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Sasha's picture

In our discussion of the

In our discussion of the Science of Bonding/Romantic Love/ etc... I feel as though several aspects of the presence and development of love were left out. First, I think it's important to note that love, pair bonding, emotional bond/connection, whatever you want to call it, changes over time. Relationships change, people change, how much you trust someone changes over time- and these all lead to a mutation in that "love/bond". This bond can be made weaker or stronger or stay the same "strength" just have a different shape (the image in my head right now is of a carbon-carbon bond and you can go from a one bond to a double bond or triple bond and with love there could be straight bonds and squiggly bonds...  ) but and they would all still qualify as "love". I'm sorry to bring in my relationship but, for example,-the love i experienced when i first started dating my boyfriend 6 years ago was very different from the love I experienced after we had been together for 2 or 3 years and the love I feel now is different from the love i felt 2 or 3 years ago. I wouldn't say I love him any more or any less than I did in previous years, it's just different. Because we are constantly changing and our brains are constantly changing the way we process and interpret our emotions and experiences with love is most likely going to be constantly changing, and so the idea of mapping certain pathways and areas of the brain that show that someone is in love seems very challenging. I guess my point is that I don't fully agree with Megan in that I don't think "brain imaging techniques could be used to support findings that love is actually just the product of chemicals creating a classically conditioned response to a person." I think the manifestation of love is more complicated than a classically conditioned response to a person. There is too much variability in how humans experience love/bond that to claim that maybe 3 specific regions of the brain are involved and activated for people in love almost seems to oversimplify a very complicated and confusing emotion and experience. Nevertheless, pair bonding/love is certainly something worth investigating at a neurological level. 

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