is “togetherness” cohabitation, companionship? Living under the same roof, in the same bed, but coming and going as you please? You spending time with your friends and he with his? You going wherever you like, pursuing your passions, and she hers? In short, how would you define “togetherness?”
Togetherness can mean one or the other of the above—or something in between. The definition must be the same for both of you, or else the sticky wicket can shatter the bonding Chemistry.6 Finding out your PLP’s views can be a tricky task, especially for women. Asking outright could make him feel like he’s being water-boarded, so listen between the lines. What does he say about his parent’s relationship? His friends? Does he joke about a buddy “getting hooked,” “biting the dust,” “putting on the ball and chain”? Or does he use words more like his buddy “is hearing the ol’ wedding bells,” “decided to settle down,” or “found the right one”?
Guys, what about her? Does she ever talk about any of her past boyfriends “suffocating her,” “being too possessive,” or “never letting her out of his sight”? Conversely, perhaps she complains about a previous boyfriend “not being with her enough” or that he was “always running around with his buddies.” Does she bemoan the fact that her father was never home?
What about family feelings? How often does he talk to his mom? His dad? Are they close? Does she spend holidays with her family? Does he speak with his siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other various and sundry relatives? If he hasn’t been a bonder in his previous life, do you think he’ll have a frontal lobotomy and start loving family life now? Psych it out and compare it to your togetherness quotient.
Researchers call how you “score” on the togetherness chart your “comparison level,” and it plays a big part in keeping the love Chemistry between you.7 “I thought he would change” are some of the most foolish words I’ve ever heard.
My cousin Rory and his wife, Camilla, whom I knew way before they got married, have two beautiful young daughters, but they’re going through a tough time this year. Rory has always had vast interests and continually finds new hobbies. He had a meditation phase, a bird-watching phase, and a bowling phase. Now he’s into calligraphy and going to comic book conventions.
A few months ago Camilla and I curled up on the couch with our coffee cups and had a poignant talk. She was lamenting that Rory was always off with his friends. I squeezed her hand and reminded her, “Rory has a lot of diverse interests. Before you were married, I remember you telling me how fascinating he was because of it.”
“I know, Leil, but I thought that when the girls came along, he would settle down.”
“Camilla, what do you most enjoy doing?” I asked her.
“Just being with my girls. I mean that’s really my favorite thing to do. It’s just that . . . well, I feel Rory should be here more. The family should be doing things together.”
Here’s the tragedy. This very weekend Rory and Camilla are planning to tell their girls they are splitting. My eyes water as I write this. If only Rory and Camilla had discovered they had totally different definitions of “togetherness.” For Camilla, it is constant closeness. For Rory, it is loving cohabitation. Who will suffer the most from their not scoping it out before? Their girls, of course.
The so-called logical advice here would be to “sit down now and talk about how you both define togetherness.” Sounds good, but unfortunately that’s not always realistic. Most Hunters are biologically challenged in illusive relationship discussions like that. It’s like asking a mermaid to do the splits. And a Huntress’s crystal ball is too chemically clouded during early passionate love to think straight.
The solution? Make an appointment for your wise Professor and emotional amygdala to have a little non-dopamine-hacked neurotransmitting about what a relationship means to you.
Chemistry Sparker #64
Emphasize Your Similar Concept of Togetherness
Make it a point to define clearly and consciously what “togetherness” means to you. Then, to the best of your ability, determine what it means to your Potential Love Partner. If, hopefully, you discover that you and your PLP’s are the same, find ways to underscore it in casual conversation.
And remember (especially Huntresses), if you’re thinking, “I can change him,” forget about it. If you succeed, call the Guinness Book of World Records.
To me, those words are the most moving most part of a wedding ceremony because I’ve seen how illness and adversity affects couples. After deep love has had time to take root, tragedy can draw a couple even closer together. Whether they have taken the actual marriage vows or not, taking care of a long-term Love Partner can intensify love and make it more enduring.8
Infirmity and adversity have the power to overshadow other problems that start to tear a couple apart. In many cases, when there are catastrophic challenges, major arguments vanish and money problems pale. “You left the cap off the toothpaste” and “Take out the garbage” are no longer declarations of war. In fact, those minor foibles can invoke smiles reminiscent of early posthoneymoon discoveries.
I’ve seen it happen twice, once due to severe injury in a small plane crash and the other Parkinson’s disease. Both my friends’ marriages were tottering, but when tragedy struck, the other partner went instantly from being a quarreler to a loving caregiver. Life was harder, but their love became stronger.
A few months into writing this book I learned firsthand the bonding effect of illness. I was glued to the keyboard morning to night and had put off a lot of “should do” things like having a mammogram. Giorgio bugged me incessantly about it. So despite my grumbling, he insisted and dragged me off to the hospital.
A week later the hospital “invited” me back for a repeat visit. When I heard my gynecologist’s sympathetic “Hello” on the phone a few days later, I realized there’d be a slight change of schedule during the next few months.
Chemo for breast cancer sucked, but I discovered a new closeness with Giorgio. He postponed taking command of the ship he was booked for in Italy, becoming my hospital chauffeur and staying with me during every depressing chemo session. Giorgio spent the months puffing up my pillows, rubbing my nauseous tummy, kissing my yucky red face, caressing my bald head, and lying to me, saying I looked beautiful.
Now I’m completely okay. No, I’m better than okay because it showed me how vital togetherness is. Whether official vows have been exchanged or not, unspoken ones can be just as powerful. After that experience I have a deeper understanding of the distinction between “being in love” and loving. I’m sure the many millions of couples who have had experiences like mine understand what I’m talking about.
So here’s a question you should ask yourself when considering exchanging togetherness promises: “If tragedy struck, would my Potential Love Partner be able to take on the role of caregiver?” When you’re flat on your back, it’s no fun lying there alone. And equally important, “Would I do the same?”
I pray you will never need it, but think about it now because this is the person you plan to spend the rest of your life with in whatever shape either of you is in. Find ways to let your partner know you’ll be there, for better or for worse. Here’s how.
Chemistry Sparker #65
Show Your Quarry That You’re a Caregiver
Be extra-attentive and loving when your Quarry isn’t feeling well. Giving her flowers when she’s sick is as meaningful as on her birthday, maybe more so. Taking him chicken soup when he’s flat on his back gives him nurse fantasies of the nonsexual kind—and those last a lot longer.
And of course, check out your Quarry for care-giving qualities. It’s bad enough to be sick. But to have no one to hold your hand when you’re sick really sucks.
I don’t need to tell you the twenty-first-century world is practically a different planet. We are inspired by different ideas, connected by diverse technologies, admired for distinct accomplishments, and desired for divergent qualities—some old, some new. How lovely that we live in a land where free expression and diversity are encouraged and where poverty and plagues don’t prohibit it as they often did in the past. In many parts of the world personal growth would be considered a luxury just for the rich. For those of us in more fortunate nations it is ubiquitous and adds a thrilling dimension to our lives.
Marriage is no longer the economic and social institution it used to be. The expectations and psychological needs of the partners bear little resemblance to even a hundred years ago. Nora in Ibsen’s late-nineteenth-century play A Doll’s House would be ecstatic knowing that, within a scant fifty years, a group of women calling themselves feminists would lay the cornerstone for the temple of personal growth at which both evolved men and women worship today. Sociologists call it “self-expansion.”9 The more a mate encourages your goals, the happier and more committed your togetherness will be.10
In days gone by, happily in the past, it was primarily the woman who was expected to serve her partner. A “dutiful wife” brought hubby his slippers, didn’t complain if he worked late, and entertained his colleagues whenever requested. Now it’s a two-way street, and women who work just as hard expect and deserve the same deference. Both Hunters and Huntresses have their antennae out for a Love Partner who will be there for them both personally and professionally.
Chemistry Sparker #66
Show Signs That You Can Help Your Quarry Grow
Today you have the luxury of adding personal growth to your wish list and expecting it. Hunters, whenever the subject of her personal and professional goals comes up, tell her how supportive you are. Huntresses, when he speaks of his aspirations, share his enthusiasm and enhance his confidence that he can achieve them.
Before making the Big Decision, however, make sure it works the other way too. Chemistry can die quickly if your own creativity and growth are stifled.
As my regular readers know, I have a huge loft in New York City that, without rent control and a roommate, I could never afford. When I first found it, I was in the habit of having short-term roommates, students or professionals on short assignments in the city, for which I advertised in a then-popular weekly paper.
One of my ads came out on Thursday. On Friday, Keith, a thirty-six-year-old cellist with the Boston Symphony who was recently separated from his wife, called. He came over on Saturday and moved in on Sunday.
Keith was a fabulous roommate, not like the previous one who left the toilet seat up with a vengeance. The only annoyance was the ghastly ringtone on his cell. Several times an evening, Manowar’s Dark Avenger blasted out on his phone. He’d answer it with an anguished expression and disappear into his room.
I once joked about his ringtone. He shook his head, “I hate it too.”
“Well, um, Keith why do you have it?”
“My wife—soon to be EX-wife—insisted.”
“Oh, she was into heavy metal?” I asked.
“No!” he blurted out. “She always liked classical. Then one day, right out of the blue, she starts listening to Slayer and Spinal Tap and turns the volume up as high as it will go.”
“You mean it was all of a sudden?” I queried.
“Well, not really; bizarre things started happening last year.”
“Keith, please don’t answer if I’m invading your privacy, but may I ask what?”
He stared at me for a moment, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay, here goes. The first thing I noticed was she’d start talking about something, and I couldn’t follow her train of thought. At first I thought it was just me until one time at a dinner party, for no reason, she starts talking about Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Star Wars character. The party’s host asked who Obi-Wan Kenobi was. My wife breaks out laughing hysterically, and won’t stop. Everybody looked at each other, wondering what the heck was going on.
“After that, there was all kinds of other weird stuff.”
“Like?”
He put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. “Jeez, Leil, the whole gambit. First she’d garble about some new age mumbo jumbo. Then she’d babble about a fatal accident if we didn’t believe in Biblical miracles. I mean, she took them literally.” When he raised his head, I saw his eyes watering. Embarrassed, he stood up. “I dunno. Maybe it runs in the family. Her mom was a bit of a kook too.” Just then Manowar’s “Dark Avenger” blasted out on his phone. He slammed on the silencer and disappeared into his room.
Keith’s story rang a bell. A few friends in the past had told me that they’d known someone who had “suddenly gone sort of nuts.” They often followed it by saying they had heard the person’s mother or father was “very eccentric” too. Other times I’d hear, “She was abused as a child,” or “He was raised by an alcoholic father.”
Lovers seldom realize that their potential partner’s childhood can have a direct impact on their future relationships and desire for a long-term one.11 During casual discussions with your PLP try to steer the subject around to his childhood. Did his parents love him? Was there any brutality in his family? Did his mother suffer severe stress while he was still in her womb? Even that could have a detrimental effect on his later psychological development.12 And yes, it’s chemical. Growing up in a loving environment increases oxytocin in his body, meaning he’ll be a better bonder.
Hunters, what about her? Did she have a stable upbringing? Did any of her close blood relatives suffer from mental illness? Was she a troubled child? As callous as it sounds, if you intend to raise a family with this lady, it’s worth determining if there was any potentially transmittable mental illness or childhood challenge that could surface in adulthood. It’s not likely but definitely worth keeping your eyes open for when you start thinking about being together for the rest of your life.
As we discussed, often an affliction can create closeness between loved ones. But tragically, there are some behavioral conditions due to childhood or inherited genetic abnormalities that don’t. There’s a very good chance it won’t ever manifest itself, so don’t freak out about this. But it pays to be extra vigilant when considering someone you’ll be with for the rest of your life. Don’t dismiss clues like Keith did.
This sounds like pretty depressing stuff, doesn’t it? So I’m going to just drop it here and beg you to read a document you’ll find on the web. Before saying “I do” or giving up your rent-controlled apartment, run a search for the “Surgeon General’s Report on the Risk Factors of Certain Mental Conditions, Chapter Three, Section Two.” Don’t skip the part on “Family and Genetic Factors.” The percentage of inheritable and upbringing-influenced conditions is staggering.
Chemistry Sparker #67
Probe Your Chosen PLP’s Childhood (and Genes!)
This is what the dating process is all about—figuring whether your future togetherness will be happy or horrible. While having fun together and fantasizing about a beautiful life, don’t forget to climb out on the branches of your PLP’s family tree to look for nuts. (Sorry, bad pun.) Scamper through your loved one’s childhood to sniff out possible future challenges. Also, avoid doing anything irrational that your PLP might mistake as having deeper roots.
Look at it this way: You wouldn’t buy an expensive purebred dog without seeing its papers and assuring yourself that it has no inheritable diseases. And you’re going to live with your loved one a lot longer than your dog!
“Life without him would be a life without meaning.”
“I’ll die if she ever leaves me.”
“I could never fall in love with anyone else.”
“It is fate we should be together forever.”
Have you ever felt this way when you were very young? We all did once or twice. Some thrice. At age seventeen I thought I’d found the love of my life, the boy I just knew was the one. He was older and what some would call a tough guy. But he could be oh-so tender! I was ecstatic when he started talking about a future with me. “Our forever together time,” he called it.
Butch and I had been dating for about three months, but my mother hadn’t met him yet. Instead of coming to the door to pick me up, he would park in front of my house and honk the horn. It was to the tune of “shave-and-a-haircut, two bits,” the then-sweetest sound in the world to me. Upon hearing it I’d bounce out the door and breathlessly race to his car for a few hours of blissful togetherness and discussing “our forever together time.”
One day my mother asked me, “Leilie, do you have a date with Butch tonight?”
“Yes,” I crooned.
“He sounds so nice from what you’ve told me about him, dear. Why don’t you invite him in for a few minutes? I’d love to meet him.”
“But Mama . . .”
“Just for a few minutes, dear. I promise.”
At the anxiously awaited shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits, I ran out and begged him to come in to say “hi” to her.
After a short, noticeably uncomfortable conversation, my mother asked, “Leilie, can you come into my room for a second?” She closed her door and literally lay down across the doorway. She pointed a furious finger up at me and gave notice: “You will go out with that boy over my dead body!” She stormed back to the living room, locking her door behind her with me inside. I never saw Butch again.
Then, just several months ago, I got a letter written in a typeface I call “nut font” from, I kid you not, a return address of the Maryland Department of Corrections. Apparently, Butch’s brother had found me on the web for him. Looking back, I shudder to think of what a nightmare my life would have been if we’d gone through with our “forever together time.”
So, Dear Reader, if you haven’t reached the big two-oh, don’t even think about the “M” word! It’s practically impossible to make the right choice at your age. It’s not because you’re not smart. You could be the brightest crayon in the Crayola factory, but the biological structure of your brain is not prepared to make one of the most important decisions of your life. You don’t have to believe Mom or Dad—let neuroscience tell you why.
Until I’m what? No, it wasn’t a typo. As you now know, the neurons in your brain are constantly communicating by electrical impulses. The tubular-shaped insulation I mentioned earlier, called a myelin sheath, protects them from hit-and-miss thinking. This sheath, a greased tube of sorts around the axons of your neurons, only develops gradually. When you were born, the myelin in your system was hardly detectable.13 That’s why an as-yet myelinated baby sleeps in a crib. She might sense that falling out of bed would be a big “ouch,” but the message emanating from her little prefrontal cortex is too slow. Her tiny little Professor doesn’t have time to get the message to her central nervous system to stop her from rolling toward the cliff. In your early twenties, when your neurons become more fully myelinated, those greased tubes transmit clearer messages to the rest of your brain faster.14 (Sorry, young lovers, the full myelination process isn’t complete until about age twenty-five.)
I know it feels so intense. Your world revolves around your romance. But if it saves even one of you from ruining your life, I’m going to break my own commitment to not quote tedious excerpts from studies. This is from “Defining the Brain Systems of Lust, Romantic Attraction, and Attachment,” published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior by five of the leading researchers in the field.15
We were able to demonstrate that adolescents in early-stage intense romantic love did not differ from patients during a hippomanic stage . . . intense romantic love in teenagers is a “psycho pathologically prominent stage.”
Pathological means “evidencing a mentally disturbed condition.” Okay, throw this book out the window or delete it. But I speak the truth.
In my grandmother’s day sex before marriage was a sin. Even in my mother’s day, living together before marriage was a couple’s guilty secret. In today’s rapidly evolved society, however, I think premarital cohabitation should be a must, even a constitutional amendment! Permanent vows should come only after you have passed the test of togetherness, at least a year and a half to be safe. And don’t even think about bringing another human being into our already-overpopulated world before then!
Incidentally, if I should mysteriously get struck by lightning before this book is published, you know it was Mother Nature taking careful aim.