NERVOUS IN SUBURBIA MUSIC PROJECT

CHEMISTRY LESSONS IN LOVE

While I know I started this blog as a 365 MP3 a day blog, I've been so busy that I've neglected to supply tracks for quite a few days. As recompense I will provide several MP3 over the next few days. Today's theme is love and love lost. Love can be exhilarating, but yet devastating when lost. First I will provide you, the lone reader, an explanation of the way love works from a scientific state of mind. Or in other words, a look behind the tinkerings of the machinery we take for granted as love. And perhaps this will help us all in our quest to find that lingering of all predilections in our lives. I will leave you all with three MP3's concerning the loss of love. If we all could only hold onto that which we so dearly crave, perhaps there would be less pain and loss in the world. Enjoy!

CHEMISTRY LESSONS IN LOVE

How do we make love's first blush linger on? Who hasn't felt that they are the happiest, the luckiest and the only human to fall so completely in love? It's hard to forget and even more harder to sustain the physical and emotional fanfare that heralds love's arrival. There are three states that contribute to the makeup of this thing called love. Lust. Romantic Love. Attachment.

1. Lust is the beginning state that gets us on the hunt for potential mates.

2. Romantic love is the state that narrows our focus and energy to just one person.

3. Attachment, the third and glue to every relationship, encourages us to stick with said partner

long enough to raise children.

While love seems all about flowers and blue skies and hazy picturesque panoramas, it's actually all run by a chemical concoction in the brain. Not as exciting, I'm sure, but love is more about science than teddy bears and roses.

Lust in the intial phase of romantic love is driven by dopamine and norepinephrine levels surging when a person is confronted by the unknown. Much like slowly ascending the peak of a roller coaster.

It often causes such exhilaration that we lose the desire to eat or sleep, or as the French prefer to call it, le coup de foudre ("lightning bolt"). It's much like an addiction, whether it's cocaine or Jennifer in the office next door, it's the same results in the brain. "Romantic love is an urge, a craving, a homeostatic imbalance that drives you to pursue a particular partner, and to [experience] emotions like elation and hope...," explains Helen Fisher, a research anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

The drive of dopamine eventually subsides, followed by romantic love's chemical concoction of vasopressin and oxytocin, hormones that lead to long-lasting attachment. Even though these two chemicals can make us feel warm and fuzzy, they can never match the intensity that dopamine made us feel in the "lust" stage of the courtship.

However, one can invoke the thrill and power of dopamine by embracing new adventures, due to the fact that novelty prompts the brain to pump out this chemical. In other words, new and varied stimuli can be sufficiently arousing to recapture what was initially so exciting about your mate in the first stage. As proof of this fact, several studies have shown relationship satisfaction, as well as more romance, between couples who share exciting experiences, than do couples leading more mundane lives together. Simple factors such as humor and sex can rev up dopamine levels in the brain, allowing partners to recapture the thrill of romantic love, if only temporarily.

Of course in the words of Homer or Tennessee Williams and many other great authors, the simplest way to shake up a relationship is through enforced separation and knock-down, drag-out fights. Arguments trigger a rush of adrenaline, which kicks in during risky, dangerous or new situations. This may explain the old adage, "break up to make up". Dopamine levels rise into high gear, "when a reward is delayed...(as in) wanting the person more when barriers are increased." explains Fisher.

And not to mention let's face it, the 21st century is nothing like the previous ones filled with slow-motion lifestyles, leisure walks in the park along a pristine lake. Today is far and removed from the elegant and gracious times of the past. Today romance is shifted presedence with juggling bills, office deadlines and scheduling errands and appointments. Due to this new factor in the human life cycle, relationships struggle to survive once the "highs" of courtship give way to routine. Our brains are now programmed and our nerve endings snapp to attention agasinst a shortage of time. Folks of the past had all the time in the world in their day to day lives, while we seem to be losing time with our progress. Therefore leading us to feel unsatisfied at the mere lessening of those highs associated with the first stage of romantic love. Therefore you can see how dompamine is much like cocaine and our desire to get the next fix around the corner, never feeling quite satisfied without that rush or addiction enducing chemical caused by the first stage of romantic love.

One other side note of interest,is the influence of scents on the stages of love. One of the most subtle but important forces steering love is the body's own unadulterated scent. Rachel Herz, visiting assisting professor of psychology at Brown Universtiy has found that scent is the second most important criterion for women (after a pleasant disposition). Women are more interested in scent than in appearance, voice or muscle tone. That may explain the abundance of beautiful women who end up with complete assholes. There's nothing that can be said about the power of cologne. People know which cologne drives them crazy, but their preference for one perosn' smell over another's is at the mercy of biological processes that generally operate below the level of conscious awareness.

The source of each person's one-of-a-kind odor is, in fact, his or her own unique immune system. Immunity is inherited from both parents, and due to the fact that the human animal is programmed to follow the simple rule of "survival of the fittest," we are designed to mate with a partner whose profile differs from our own. As pointed out, studies suggest that we like the scent of people with immune systems unlike ours. On an interesting side note, it's been found that couples with similar immune systems have a higher risk of spontaneous miscarriages and have more trouble conceiving.

In an experimental study, directed by Claus Wedekind of the University of Bern in Switzerland, several women were asked to sniff and select cotton clothes that were worn by various men. The women not only favored the shirts of men whose immune profiles differed from their own but also said the aromas reminded them of current or ex-lovers. This is definate proof that immune profiles influenced their romantic choices in the past. On the other hand, T-shirts worn by men who had similar immune systems to the women, reminded the women in the study of their fathers or brothers instead.

One factor that may be an explanation in our sky-high divorce rates is a factor of the study that pointed out that women taking oral contraceptives, however, were dangerously misled in partner preference: They found the dad-and brother-like smells most attractive. The reason behind this is the fact that the pill tricks the woman's body into acting as if she's pregnant. One explanation to the theory behind this reasoning, is that throughout time it would have been beneficial and advantageous for a woman to be around family and kin when she is in such a vulnerable state. Rachel Herz stated that "Marriage counselors say that a [top] complaint from women who want to end a relationship is, 'I can't stand his smell.'"

A few years into marriage a woman may stop using contraceptives, only to find a loss of interest in her mate without knowing why. Herz now advises women who use the pill to try alternate means of birth control before settling down with a partner.

Although this may be a factor in a relationship, it's not a definate end all, be all to a relationship. Once atwo people are emotionally attached, they are disposed to see -- and smell -- each other in a positive light.

Culled from material research from "Chemistry Lessons" - Psychology Today; "Love's First Blush" by Kaja Perina; "Sensationally Out of Step: by Hara Estroff Marano; "Does Love Make Scents" by Carlin Flora.

Today I give you three MP3 equated with lost love:

The first is the original version of "Don't Turn Around" by Aswad. Probably the first ever song that was originally a reggae song and then covered as a pop song. As you know it's usually the other way around. Pop songs so often become reggae covers. But this was born a reggae track. Let the truth be known.

1. Aswad - "Don't Turn Around"