ABC's Good Morning America did a short Monday morning piece on the chemistry of love, in honor of Valentine's Day, in which they featured a website that seems to think it can provide better match-making through personality typing. Now, I don't for a minute doubt that it's true, being a casualty of the love wars myself, and, therefore, completely committed to the principles of grandmothers everywhere, believing into my deepest soul that it's all about personality, and by "it" I mean every-flipppin'-thing. So, this "news" story says that some researchers somewhere, armed with PET scanners, have determined that "love" triggers the same pleasure and desire centers in the brain that are affected by drugs and addiction. Now, I think they're confusing "love" and something else entirely, which is what I came here to try to discuss today.
First of all, those of us who were raised in a less than perfect family, might come into our early adulthood just a tad confused about what love is and what it isn't. If Mama (or Daddy, or both of them) was all about how things looked rather than how things really are, if she refused to ask for what she needed but expected her needs to be anticipated and was quick to anger when they weren't, if she was unable to give emotional support and reinforcement no matter how worthy or deserving a child might have been, if she lied about stupid little things all the time for no good reason beyond needing to appear at all times to be the Most Special One, then those traits, which may very well be attractively packaged in the capture phase of the relationship, are going to feel like, well, coming home to Mama to the young adult, and they will trigger those "pleasure" areas, confused as those areas might be about what love is and what it isn't.
I remember that loosey goosey all messed up can't talk right like you're twelve again feeing that comes over folks when they find themselves in the presence of another human toward whom they feel strongly attracted. It's just that I'm fairly certain, at this very late stage of the game (post-game?) that the aforementioned feeling (or the lack thereof, for that matter) has nothing at all to do with love and that it just recalls for each of us some primary relationship from earlier in life, which may or may not have been healthy.
I am convinced that love, real love, the kind that lasts, is defined, first and last, by a pattern of loving interaction, and that all the warm, fuzzy feelings in the world, absent a consistent pattern of loving interaction, can't ever add up to love. I'm also convinced that a whole lot of us grow up the product of unhealthy parents (who, in all fairness, just didn't know any better) and haven't the first clue how to be in relationship with another, lovingly. Now, I can't go back and make my marriage different than it was. I can't go back and see through that amazing spin and realize that when he asked for my hand and promised my father and my step-father he would love me and take care of me, he didn't mean he loved me to the extent that he cared more that I (and any children we might produce) had food and shelter and health insurance than he did about his narcissistic delusions of entrepreneurial grandeur.
So, I'm not looking for valentines, and I haven't in a long, long time, at least since I got married all those years ago. I'm looking for honesty and kindness, advocacy and support, sweet-natured respect and tender friendship above all else. I'm not holding my breath or wasting my time longing, but it would be nice to find someone, somewhere who would, instinctively out of love, take my side, because that's what love means and, absent a consistent pattern of loving interaction, no matter how many times or how publicly you say it is, it isn't love.
I hope everyone has a happy V-Day, whether you're celebrating with the one you love or just with the one you're with. I'll be celebrating living with some integrity, finally and gratefully having shed false appearances of love that never really existed.
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