Anthropologists say Romantic Love is one of the most powerful sensations on Earth, I agree, do you?
Will it be wrong to infer that cocaine and romantic love have similar or same effect on our brain? Probably not, But the effect of Romantic Love is much more than a cocaine dose. The effect of cocaine dose goes away after some time and the cells in VTA start showing normal in MRI but in case of a Romantic love, it grows. Romantic love is an obsession, it possesses you. You loose senses of your self and you cant stop thinking about another human being. That other human being is all over you. Sounds illogical and too filmy (like hindi romantic movies)? Ask someone who is in a Romantic Love, or observe someone who is high with cocaine. You get addicted and then you can do anything to get it, even to the extent of killing someone or take their own life.
VTA - Ventral Tegmental Area - this is a tiny little spot near the base of brain (as seen in an MRI scan). It is a part of the Brain Reward system. Its way below your cognitive thinking process, your emotions. It is a part of the reptillian core of the brain associated with wanting, motivation, focus and craving. Incidentally the same area of brain gets activated when you take cocaine (again as showed in an MRI scan).
Will it be wrong to infer that cocaine and romantic love have similar or same effect on our brain? Probably not, But the effect of Romantic Love is much more than a cocaine dose. The effect of cocaine dose goes away after some time and the cells in VTA start showing normal in MRI but in case of a Romantic love, it grows. Romantic love is an obsession, it possesses you. You loose senses of your self and you cant stop thinking about another human being. That other human being is all over you. Sounds illogical and too filmy (like hindi romantic movies)? Ask someone who is in a Romantic Love, or observe someone who is high with cocaine. You get addicted and then you can do anything to get it, even to the extent of killing someone or take their own life.
Now, what happens when a person in Romantic Love is dumped? MRI scans show there are 3 other brain regions, that get activated. Interestingly these locations corresponds to the region that is associated with profit & loss calculations, the region that gets activated when you are prepared to take HUGE risks for huge gain or huge loss and the brain region associated with deep attachment to another person. All these 3 regions get activated and the VTA is all the MORE aggravated.
The only one thing you want to do when you are dumped in love is to forget that person and move on but your brain betrays you and you love them even harder (lesser the hope, hotter the love). And these 3 other brain regions acts as super catalysts by creating deeper attachment to that person, helps you do all the profit loss calculations and you cant stop thinking what went wrong, what did I loose, and encourages & enables you to take huge risks.
No wonder, with this intense energy, intense feeling, intense motivation, willingness to take risk and passion to achieve someone makes lovers a different, un-understandable sect. They simply do not care for anything other than their Love. Sometimes not even their lover. Romantic Love has same and all the characteristics of addiction. You are extremely focused, obsessed, mentally distorted, socially disconnected, you crave for someone and that "just" one, and you are ready to take any risk to get that someone.
There was a survey conducted by some researcher, 2 of the questions in that huge questionnaire was i) Were you dumped by someone you loved ii) Did you dump someone who loved you and strangely 95% of the respondents said YES to both the questions. If you look around you will find how true this survey result was. With all this knowledge, I wonder, can we make any change? Its not logic, cognitive, its not even emotion and I dump the person who loves me and get dumped by the person whom I love and then all my brain regions start pushing me towards something too passionate and dangerous, sometimes towards the passion crimes.
Although this has nothing much to do with age, but I feel teenagers and young people are prone to the vulnerability of Romantic Love, so if you are dealing with any such person, keep this in your mind that your logic and emotions will not be of great help. Deal with it with tools that can help - meditation, yoga, telepathy etc might help.
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