How Is Your Love Defined?
By Jianny Adamo. Posted on .
Everyone wants love but not everyone finds it. Interestingly enough, when you love or are in love, you know exactly what it is. Love paints our view of the world and bestows purpose and meaning to life. Somehow, when love is absent or lost, amnesia sets in. It's hard to define love; you ask if it's even real. You are either on a journey toward love or on a journey to defy it. 5 Tips To Help You Decide When To Have Sex
Love is fluid, offering different flavors and depths. In the attraction phase, being in love is an emotion producing, strong affection and obsession for another. It's driven by chemistry racing around your brain and body, an experience many poets and artists have written about. It's euphoric and cannot be understood unless you have experienced it yourself.
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This experience is a hallmark of new love, marked with preoccupation with your beloved and making the world around you disappear. It transcends time and commands your attention. A three-hour conversation with your beloved can seem like a blink of an eye when smitten with love. Existence quickly moves from okay to "I can climb Mount Everest," simply because of your experience with love. 3 Steps To Strengthen Your Love Connection
But not every relationship experiences such a high, nor does experiencing this bliss determine the longevity of your relationship. Dopamine, the pleasure chemical in your brain, norepinephrine, which produces the racing heart and excitement, and endorphins—the body’s natural painkillers—act like magnets bringing lovers together in ecstasy. This chemical reaction produces a dependency on your love object. For some, the need for this natural high has tripped them up to becoming addicted to love, cycling through relationships looking for the next rush. On average, this phase lasts 18 to 36 months and is nature's way of attracting us into venturing into 'real' love.
Consider the attraction phase the prelude. Many relationships naturally phase out here when there isn't enough interest, commonalities or shared values and goals. For those that continue, the next phase is attachment. The attachment phase centers on commitment. You've moved through the fantasy and are ready to embrace real love. It's as if in the attraction phase, all the possibilities of what this love can bring flashes before your eyes—and in the attachment phase you get to build it… together. 4 Steps To Finding Love [VIDEO]
Playing a key role in this stage are oxytocin, vasopressin and endorphins, which are released when having sex and when engaging in things that makes you feel close to your partner. They produce a general sense of well-being, including feeling soothed, peaceful and secure, leading to happy feelings and a deeper attachment. The commitment or attachment needs to be strong, as problems and distractions will arise testing your patience, your love and at times, push you over the edge.
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