Why did Nature devise love? And since which moment has this phenomenon appeared in our history? Philosophy of love hasn’t changed for millenniums, though mankind has passed a lot of formations in development. I want to quote a great number of aphorisms about love by famous people ,then I’ll try to systematize and draw a line under this concept.
Ancient Greece, Democritus, 460 B.C. Who doesn’t love anybody, I think, he isn’t loved either. Ancient Greece, Socrates, 470-399 B.C. It’s better to be afraid of woman’s love than man’s hatred. It is a poison – as dangerous as pleasant. Ancient Greece, Theocritus, 4-3 c. B.C. Ugliness often seems beautiful to the one who is in love. Ancient Rome, Catullus, 87 – 54 B.C. What a woman tells her beloved is written on wind and on quick flowing water. Ancient Rome, Publius , 1c. B.C. It’s possible to gain love with caress but not with force. Voltaire 1694 – 1778, France Love is the strongest passion as it captures head, heart and body. Diderot 1713 – 1784, France Love often takes intellect from those who have it and gives to those who don’t have it. La Rochefoucauld 1613 – 1680, France Woman in love will sooner forgive major immodesty than minor unfaithfulness. Leonardo da Vinci 1452 – 1519, Italy True love affects in misfortune. As a spark, the brighter it is, the darker is night haze. Lope de Vega 1562 – 1635, Spain When we love, we lose vision. Chamfort 1741 – 1794, France Love is like an adhesive disease, the more you fear, the sooner you catch. Shakespeare 1564 – 1616, England Love is stronger than fear of death. Love is poor if it can be measured. Byron 1788-1805, England If wounds of love not always kill, they’ll never heal. Pushkin 1799-1837, Russia Love doesn’t know age. The one who once loved will never love again. Remark 1898-1970, Germany True love doesn’t bear strangers. Bernard Shaw 1898-1970, England If a person doesn’t love before 40, he’d better not love after.
After great people it’s difficult to discuss something as it has much been said, but I’ll divert from emotion and go to our article. Every human being once loved and was loved. Sometimes he didn’t realize or didn’t feel that love is near, but sometimes it was a short moment which he didn’t catch. Manifestations of love are different: love towards parents or parent’s love, love towards sister or brother, it’s possible to love friends or motherland, to love fanatically work or sport game. But I focus your attention on heroic love, that’s love between man and woman with their multiple manifestations and forms, consequences and duration, and of course, I’ll try to explain biological mechanisms of this phenomenon. Questions about love affairs are particular questions of life, and it is understood in case of analysis of all life situations and questions. Of course, it’s wonderful when love exists in marriage, but I would like to draw your attention to this phenomenon from all sides. If we try to go deeper into origin of this feeling, it’s necessary to consider in which micro- and macro-society the person grew up and developed, whether he had a normal or incomplete family, whether he was the only child of the family or grew up in a large family, whether he was given love and attention by parents, brothers and sisters or in the macro-society (in the yard, at school, in the Institute, at work, etc.). It’s necessary to take into account people’s personality, that is whether they are able to show feeling to others, whether they are selfish, they are sincere in their feeling or hide due to some hidden psychological motives. Without going into details of a person’s psychology let’s mention some characteristic features which hinder deep love affairs. It is lack of self-confidence and uncertainty in own feeling, shyness, non-communicativeness, a sense of alarm, disrespect for others and egoism, egocentrism, suggestibility, falsity, high emotional lability , adhesive thinking, pedantry, capriciousness, impulsivity, affective explosiveness, jealousy and etc. And which features lead to deep love relationships? They are as follows: a sense of duty and responsibility, high moral values, mildness of character, attentiveness, compliance, ability to do heroic deeds, romanticism, sensitiveness, a sense of equity and dignity, sincerity, ability to accept own injustice, responsiveness, kindness and disinterestedness. Which kind of forms of love can be? Love of equal value - two personalities with the same social, moral, ethical bases, material demands and opportunities. Love of unequal value – allegoric is love between king and maidservant or between baroness and gardener. Here there are hidden motives to save and help the beloved from something and take sincere pleasure in it. Love towards a married man/woman – here there are hidden motives to take someone else’s belongings; or sometimes extreme love affairs leading to increase of vitality in monotonous life. Unhappy love – a lot of things were described in Literature, especially it is often met by creative personalities when after the beloved’s abandoning they direct all their activity and creative work to her by finding inspiration in it, but sometimes they themselves dramatize this condition for raising their creative burst or just to be paid attention. Idealized love – when seeing only a photo or seeing the person instantly without going deeper into personality and including fantasy they love. In this case they subconsciously want to see their imagined ideal in the very person whom they worship and love, and besides they often move away from reality. Unanswered love – when the object of your feeling doesn’t even suspect about your intent participation in his/her life. Here, of course, the problem lies inside personality – in uncertainty of own correspondence to the beloved, fear to do the first step, imagined inaccessibility, and all this can lead to very understated self-esteem. Love to older people – here we can see subconscious motives not getting love from parents in childhood, and with this they fill the feeling. Love towards younger people – subconscious return to light-hearted times when they were young, beautiful and healthy from where they get inspiration and energy for further life. Man loving only one woman all his life. They are faithful to the one, and even after parting they aren’t able to fall in love again. Here are very important personal peculiarities which don’t allow to trust again and to be involved in a new love relationship as there was a previous bitter parting, and they are afraid of new frustration. Personalities who are able to love many times all their life. Here, besides personal peculiarities, we can see subconscious aspiration for comfortable psychic-emotional conditions which they find in love. If they are dull, they are apt to change their love object. Sometimes we face substituted concept of love and banal sex. Here we mean immature and infantile people who aren’t able to analyze emotional-sensual component of love and associate sex with love.
Biology and biochemistry of love Scan of beloveds’ brain done by scientists and study of their brain activity showed that such great love occupied small part of brain giving an answer to instinctive feeling and generation of euphoria. The beloveds use that part and mechanisms of nervous system which are usually narcotic dependences by absorbing work of those parts of brain which in an usual state allow to evaluate any situation rationally. It also reveals that such neuromediators as dopamine and endorphine cause love euphoria, raise inner energy, cause arousal, improve mood, at the same time by bringing down appetite and demand in dream put down alarm. Such substance as phenyl ethyl amine cause romantic mood, at the same time level of serotonine falls down which from one hand strengthens libido (sexual desire) and from the other hand it lowers objective assessment of reality. Such shock of neurotransmitters can not last long and gradually falls down within 30 months though exceptions may also be. After that level of neurotransmitters falls down, and a lot of people think that love goes out but really being in love goes out. In this period additional neurotransmitters involve: oxytocin and vasopressin which take part in sympathy and affection. As we see it’s also possible to explain love from viewpoint of exact science but all this roll up this wonderful feeling into excessive rationality and commonness. In the end of the very part of the article I will quote the quotation by S. Medvedev, director of “Institute of Brain”. From professional point of view love is an delightful neurosis. And all clinical signs are available: inability to evaluate own and the other’s condition impartially, extreme excitation, fixed thoughts about passion. If we try to analyze impartially the above mentioned I’ll come to the conclusion that love is a difficult psycho-emotional state where exist personal peculiarities, social environment of development and upbringing, biological and biochemical processes which lead the person to a long comfortable state. Love of old people leads to the rise in society, and as for the people with unhappy love it leads to the fall of all life manifestations. Why are there few happy love affairs and why aren’t you in love? The answer you should find in yourselves and in environment with its undermined morals and manners. P.S. Love can not have many faces, and it is associated with monogamous relationships.
